Measuring visibility to improve supply chain performance: a quantitative approach

摘要

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to describe a quantitative approach to assess the degree ofrnvisibility that a focal company has of its supply chain, addressing specifically complex networks andrnecosystems.rnDesign/methodology/approach - The study is based on an in-depth literature review concerningrnthe measurement of supply chain visibility and the assessment of its value. An extensive, six-monthrndiscussion and refinement process with the supply chain managers of nine leading companies wasrnconducted to validate the proposed approach and to conduct real case studies.rnFindings - The main outcome of this paper is a model to measure the visibility level in complexrnsupply networks. Such a measure can be used for benchmarking and as a diagnostic tool forrnpractitioners to find more easily the areas where a visibility improvement is more urgent.rnResearch limitations/implications - The model provides a measure of the visibility across therninbound supply chain. Further research will extend the approach to the internal and outbound supplyrnchains. Moreover, limited empirical evidence is presented in this paper, which mainly aims to validaternthe proposed approach. A wider application of the model could offer interesting opportunities in terms ofrnmanagerial practice and provide a more extensive basis for benchmarking.rnOriginality/value - Various authors have attempted to quantify visibility across a supply chain, butrnthey either calculate it only for simplistic, two-tier or linear supply chains, or they fail to provide arncomprehensive visibility metric.