Continuous supply chain collaboration: Road to achieve operational excellence

Supply chain management (SCM) is becoming critical as firms recognize that competition is shifting from company versus company to supply chain versus supply chain. In the present competitive scenario, the fierce competition has driven most companies to seek for means of enhancing performance beyond their four wall boundaries. The firm’s ability in collaborating with its upstream and downstream partners determines its success in attaining better performance with supply chain collaboration; a firm is able to serve fragmented markets in which end customers require more product varieties and availability with shorter product life cycle and, at the same time, lower supply chain costs. This paper introduces the framework of continuous supply chain collaboration (CSCC), which extends the traditional frame of reference in strategic sourcing from a supplier centric to a supply-chain-scope as continuous improvement efforts to enhance the customer satisfaction. CSCC practices are rather exceptional, yet CSCC is believed to be the single most comprehensive framework for attaining operational excellence.