Supply and Development Networks

In industrial companies whose focus is the development of customer-specific products, the interplay between the products and the companies? supply systems is all-important. The project at hand seeks to investigate and improve precisely this interplay. One important step in making the needed improvements is to hone the SCOR (Supply Chain Operations Reference) model; i.e., advancing and adapting the techniques inherent in the model to better suit Danish SMEs. The ability to involve customers as well as suppliers is of special interest within those supply chains in which customized products are delivered. Both top-management and project managers, as well as all business partners need a common communication platform in order to eliminate uncertainties, develop confidence and mutual understanding, as well as ease the contractual work. These improvements of communication and relationships enable the realization of a more proactive supplier understanding and involvement, in order to exploit the potential competitive advantages within the supply chain network. To this end, the project group will collaborate with a range of SMEs in testing, and subsequently fine-tuning SCOR. In the research target group, single-unit or small-series production companies manufacturing customer-specific or customer-adapted products are of special interest. On one level, this initiative takes the necessity that corporate management maintain an overview of internal as well as external business processes as its point of departure. But it also seeks to address the implementation process by composing decision and process support tools. In short, the overarching aim of this project is to evolve a proposal detailing a series of improvements to the SCOR model. This proposal will then be submitted to the Supply Chain Council and, through this channel, we hope that the proposed improvements may contribute to developments in the international sphere. Finally, it is the wish to put the application of the SCOR model on the above mentioned problem area into an academic perspective. Contributing institutions: Center for Industrial Production, Aalborg University; Copenhagen Business School; the Danish Technological Institute (TI) Project budget: DKK 2.5 million Project duration: fall 2002 ? fall 2004.