Integrated Supply Chain Practices

By

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

First I start with the name of GOD for giving me potential and capability to complete the entire research as per requirement. I would like to take this opportunity to say a special thanks to my supervisor Dr. Masood Sabzwari for helping me or support me while making research. He has constantly challenged me to think about the thesis in new ways, and has consistently supported me in my research endeavours. Through his guidance and knowledge, I have learned and gained valuable knowledge. I'm also very thankful to facilitations of Dr. Imtiaz Subhani for his cooperation and assistance eloquent support in statistical analysis, interpretations and inference made measurement. He helped me for result analysis which meets my research requirement. Moreover, I'm especially thankful to all the respondents who co-operated with me in filling out the questionnaire. Finally, I would like to thank my parents. They have always encouraged me throughout all my endeavours. Their support and advices has given me the motivation to achieve my goals. This research is designed to give the master's degree student a chance to finish a program from the beginning to the end. It helped us for our future career that most employers are concentrated on the research as this is my own work that I have achieved in master's degree.

DECLARATION

I declare that the work in this dissertation was carried out by me. The project is my own original work and has not been submitted elsewhere in fulfilment of the requirements of this or any other award.

SIGNED: ............................................................. DATE: ..........................

ABSTRACT

For the success of supply chain, supply chain integration is considered as a major factor. An effective, efficient and responsive supply chain attempts to integrate all its suppliers, customers, partners and internal systems seamlessly for successful operations. This research was initiated to identify the critical success factors for integrated supply chain. The literature review identified information, information technology and competitive capabilities as the factors likely to affect a firm's performance. A questionnaire based survey assessed the contribution of these factors to a firm's performance. Analysis of the primary data revealed that information technology and competitive capabilities were considered as critical to supply chain integration for an effective performance. When compared to competitive capabilities and information technology, it is surprising to find that information was given less importance as an ingredient of supply chain integration. This factor might have been perceived as already incorporated in competitive capabilities and information technology. This element of outcome of this research justifies further research on the impact of information on competitive capabilities.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTii

DECLARATIONiii

ABSTRACTiv

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION1

1.1 Overview of the topic1

1.2 Problem Statement2

1.3 Outline of the Study2

1.4 Definitions2

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW3

2.1 Background of the Supply Chain Concepts3

2.2 List of Selected Variables6

2.3 Supply Chain Information7

2.4 Information Technology7

2.5 Competition Capability & firm performance8

2.6 Supply Chain Risk Sources8

2.7 Supply Chain Resilience10

2.8 Collaboration needed in Supply Chain Entities11

2.9 Contingency Planning in Supply Chain13

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODS14

3.1 Method of Data Collection14

3.2 Sampling Technique14

3.3 Sample Size15

3.4 Instruments of Data ...