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A Model to Explain the Concept of Integrity in Supply Chains

Fakour Motlagh, Shadi | 2013

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 44014 (01)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Industrial Engineering
  6. Advisor(s): Akbari Jokar, Mohammad Reza
  7. Abstract:
  8. With the increase of competition in the world of business and the advent of modern technologies, many companies in the world have turned into integration. The need for flexibility, reduction of costs, establishing close and broad connection among suppliers, producers, and distributors has caused companies to integrate their own systems and organizations so as to survive and keep going in today’s competitive, ever changing environment and finally gain competitive advantage. Supply chain management as a support for essential and operational processes of the organization is not an exception from this integration rule. Despite many views on the integrity of the supply chain, yet there is no clear understanding of integrity and its processes, and each one of the activists in this field has offered a different definition based solely on their own interpretation of this concept. Therefore, in order to explain a comprehensive concept of integrity, it is necessary to identify and define the principles governing the integrated systems so as to provide not only a comprehensive definition of the supply chain integrity, but also a model for the assessment of the level of their integrity.
    With regard to the studies and research carried out during the past few years, it was demonstrated that a supply chain is said to be integrated only when it abides by these ten principles: coordination, convergence, process-oriented approach, completeness, non redundancy, standardization, interaction, accessibility, conformity, and uniformity. In order to determine the validity of this model, several research projects should be conducted so that if these principles are proved, the model can be presented as a standard model for measuring the integrity of a supply chain. The current project has been conducted with the same purpose, aiming to present an explanatory model, based on library and field studies, capable of measuring the integrity of a supply chain, and then to confirm the structure of the presented model and classifications developed by the use of questionnaires, taking experts’ opinions, and applying appropriate statistical methods. For the same purposes, the related research literature were studied, and then different criteria proposed about the integrity of the supply chain and its processes were identified and classified as the above-mentioned ten principles. At the next stage, several meetings were held with some experts at the field of supply chain management in order to correct and confirm the above classification. After finalizing the indices related to each principle, a questionnaire was designed to answer the main research questions; it was then distributed among experts of logistics and supply chain management. Finally, statistical analyses such as Friedman binomial test, Pearson and Spearman’s correlation, and factor analysis were carried out, which proved the model, and through which the effectiveness of the integrity principles and indices as well as their correlation with each other were examined
  9. Keywords:
  10. Statistical Analysis ; Supply Chain Integrity ; Integration Indices ; Model Provision

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