Abstract

Supplier Relationship Management is very important for manufacturing firms as it can ensure the supply ofreliable and frequent deliveries in today's dynamic and competitive environment. For such relationship to beeffective and long-term, it has to be beneficial for all parties, the buying and the supplier firms. This studyattempts to examine the impact of supplier relationship management (SRM) on competitive performance in themanufacturing sector.

Based on the literature review, we measure SRM through five main practices: supplier quality improvement,trust-based relationship with suppliers, supplier lead time reduction, supplier collaboration in new productdevelopment, and supplier partnership/development. We measure competitive performance through cost, quality,flexibility, delivery, and on time product launch.

Using international data collected in Japan, Korea, USA, and Italy as part of round 3 of High PerformanceManufacturing (HPM) project, and After using statistical package of social sciences (SPSS) to describe andanalyze the data, the results show that two practices of supplier relationship management, supplierpartnership/development and supplier lead time reduction significantly and positively affect the competitiveperformance of the buying firms. Discussion and conclusion are provided based on the results of this study.

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