Investigating the relevance of supply chain improvement systems (SCIS)

Due to the pressure of competition, high process efficiency has become a corporate ob¬jective for companies to maintain their global competitiveness. To ensure high process efficiency, it is important to constantly reduce process losses within various business activities. Different concepts to evaluate the efficiency of a company's key processes have therefore been discussed in academia. These concepts largely concentrate on the production area of one single company. Currently, howev¬er, not only individual companies but also entire supply chains are competing with each other. For this reason, it is necessary to thoroughly evaluate and increase the efficiency of production, transport, handling, and warehousing processes along the entire Supply Chain. We addressed this challenge with the conceptual design of a supply chain improvement system (SCIS). The results of empirical research focussing on the managerial purpose of the SCIS indicate that intercompany efficiency evaluation and improvement are prevalent issues in entrepreneurial practice.