eThesis - School of Business electronic theses

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The focus of this research is in the area of Supply Chain Collaboration (SCC). More precisely we studied the TeleCom Installation Services supply chain in the case company Digita Oy. Our goal was to identify the key elements to be considered when pursuing towards SCC; highlight the development areas in Supply Chain Management (SCM) in the case company; study how the SCC efforts can improve SCM in the case company; and construct a Collaboration Based SCM Framework for the case company. Overall aim of the framework was to improve visibility and efficiency of the supply chain, as well as, improve material management.

Such a study is important in order to fulfill a gap in existing research in that there is a lack of consensus in the definition of SCC, which causes variation in understanding the concept, as well as, difficulties in implementing such initiative. In addition, SCC initiatives are company and supply chain specific. Also, most of previous research has concentrated on a few industries and a majority of the companies that have successfully implemented SCC approaches fall into the large enterprise category. This, in other words, means that these approaches might be unsuitable for smaller companies, such as Digita Oy. Therefore, the evidence suggests that there was a need for empirical research. The research approach adopted in this dissertation was case study and it included extensive review of relevant literature, as well as, collection and analysis of empirical data obtained from Digita supply chain setting. Primary focus of the empirical work was to gather data by interviews of senior staff from various organisations within the Digita supply chain. In addition, data was collected from company internal systems, documents, project groups and meetings. Finally the findings of both review of literature and empirical research were compared to reach synthesis.

The main findings and conclusions drawn from this study are that there are certain key elements that should be considered in Supply Chain Collaboration, as well as, every company should approach adopting it in a different way. In addition, empirical study indicated that Digita has experienced challenges in their overall supply chain activities, and expecially in material management. Therefore, this dissertation recommended that Digita adopts the Updated Collaborative SCM Framework, presented in this thesis, where an influential and impartial logistics integrator would operate as a moderator and information furnace in the supply chain. In other words, this model would combine consultancy, operative implementation, as well as, running operations under a one umbrella of solutions.