Operations Analysis: A Case for Supply Chain Performance
Under the on-going globalization economic trend, for international businesses that transports raw material, intermediary goods, and end products across borders, establishing and sustaining an efficient supply chain is the most critical part of their business strategy to succeed. But how do managers know that the firms supply chain is performing efficiently and effectively? Continuous measurement to obtain feedback and implementation of improvements based on the retrieved information is the answer to that. Balanced scorecard, which was developed by Kaplan and Norton, was a milestone for performance evaluation in supply chain management, which asserted in measuring performance not just from financial perspective, but to determine by focusing on the customer, internal process, and learning & growth. Since then to present, the scorecard has been evolved to further generations to correspond with the rapid changing economic situation.The following case study on Danone Dumex Sdn Bhd was conducted on a purpose to appraise a practical international business supply chain by using first generation balanced scorecard as a gauge. Danone Dumex was chosen as evaluation target due to the nature of business, which is a manufacturing firm that requires multinational logistics. For the research method, company report was reviewed, personal interview to a supply chain director was performed, and extensive information sources were revised and filtered. From the assessment, for customer, financial, and internal process perspective, Danone Dumex had an outstanding performance. This is attributable to their business strategy of customer above all, and based on that, the firm has established a prominent standard in quality control and market forecasting system, and implemented to its supply chain by utilizing customized SAP. Meanwhile, their less emphasis on learning and growth perspective should be reconsidered in a long-run, as its competitors are improving on the same direction as Danone Dumex is heading.