SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT PRACTICES IN INDIA
(A CASE STUDY OF TISCO)
Introduction
Today’s world is moving in turbulent economic environment, firms are striving for waysto achieve competitive advantage. One of the approaches is to manage the entire supplychain to reduce costs and improve performance to create competitive advantage andbusiness success. Supply chains are now at the center-stage of business performance ofmanufacturing and service organisations. This research explores and investigates howhigh technology firm’s uses supply chain management to gain competitive advantage andincrease business success. This research provides a theoretical framework to understand afirm’s performance and argues that supply chain management will help a firm to becompetitive and successful.
In order to leverage on existing supply chain investments, firms in the SteelManufacturing industry, like many other industries, are faced with the challenge of beingable to align their supply chain strategies with the effective use of technology. To thisend, manufacturing firms are changing their focus from a simple product-focus, to a morecustomer focused approach, achieved through the development of more viable, longer-term relationships with their customers. Many firms in this industry sector have realisedthat the Internet is an effective tool that can be used to build these relationships. This isachieved by adding value to the services a firm offers to its customers (Kalakota andRobinson, 2000). The result of this approach is a shift in supply chain managementpractices, whereby, a business to consumer link is added in the supply chain, typically atthe distribution end (Anderson, 2001) the business to consumer link is facilitated throughthe integration of Internet technologies into the supply chain.
Supply chain management is not a static concept or solution. Instead, new advances andtechniques for supply chain management continue to mushroom. This tremendous growthin new ideas and...