Supply Chain Transparency- Benefits & Transformational Barriers

Sammanfattning: Background Transparency of a supply chain is the extent to which all its stakeholders have a shared understanding of, and access to, the product-related information that they request, without loss, noise, delay, and distortion. Having access to accurate and timely information is a challenging issue in global supply chains. Therefore, this research aimed at identifying barriers that could act as limiting factors towards Supply Chain Transparency (SCT) transformation. Also, the study intended to identify several benefits of SCT which could be used as enablers to spread knowledge amongst IKEA co-workers during the transformation. Purpose The master thesis aimed to deliver a conceptual framework for IKEA’s supply chain to identify the benefits and address the barriers in order to enable supply chain transparency. Methodology The methodology of this study was divided into three phases. The first phase was to conduct a literature review that helped the authors develop the theoretical framework. In total twenty research articles were studied for identifying SCT barriers and twenty-three articles for identifying benefits of the SCT transformation. The theoretical framework provides insights on (i) SCT concepts (Network mechanisms, Conditions when transparency is strongly suggested, types, Perspectives, Degree, Direction and Distribution of transparency), (ii) numerous benefits of SCT, and (iii) barriers that could limit the SCT transformation at IKEA. The second phase was conducting interviews at the Supply Chain Development (SCD) and Supply Chain Operations (SCO) functions of IKEA. Twelve semi-structured interviews were conducted with representative people from these functions. A survey questionnaire built from the theoretical framework and insights from the interview was sent out to IKEA co-workers with an intention to reach out to as many people as possible complementing the interview. A total of thirty-four responses were obtained through the survey. In this thesis, a single case study was followed and explanation building and pattern matching analysis were performed to compare theory and empirics. A root cause analysis was performed on the identified barriers which indicated five major causes like (i) Information sharing processes, (ii) Organisational silos, (iii) Change management (iv) IT infrastructure, (v) Supply chain complexity. Later, based on critical findings from theory and empirics a final framework was developed. Conclusions The final framework is divided into three sections. The first section "SCT concepts'' reflects the current scenario of SCT at IKEA. The second section " SCT Benefits'' highlights multiple benefits SCT could bring to sharing of information, IKEA co-workers, IKEA and its supply chain, and finally to its customers and society. The barriers that might come along IKEA’s SCT transformation are categorised as people, organization, IT, and supply chain characteristics highlighted in the third section “SCT Barriers”. IKEA can overcome these barriers by parallelly addressing the major root causes indicated in the “Causes” section of the framework. Overall, IKEA has identified the need for SCT transformation and meets all the conditions that strongly recommend SCT. Looking at the current scenario, IKEA has limited transparency across its value chain. Today it lacks track and trace capabilities and with the current ways of working in a siloed manner, IKEA does not have fully integrated IT platforms that can enable sharing explicit and relevant information at the right time.