Supply Chain Collaboration Practices (A Study on Manufacturing Companies - Ethiopia)

Supply chain collaboration has been a major component of competitive strategy to enhance organizational productivity and profitability. Collaboration is a recent trend in supply chain management that focuses on joint planning, coordination and process integration between suppliers, customers and other partners in a supply chain. Its competitive benefits include cost reductions and increased return on assets, and increased reliability and responsiveness to market needs. The research is entitled as “An Investigation in to the Collaborative Supply Chain Practices: A study on Ethiopia’s Steel Mil Manufacturing Companies. The investigation is aimed to scrutinize the orientation of the manufacturing companies to make use of the dynamic and multidimensional role of supply chain collaboration in the current serious competitive business world. To achieve this objective descriptive research method was used. The relevant data was gathered from both primary and secondary source. The sample respondents were selected using non probability sampling. Both qualitative and quantitative data analysis tools were used as per the nature of data. Accordingly, the major finding of this study shows a positive effect between the collaborative supply chain practices and the companies’ productivity. The finding also implies that there is direct relationship between the internal operations and performance level of the companies. However, the finding disclosed greater deal of attention should be given to the internal operation which is the base for an effective external integration. Furthermore, due attention has to be paid for the effective utilization of both information technology and information system. Keywords: Supply chain, Supply chain management, Supply chain collaboration