Research On Supply Chain Flexibility Evolution And The Relationship Between Supply Chain Flexibility And Performance

With the accelerated change of technology and the formation of information network in the modern global competition marketplace, customer's requirements and expectations become higher and higher, and consumption concept has happened significant changed. In order to satisfy the real customer's requirements and expectations, enterprises need to manage and integrate the whole value chain from suppliers, distributors, retailers, and customers to develop new product, manufacture and sale. Supply chain management is an effective strategic pattern to integrate related business companies (including suppliers, manufactures, distributors, retailers, etc.) from raw material provider to final product production and sale, which makes the competition of the enterprises gradually evolve the competition of supply chain.With the continuously updating of technology and various of customer's requirement, there are various uncertainties in supply chain environment, from market situation, changeable customer's requirement, collaboration of supply chain partnership to various operation management internal supply chain, including every link of stock amount, production quality of suppliers, information passing, transport conditions and so on, all of them exist kinds of uncertainties, which add the complexity of supply chain management. The core problem of supply chain management is how to react the change of environment and uncertainties with high performance to satisfy various demands through effective cooperation of enterprises. Flexibility has been considered as the ability to react uncertainty and a major determinant of competitiveness. Thus, it is necessary to research on supply chain flexibility evolution and the relationship between supply chain flexibility and performance precisely and systematically.The most literatures on the flexibility are concentrated in the context of manufacturing field and enterprise level. With the need of competition and the blurring boundaries of the firm, supply chain flexibility has been receiving increasing attention from both practitioners as well as researchers. Due to the multidimensional concept of flexibility and the complexity of supply chain, the research field of the connotation, basic motive force and generated mechanism of supply chain flexibility are still confusion. The research field of the evolution of supply chain flexibility is still blank. Besides, with the more attention to the consumer's requirement in modern business environment, supply chain operation mode has transformed from product-pushed to demand-pulled. It becomes a tendency to consider consumer's requirement as the original intention of the supply chain operation, consumer satisfaction as the performance evaluation criteria. In order to response environmental uncertainty, deeply understand flexibility and analysis measurement and evolution of supply chain flexibility in changeable demand environment is a primary goal in supply chain management. Practitioners finally want to improve supply chain performance through flexibility. Many researchers point that flexibility is an important index of supply chain performance, but few studies have researched the relationship between supply chain flexibility and its performance. Thus, it is theoretical requirement and practical need to research the relationship between supply chain flexibility and supply chain performance based on the deeply understanding of the supply chain flexibility, which has deeply theoretical and practical value.This paper adopts the method of system analysis, the combination of normative research and empirical research, qualitative and quantitative research method to deeply study the evolution of supply chain flexibility and the relationship between flexibility and supply chain performance. This paper regards consumer orientation supply chain as research object, following the logical process of basic driving sources of supply chain flexibility and its influencing factors, generated mechanism of supply chain flexibility and its measurement and evolution to research supply chain flexibility systematically. Besides, this paper empirically analyzes the relationship between flexibility and supply chain performance, expected for providing theoretical basis and decision reference to react environmental uncertainty and improve supply chain performance by building and adjusting supply chain flexibility. The mainly problems to solve and related contents in this paper are as follows:1. This paper analyzes the concept of flexibility based on the review research status of flexibility related theory. According to the characteristics of supply chain and the research theme in this paper, it provides the definition of supply chain flexibility from the view of value added, consumer orientation, and partnership value. Besides, it analyzes the characteristics of supply chain flexibility, including dynamics, multi-dimension, timeliness, robustness and expandability. Supply chain needs to dynamic adjust and real-time monitor degree of flexibility due to the timeliness and dynamics of supply chain flexibility, which is the basic evolution of supply chain flexibility. Multi-dimension characteristic of supply chain flexibility is the basic of building measurement index and understanding concept of supply chain flexibility. Robustness and expandability characteristics of supply chain flexibility reflect the construction of supply chain flexibility. Thus, the characteristics of supply chain flexibility are the basic for further researching, which are also the starting point and origin to deeply study flexibility.2. This paper analyzes the basic driving sources of supply chain flexibility. According to the concept of flexibility, we can see that flexibility is the ability to react environmental uncertainty. Thus, environmental uncertainties as the drivers of flexibility are the starting point for deeply understanding and construction of flexibility. This paper studies supply chain environmental uncertainty in the integrated subjective and objective viewpoint, and builds the dimensions of supply chain environmental uncertainty. It analyzes the elements of supply chain environmental uncertainties from the three dimensions of environmental uncertainty, including dynamics, complexity and resource availability, which are the sources of supply chain flexibility. Besides, this paper quantitative analyzes supply chain environmental uncertainty, and investigates the driving force of supply chain flexibility, which provides the basic drivers of supply chain flexibility qualitatively and quantitatively.3. Supply chain flexibility is considered as the ability to react environmental uncertainty, which needs to have the ability of dynamic