1.1.

Supply Chain Responsiveness & Competitive Advantage

Competitive advantage is no doubt hard to achieve without SCR, timely and efficient
responses (Upton, 1997). When the suppliers’ network would be efficient, better equipped to
meet the change in demand of market, changing demands of customers, competitive advantage
would be easier to achieve. There are various methods organizations use to have a benchmark
position in the market, and these ways are cost, quality control, timely delivery, in time market
etc. a better channel of suppliers thus considered to be more favorable in having a competitive
edge over others. When products are manufactured and are not delivered timely, they would be
of no use. So not only manufacturing but transportation, storage of materials, maintenance of the
stored material etc also hold importance. And Logistic system responsiveness tends to increase
the competitive advantage of the organizations. Responsiveness to the demands of customer is a
way to get competitive advantage (Williamson, 1991)

In this dynamic and speedy environment of business, operations need to be smooth,

continuous, and flawless. There should be some side plans in case of any sudden change, change
in demand, the management must have some ways to come out of the sudden phase. A flawless
operation system increases the competitive advantage of organization. Supply chain
responsiveness is a vast subject covering all the fields of Supply Chain and as the supply chain is
base of manufacturing industry so proper adoption of supply chain management practices can
lead a company’s to get the benefits of supply chain.

There is very little empirical research on the supply chain responsiveness. Supply chain
integration is the most important area of the study. There are different supply chain management
practices that can result in responsiveness in the contemporary era of competition (Sukati et al.,
2012). Supply chain integration can be defined as the effectiveness of communication among all
the members of supply chain (Turner, 1993; Holweg, 2005). The supply chain integration helps
to achieve competitive advantage of a company. Integration basically defines the degree of
relationship among different departments of a single organization or relationship among different
organizations. Integration is the source of knowledge (Sukati et al., 2012). The supply chain
management theories posit that there are different critical factors that play a very important role
to achieve responsiveness. These factors are communication, cooperation, information and trust
(Russell & Taylor, 2009). A study suggested that in this era of tough competition in the supply

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chain, there is also a need for the organizations to sustain the competitive advantage (Li et al.,
2006). Another study related supply chain to competitive advantage and revealed that if there is a
strong link between performance of supply chain process and financial strategic goals, the
organization can achieve the competitive advantage. This can also help the organization in
formulating strategies for supply chain management (Elgazzar, et al., 2012).