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The impact of supply chain complexity on manufacturing plant performance
Author(s) -
Bozarth Cecil C.,
Warsing Donald P.,
Flynn Barbara B.,
Flynn E. James
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal of operations management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.649
H-Index - 191
eISSN - 1873-1317
pISSN - 0272-6963
DOI - 10.1016/j.jom.2008.07.003
Subject(s) - supply chain , complexity management , computer science , flexibility (engineering) , upstream (networking) , downstream (manufacturing) , computational complexity theory , lean manufacturing , operations research , industrial organization , business , marketing , economics , mathematics , management , computer network , algorithm
This paper puts forth a model of supply chain complexity and empirically tests it using plant‐level data from 209 plants across seven countries. The results show that upstream complexity, internal manufacturing complexity, and downstream complexity all have a negative impact on manufacturing plant performance. Furthermore, supply chain characteristics that drive dynamic complexity are shown to have a greater impact on performance than those that drive only detail complexity. In addition to providing a definition and empirical test of supply chain complexity, the study serves to link the systems complexity literature to the prescriptions found in the flexibility and lean production literatures. Finally, this research establishes a base from which to extend previous work linking operations strategy to organization design [Flynn, B.B., Flynn, E.J., 1999. Information‐processing alternatives for coping with manufacturing environment complexity. Decision Sciences 30 (4), 1021–1052].