Approaches to Supply Chain Integration Followed By SMEs: An Exploratory Case Study

Although large organisations have invested significant amounts of money to integrate their supply chains, the development of supply chain integration among Small to Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) is slow-moving. For SMEs, integration is a significant problem due to high costs and technology requirements. Hence, they follow different approach to integrate their supply chains. In authors’ previous research, they studied how 15 Taiwan’s SMEs integrated their Information Systems (IS) with their suppliers through Internet and what types of interconnection approaches have they applied. It was found that SMEs have their own ways for integration with the authors identifying in total seven types of interconnections. This research was a small step towards SMEs supply chain integration understanding. Based on this, the authors continue to explore the ways that SMEs integrate their supply chain by revisiting few of these 15 companies, and found out that the case companies are now moving one step forward to fully integrate their supply chains from the procurement of raw material to the distribution of finished goods. This approach is considered as a crucial issue as nowadays the competition among enterprises is about the efficiency of supply chain, which emphasises on tighter cooperation relationship of overall supply-chain process. This paper attempts to explore this area by focusing on the supply chain integration strategy employed by one of the SMEs in Taiwan to (a) to explore how SMEs integrate their supply chains; (b) to identify the benefits of integrating supply chains; and (c) to help SMEs and researchers to understand this approach better.