Benchmarking the supply chain performance: the food and beverage industry

Abstract

Supply chain management is gaining importance in today’s business world along with increasing globalization and the developments in technology. Companies shift their competition from organizational level to supply chain level to be able to sustain their competitiveness in today’s globalized international trade environment. Within this context, the study aims to develop a systematic approach to evaluate and benchmark supply chain performances of companies and implements it on Turkish food and beverage industry. Utilizing optimization tools, the analysis develops national and international benchmarks at company and sectoral levels. The study proceeds with discussing improvement opportunities in company supply chain performances as well as their international trade operations with an emphasis on export performances. Both the approach developed and the results of the implementation are expected to shed light on similar sectoral studies especially in Turkey. It might also aid practitioners such as managers, investors in their decision making process.