A study on the factors influencing supply chain quality management practices and their impact over a firm’s supply chain performance

Abstract

With the accelerated evolution of today‘s business environment, the competition is no longer between businesses, but between supply chains of rival companies. Therefore, the supply chain managers have a huge responsibility to gain competitive advantage over rival supply chains in order to achieve and retain stakeholder attraction. The competitive environment of the twenty-first century requires achieving efficiency, high service levels, rapid response, and high quality and agility in products and processes. All these competitiveness could be achieved through improvement in quality performance in collaborative supply chain (SC) environment. In order to face challenges in quality management and to enhance performance, a sound knowledge about supporting factors for effective quality management practices are important. This research involves in studying the factors influencing supply chain quality management practices (SCQMP) and their impact over a firm‘s supply chain performance (SCP) in Sri Lankan apparel industry. Apparel industry is one of the most evolving industries in Sri Lanka, hence it is chosen as the domain for the research. Through an extensive literature survey and the expert opinion from the industry, this research investigates the impact of the seven selected SCQMP over SCP. Both qualitative and quantitative data has been gathered through a structured questionnaire survey, through interviews from executive level to top management members working in supply chain and quality departments and from secondary data. Four plants of leading apparel export firms have been studied to obtain information under convenient sampling concept. Multiple regression analysis and Spearman‘s Correlation has been used to analyse data. The results indicate that customer focus, supplier quality management, operations focus and information analysis as the most significant SCQM factors influencing supply chain performance.