Title: Exploring the factors affecting supply chain performance in dairy industry using exploratory factor analysis technique

Authors: Rahul S. Mor; Arvind Bhardwaj; Sarbjit Singh; Vinkel Kumar Arora

Addresses: Department of Food Engineering, National Institute of Food Technology Entrepreneurship and Management, Sonepat, India ' Department of Industrial and Production Engineering, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar National Institute of Technology, Jalandhar, Punjab, India ' Department of Industrial and Production Engineering, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar National Institute of Technology, Jalandhar, Punjab, India ' Department of Food Engineering, National Institute of Food Technology Entrepreneurship and Management, Sonepat, India

Abstract: This paper explores the factors affecting supply chain performance of dairy industry and to develop a framework using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) technique. A pre-structured questionnaire survey was conducted to explore the key factors of three interfaces of dairy supply chain viz. procurement, production, and distribution. The respondents were requested to rate the 50 statements/issues of different dairy supply chain practices on five-point Likert scale. The results of EFA grouped the 50 statements into eleven factors. The results reveal that dairy industry necessities substantial development in the supply chain practices in order to be competitive and proficient. Further, the study is helpful for the firms in the milk processing sector for handling the demand fluctuations, improved product quality, execution of effective information system, process flexibility and hence, enhanced supply chain performance.

Keywords: exploratory factor analysis; EFA; supply chain; dairy industry; multivariate data analysis; procurement; production; distribution.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2020.110277

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2020 Vol.36 No.2, pp.248 - 265

Received: 24 Apr 2018
Accepted: 21 May 2019
Published online: 12 Oct 2020 *

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