The latter part of the twentieth century saw the lean production paradigm positively impact many market sectors ranging from automotive through to construction. In particular there is much evidence to suggest that level scheduling combined with the elimination of muda has successfully delivered...

The topic of this research focuses simultaneously on the perceived trust of companies towards suppliers and customers in supply chains. Initially, it is assumed that lean, responsive, and agile supply chains require satisfactory or high levels of perceived trust of companies towards suppliers...

Electronic grocery shopping (EGS) with direct home delivery is gradually becoming an option for busy families. The early EGS operators offer service built on top of the traditional grocery shop and the Internet is only used as a communication tool to transmit the customer order. To become a...

The reason for this research originates from the time‐ and functional dependencies between firms’ activities and resources in supply chains. These dependencies cause vulnerability. The principal objective of this research is to conceptualize the construct of vulnerability in firms’ inbound...

The topic of this research focuses on companies’ perceived time and relationship dependencies in supply chains. The empirical findings are based upon a mail survey in the Swedish automotive industry. The principal contribution is a typology of vulnerability scenarios in supply chains based...

The highly competitive electronics manufacturing marketplace demands that suppliers provide low‐cost, high‐quality products to their customers in a timely fashion. Shortened product life cycles and increasingly global competition have caused traditional manufacturers to focus on their...

Competitive market pressures within today’s contemporary business environments have encouraged the partnership of many supply chain members. Of particular interest is the development of successful relationships between firms in an effort to gain product and service quality and efficiency that...

It is now becoming apparent that the prevalent “stock‐push” approach in the automotive industry of building vehicles against a long‐term forecast and fulfilling the large majority of orders from existing stock is no longer a viable proposition. Pressure from rising stock levels in the...

E‐commerce is such a new phenomenon that little research has addressed the effects it has on relationships in supply chains. A qualitative study was conducted with eight e‐commerce companies in order to construct theoretical relationships with which to develop a grounded theory of the impact...

This is a case study discussion drawn from scholarly publishers Emerald, formerly MCB University Press. It discusses the unusual “supply circle” phenomenon in scholarly publishing, where authors (suppliers) are often the same people as readers (customers). It addresses this from the...