This study examines the performance implications of an integrated supply chain strategy, with customer service performance followed by financial performance as performance constructs. Two major components of an integrated supply chain strategy are identified and defined: (1) integrative information technologies, which is modeled antecedent to (2) supply chain integration. The research model was tested using data from a sample (n = 57) of the top 150 independent first tier automotive suppliers to the Big 3 in North America. The results showed positive direct relationships between (1) integrated information technologies and supply chain integration, (2) supply chain integration and customer service, and (3) customer service and firm performance. The relationship of supply chain integration to financial performance was indirect, through customer service; i.e., customer service was found to fully (as opposed to partially) mediate the relationship between supply chain integration and firm performance for first tier suppliers in the automotive industry.

This paper examines the effects of integration practices on time-based performance and on overall firm performance (financial and market share). Integration practices are grouped into two categories: (1) external strategic design integration, which reaches across firm boundaries to involve suppliers and customers and (2) internal design-process integration, which comprises more tactically oriented, integration practices that match design requirements and process capabilities. First, regression results show that both internal and external integration are related to time-based performance, which in turn is related to firm performance. Thus, two indirect routes to firm performance are identified. Second, hierarchical regression reveals that integration directly affects firm performance even after time-based performance is accounted for. Finally, we found that the interaction of internal and external integration is significantly related to both market share and financial performance (after controlling for all other effects). This latter result suggests that the joint use of external and internal integration practices has a synergistic effect on firm performance. #

Logistics creates value by accommodating customers' delivery requirements in a cost effective manner. Logistics service performance, therefore, assesses a provider's ability to consistently deliver requested products within the requested delivery time frame at an acceptable cost (Bowersox, Closs, and Cooper 2002). Logistical services, a unique subset of industrial services that span the boundaries between suppliers and customers, have become increasingly important to successful supply chain operations. Logisticians understand that these activities constitute the very essence of their business. Communicating the importance of logistical activities to other functional activities, as well as to corporate officers, has been a difficult feat. Professor Donald Bowersox, speaking at the Council of Logistics Management Annual Conference in Toronto in 1999, described establishing the link between functional logistics performance and overall firm performance as our discipline's equivalent to finding a cure for cancer.Definitive empirical results that link improvements in logistics performance to overall firm performance have been difficult to achieve. Some progress, however, has been made. Recently, Daugherty, Stank, and Ellinger (1998) conducted an in-depth assessment of the relationships among logistics service performance and customer satisfaction, loyalty, and market share in an industrial setting. Their findings indicated that high levels of logistics service are indirectly related to market share through satisfaction and loyalty.