The impact of supply chain complexity on manufacturing plant performance

Abstract

This paper puts forth a model of supply chain complexity and empirically tests it using plant‐level data from 209 plants across seven countries. The results show that upstream complexity, internal manufacturing complexity, and downstream complexity all have a negative impact on manufacturing plant performance. Furthermore, supply chain characteristics that drive dynamic complexity are shown to have a greater impact on performance than those that drive only detail complexity. In addition to providing a definition and empirical test of supply chain complexity, the study serves to link the systems complexity literature to the prescriptions found in the flexibility and lean production literatures. Finally, this research establishes a base from which to extend previous work linking operations strategy to organization design [Flynn, B.B., Flynn, E.J., 1999. Information‐processing alternatives for coping with manufacturing environment complexity. Decision Sciences 30 (4), 1021–1052].

Complexity Analysis of Industrial Organizations Based on a Perspective of Systems Engineering Analysts

“…The product complexity focuses on product features and specifications while the process complexity analysis focuses on the tools, equipment and operations used to manufacture it (Hu et al 2008). Supply chain management complexity such as: upstream complexity, internal manufacturing complexity, and downstream complexity are considered as complexity issues regarding manufacturing systems (Bazarth et al 2009). Manufacturing strategy also plays an important role in complexity in industrial enterprise such as Just-in-time manufacturing (lean manufacturing), flexible manufacturing, cellular manufacturing, agile manufacturing, concurrent engineering, etc.…”

“…Three different types of complexity were suggested (Bazarth et al 2009) to represent and model supply chain complexity such as: upstream complexity, internal manufacturing complexity, and downstream complexity. They used these complexities to study the impact effect on a manufacturing plant performance.…”

Impact Analysis of Complexity Drivers in the Supply Chain of Prefabricated Houses

“…In analogy to the automotive industry, the customer is included in Tier 0, Tier 1 includes the module manufacturer and the architect, the subcontractors are included in Tier 2 and Tier 3 consists of the suppliers for materials and semi-finished products (Meng, 2012). In order to achieve a higher transparency, in this paper the complexity drivers of a supply chain can be classified into three different categories: upstream complexity, internal manufacturing complexity and downstream complexity (Bozarth;Warsing;Flynn & Flynn, 2009). Similar to the complexity drivers in the manufacturing process for goods, the housing supply chain contains the same division of complexity drivers.…”

“…The category upstream complexity contains per definition drivers which are native to areas of the supply chain base. Potential factors of this category include aspects like the number of suppliers, the delivery time and reliability (Bozarth et al, 2009). In order to transfer the modular housing supply chain into this pattern, the customer as well the architects and engineers need to be included into this category (Grundke & Wildemann, 2015).…”

A novel approach to assess minimally invasive surgical device failure utilizing adverse event outcome severity and design complexity.

“…interconnectedness. Multiplicity is defined as the number of variants or versions of a product or the number of suppliers if evaluating at the supply chain level (Closs, Jacobs et al 2008, Bozarth, Warsing et al 2009, Closs, Nyaga et al 2010. Diversity refers to the degree of dissimilarity seen across the elements and can be quantified by comparing the number of unique elements to the total number of elements within a system.…”