Title: Benchmarking Supply Chain Flexibility using Data Envelopment Analysis

Authors: Dileep More; A. Subash Babu

Addresses: Operations Management Group, Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, D.H. Road, Joka, Kolkata 700104, India ' Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, Powai, Mumbai 400076, India

Abstract: Organisations have been facing several disturbing events, problems and changes affecting overall performance of their Supply Chains (SCs). To be competitive by quickly responding to disruptions, building enough flexibility in SCs is emerging as a new business strategy. However, it is very difficult to identify how much flexibility is required in different functions of the SC, as it depends on the nature and level of uncertainty faced by the process, facility or organisation. In this paper, SCF is logically attributed to a business function synonymously with the efficiency of the corresponding business unit, wherein the leveraging factors are treated as the inputs and the benefits as the outputs. Here, the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach is used as a benchmarking tool for deriving the advantage of optimisation in many ways.

Keywords: SCM; supply chain management; SCF; supply chain flexibility; DEA; data envelopment analysis; benchmarking.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLSM.2012.047603

International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management, 2012 Vol.12 No.3, pp.288 - 317

Published online: 28 Nov 2014 *

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