Measuring Logistics Performance: the Effectiveness of Mmog/Le as Perceived by Suppliers in the Automotive Industry

In spite of logistics having grown in importance lately, which included the discussion of concepts such as integrated logistics and supply chain management in the business agenda, little has been discussed about how to measure logistics performance. This paper analyzes the perception of logistics professionals about the effectiveness of MMOG/LE (Materials Management Operating Guideline/Logistics Evaluation), which is a set of recommendations regarding logistics and materials management that was created by the automotive industry to be used by those comprising its supply chain. The respondents, who were naturally all from the automotive industry (they were suppliers of large vehicle assemblers with industrial plants located in Brazil), had been previously trained on this logistics performance evaluation tool in order to implement it in their organizations. They filled in an email survey with Likert scale questions, early in 2008. Among other findings of the research, it was noticed that the impact of the MMOG/LE recommendation is stronger with respect to activities that had not been previously addressed by quality norms and recommendations. Most respondents also considered that their organizations were already efficient in integrating their activities with their customers (car assemblers) but rarely with their suppliers, which was acknowledged to be the bottleneck of their logistics systems.