The impact of supply chain complexity on manufacturing plant performance

This paper puts forth a model of supply chain complexity and empirically tests it using plant-level data from 209 plants across seven countries. The results show that upstream complexity, internal manufacturing complexity, and downstream complexity all have a negative impact on manufacturing plant p...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of operations management 2009-01, Vol.27 (1), p.78-93
Main Authors: Bozarth, Cecil C., Warsing, Donald P., Flynn, Barbara B., Flynn, E. James
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Empirical research methods
Impact analysis
Manufacturing
Manufacturing strategy
Operations management
Studies
Supply chain complexity
Supply chain management
Supply chains
Supply management
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Summary:This paper puts forth a model of supply chain complexity and empirically tests it using plant-level data from 209 plants across seven countries. The results show that upstream complexity, internal manufacturing complexity, and downstream complexity all have a negative impact on manufacturing plant performance. Furthermore, supply chain characteristics that drive dynamic complexity are shown to have a greater impact on performance than those that drive only detail complexity. In addition to providing a definition and empirical test of supply chain complexity, the study serves to link the systems complexity literature to the prescriptions found in the flexibility and lean production literatures. Finally, this research establishes a base from which to extend previous work linking operations strategy to organization design [Flynn, B.B., Flynn, E.J., 1999. Information-processing alternatives for coping with manufacturing environment complexity. Decision Sciences 30 (4), 1021–1052].
ISSN:0272-6963
1873-1317
DOI:10.1016/j.jom.2008.07.003