Effects of the Quality of Supply Chain Relationships on Product Quality and Responsiveness Flexibility --- A Case Study of W Company

• Main Authors: Yih-Yen Chang, 張義禹
• Other Authors: 周素娥
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/37788196434159938437

碩士 === 臺中技術學院 === 事業經營研究所 === 98 === Every year manual hand tool manufacturers, traders and vendors around the world attend to the “International Hardware Fair Cologne” in Germany for visiting or exhibition. Foreign vendors always ask our Taiwanese firms “Where do you come from? Taichung or Taiper ? ” That is because they clearly know that Taiwanese manual hand tool manufacturers come from Taichung and traders are from Taipei. These special reputations established by the competitiveness of Taiwanese hardware industry. In general, the production process of a hardware tool includes 15 or 16 parts and it needs to be accomplished in 60 days which comprises 30 to 45 days for purchasing the materials and forging its initial shape. Therefore, how to complete the other process in a limited time is a challenge for hardware manufacturers. The supply chain relationships of manual hand tool industry need to be flexible and responsive; it means the responsiveness and the quality of product are very important to the production process of hardware tools. As a result, the purpose of this study is to investigate that how the supply chain relationship quality will affect the quality of products and responsiveness by using the supply chain of manual hand tool industry as our samples. This study, employs communication, cooperation, commitment, trust and interdependence as variables to measure the quality of supply chain relationships ; use the quality of design and consistency to determine the quality of products and evaluate responsiveness by using the reliability and delivery time as measurements. Meanwhile, we choose Company W which is the first one to assemble curved handle tool in Taiwan as our focal firm and its major 26 suppliers as our subcontractor samples. Using a 7-point Likert-type scale questionnaire and the effective questionnaire returns-ratio is 100%. The empirical results show that the quality of supply chain relationship is positively related to the responsiveness of subcontractors, it means the relationship quality influences the responsiveness and the quality of products. Concerning to the dimensions of relationship quality, it implies that communication, sharing information, cooperation, commitment, coordination and trust improve the relationship quality between focal firm and its outsourcing suppliers. Furthermore, the results show that commitment is the most representative variable to the supply chain relationship quality. And the commitment of delivery time is the most important measurement for the manufacturing department to control its production process and quality.