PPP Brazil 2013-2014 - MatuFlex I: Development of a Maturity Measurement Framework for Supply Chain Flexibility

Basic data for this project

Description

Today’s supply chains are acting in an ever more complex, dynamic and uncertain business environment. Increased customer expectations regarding product variety, shortened product life-cycles and volatile demand motivate the need for supply chain flexibility (SCF) in the face of stiff competition and environmental changes. Flexibility processes implementation in supply chains varies according to companies and supply chain, due to several factors. The level of awareness of the need for flexibility, proactive or reactive planning and use of flexibility; and the focus on the supply chain as a whole or on single companies are examples. The concept of process maturity assumes that the implementation of procedures is carried out in multiple evolutionary and successive stages, which are explicitly defined, managed and measured. Maturity models give companies indicators as well as guidance to analyze and subsequently improve their processes. Despite several SC maturity models in the literature, there was not a model focusing on the maturity of SC flexibility processes, as the one developed in this project. The levels of the developed maturity model for supply chain flexibility are (1) none, (2) inter-firm, (3) SC reactive, (4) SC proactive, and (5) SC paradigmatic. Each level has five dimensions: (1) Collaboration, (2) Information Technology, (3) Information flow, (4) Internal flexibility types and (5) Performance measurement. This project was set out to develop the afore described maturity model for supply chain flexibility and to apply it in practice. Project partners of the research group Information Systems and Supply Chain Management were the two universities Universidade Federal de Sao Carlos and the Pontoficia Universidade do Rio de Janeiro from Brasil. The project started in 2012 and was successfully concluded in 2016. Besides the academic development of the model, the model was applied in several case studies with industry partners.