Research Of Customer Integration And Supplier Integration Influence On Efficiency Performance Of Manufacturing Plants

The study aimed at investigating whether enterprises can or shall implementsimultaneously customer integration and supplier integration to createsynergistic effect. Especially, this study will emphatically analyze the effect ofcustomer integration on enterprise efficiency performance, and the moderatingeffect supplier integration could bring.This study will analyze the data accumulated from200manufacture plants,and address two hypotheses through hierarchical regression analysis.Customer integration and supplier integration covered various aspects ofintegration, such as sharing production plan and market forecast fromcustomer, enterprise performance evaluation, quality improvement and designadjustment communication, and mutual effort on quality level improving,close communication/contact, partnership etc.. The focal of integrationobviously exceeds the separate activity of single parties, and the reason lies inthat this kind of integration covers focal company integration with supplychain upstream and downstream, and includes both supplier and customer.Supplier integration could bring positive moderating effect for the relationshipbetween customer integration and enterprise performance, and the dataanalysis of this study demonstrates that the hypotheses that customerintegration could always be positively related with enterprise performance isnot valid under all situations. Data at the mean time reveals that customerintegration could even have counter-effect when supplier integration is in lowlevel.Efficiency performance optimization requests to simultaneously implementcustomer integration and supplier integration in order to stimulate theinteraction between two parties, but not only have investment and action oncustomer integration. At the mean time, enterprises shall firstly ensuresupplier integration level, before deciding whether or not need to invest oncustomer integration, and the main initiative lies in that supplier integration is playing as prerequisite role for the successful implementation of customerintegration.