Discusses the importance of achieving alignment between buyers and sellers, with specific emphasis on efforts by buyers to improve the performance of their suppliers. Describes common barriers and presents strategies and methods that were successful in educating and developing suppliers’...

Describes the process for conducting downward price business‐to‐business online auctions over the Internet for direct material purchasing and presents common issues, process improvement opportunities, and the interpretation of auction results. Comparisons are made between online auctions and...

Discusses the types of terms and conditions that typically accompany purchasing contracts resulting from online reverse auctions for industrial components. Identifies the terms and conditions that perpetuate traditional batch‐and‐queue production practices. Concludes that buyers must...

A supply chain consists of suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and customers, all linked together with a forward flow of material and backward flow of information. It encompasses all activities associated with the flow and transformation of goods from raw material extraction through end use....

Purpose – To investigate the relationship between a supplier and firm's level of environmental management activity and the structure of the customer‐supplier manufacturing relationship. Design/methodology/approach – This paper presents a conceptual framework and looks at the literature in...

Purpose – To show how value chain analysis techniques have highlighted opportunities for strategic change in a UK agri‐food supply chain and to present an initial model of an integrated supply chain based on the application of lean principles. Design/methodology/approach – The paper...

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to examine the impact of supply chain management (SCM) on the HRM practice of suppliers. The paper argues that the performance requirement in an SCM system requires that suppliers develop specific HRM practices. Design/methodology/approach – A structured...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to address “how Toyota can continuously and consistently achieve its dramatic success through its competences ‐ continuous waste elimination and the objective of long term philosophy”; the paper aims to summarize some solid suggestions and...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse the characteristics and the performance of the Catalan pork supply chain, with the objective to assess whether this operates according to the parameters of a lean chain. Moreover there is a tentative lean supply chain model contribution....

Purpose – This paper aims to develop a methodology for lean implementation that reduces the risk of damaging a company's key resources and abilities through the application of core competence theory. Design/methodology/approach – Academic literature provided background conceptual...