A performance comparison tool for supply chain management

Increasing globalisation, diversity of the product range and increasing customer awareness are making markets highly competitive, forcing different supply chains to adapt to different stimuli on a continuous basis. The necessary level of ‘compatibility’ among all the upstream and downstream players in a supply chain must be achieved to meet the strategic objectives of the supply chain. A mismatch between the objectives and capabilities of different players not only leads to the inefficient use of scarce resources but also affects the successful attainment of the strategic objectives for the supply chain. This paper briefly reviews some of the technical papers published to evaluate the performance of a single player or a supply chain over a chosen set of performance metrics. The paper then proposes a spreadsheet-based tool to address the issue of ‘strategic fit’ for a supply chain. The spreadsheet identifies the bottleneck areas in achieving the strategic fit between the supply chain's goals and the different players' capabilities. The spreadsheet also gives information regarding the time and monetary resources required to remove and/or reduce the mismatch, thereby serving as a valuable aid for strategic decision making.