regulation and adaptation environment. This paper investigates the factors of supply chain flexibility in the activity and adaptability viewpoint. Activity factors mainly refer to the dynamic capability of the supply chain core enterprise, which effect activity function to construct supply chain flexibility. We concern three aspects of dynamic capability, including environmental insight and consumer orientation value, value chain configuration and integration ability, learning ability. Adaptability factors mainly refer to the supply chain cooperative ability, which effect adaptable function to react environmental uncertainty. We concern three aspects of supply chain cooperative ability, including management cooperation, information cooperation and business cooperation. The above two aspects play an important role to the construction and evolution of supply chain flexibility, which are the basic for the further researching.4. This paper deeply studies the generated mechanism of supply chain flexibility based on the thorough analysis of the concept, drivers, and factors of supply chain flexibility. According to the nature and the functional properties of supply chain environment, considering the characteristics of supply chain flexibility and limitation of research, this paper classifies the elements of supply chain flexibility. It classifies the elements of flexibility from the aspects of products production and transformation among the supply chain, information communication and network reconfiguration, including information flexibility, operation flexibility, logistics flexibility, robustness network and reconfiguration flexibility, giving the definition respectively. It provides supply chain flexibility generated mechanism model, analyzes the process of supply chain flexibility generation and analyzes the relationship among environmental uncertainty, dynamic capability, supply chain cooperation and supply chain flexibility.5. Because of the dynamic characteristic of supply chain flexibility, it needs to dynamic adjust according to the change of environment. Thus, this paper investigates the evolution of supply chain flexibility based on the analysis of supply chain flexibility measurement and generation mechanism. It provides evolution framework and measure method of supply chain flexibility, supply chain flexibility matching process and model in environmental uncertainty in the theoretical, method and practical standpoint respectively. Flexibility is a multi-dimensional concept. In order to adjust and evolve reasonably, it is premise to measure supply chain flexibility accurately. Thus, this paper builds two dimensions of supply chain flexibility based on the previous research, including scope and adaptability, and provides the supply chain flexibility measurement index system according to the elements of flexibility. This paper presents method to measure supply chain flexibility. Measuring supply chain flexibility accurately and systematically is the basic to design and optimize flexibility. Evolution framework provides the supply chain flexibility evolution direction, gives the criterion and process of judgment and decision making. According to the judgment of evolution condition, we can choose suitable strategy and practice to guide practice, providing the theoretical foundation of supply chain flexibility evolution. According to the analysis of the matching between demand flexibility and reality flexibility, potential flexibility respectively, we can adjust flexibility effectively. Thus, this paper provides supply chain flexibility matching evolution process and matching model in environmental uncertainty from the practical perspective. According to the related judgment criterion, we can adopt suitable practice, adjust flexibility reasonably and make decision.6. Supply chain flexibility is an important source of supply chain performance. Thus, this paper analyzes the relationship between supply chain flexibility and performance based on the investigation of supply chain flexibility generation mechanism, measurement and evolution. It presents the supply chain flexibility and performance relation model under environmental uncertainty, and studies the moderating role of environmental uncertainty and every flexibility elements effect role to supply chain performance. It tests model by empirical study. Theoretical analysis and empirical research show that environmental uncertainty has the significant positively effect to supply chain flexibility, and supply chain flexibility is indeed the important source of supply chain performance. That means the degree of supply chain flexibility is affected by environmental uncertainty, the higher environmental uncertainty, the higher degree of supply chain flexibility to match it. The higher degree of supply chain flexibility shows, the higher supply chain performance appearances. Besides, this paper investigates the flexibility elements relationship and the relationships between flexibility elements and supply chain performance. The study results demonstrate that there is strong positive effect among flexibility elements. Different flexibility elements have different effect to supply chain performance. The results are helpful to practice to improve supply chain performance by build supply chain flexibility.In theoretical perspective, supply chain flexibility and supply chain performance are the focus topic in academic. Many scholars point that flexibility is an important index to supply chain performance, but few studies have deeply researched. Besides, the theory of supply chain flexibility is remaining unclear, and the area of supply chain flexibility evolution is blank. Thus, deeply investigating supply chain flexibility and the relationship between supply chain flexibility and performance can not only improve the supply chain flexibility theory, but also have significant theoretical value to the research of supply chain performance.In practical perspective, this paper investigates the supply chain flexibility generated mechanism and the relationship among flexibility elements, which can provide enterprise approaches to understand supply chain flexibility construction. It analyzes supply chain environmental uncertainty and investigates matching relationship between environmental uncertainties and flexibility elements, which can effectively react environmental uncertainty and develop related strategies. Accurately measuring flexibility and studying supply chain flexibility evolution make supply chain understand how to optimize flexibility and adopt suitable practice to make decision. Empirical studying the relationship between supply chain flexibility elements and supply chain performance make enterprise clear how to improve supply chain performance by supply chain flexibility construction, which has significant practical value.