Supply Chain Management Practices and Performance: How To Thrive and Not Just Survive in a Low-Margin Supply Chain

Sammanfattning: Supply Chain Management (SCM) has increasingly become the focus of many organisations in a vast array of industries. However, due to external environment pressures and the multitude of internal management options, firms experience difficulties in determining how to best manage a supply chain in order to create a competitive advantage and enable higher organisational performance. This thesis aims to provide an accurate representation of the relationship between specific SCM practices, competitive advantages, and organisational performance in a low-margin supply chain. Using a qualitative approach, a theoretical framework is selected through the literature review and the dairy industry in the UK is chosen to test it. Through the analysis, all of the framework’s SCM practices are reaffirmed as relevant: strategic supplier partnerships, customer relationships, level of information sharing, quality of information sharing, and postponement. Moreover, empirical findings from both secondary data and primary data show that strategic supplier partnerships must precede the other practices in order to support higher performance and create a competitive advantage. It is lastly claimed that together with the existent practices, the lean capability and innovation should be added to the framework, as they, according to the current study, can increase organisational performance and support organisations in low-margin industries in the creation of competitive advantages.