Supply Chain Quality and Performance Measurement

Abstract

For over a decade, one of the most important subjects dominating not only manufacturing and distribution but all businesses from fast-food to health care has been quality improvement. Much of this concern has focused on product quality. Seminar courses and popular discussion abounds on the topic and interested practitioners, academics, and consultants can find literally dozens of books and hundreds of articles illuminating the topic from diverse directions. Despite its importance, however, product quality is only a single facet of the quality improvement philosophy. Increasingly, enterprises have also come to see that customer service quality is equally as critical to competitive advantage. However, although industry stories concerning such customer service leaders as Federal Express, L. L. Bean, Nordstrom, and Wal-Mart have traditionally received top billing, little has been written about the service quality requirements of the supply chain arrangements that support them. Although the quality programs of companies such as Milliken Industries, Hewlett-Packard, SYSCO, and Siemens have shared some press, for the most part the service quality efforts of companies up the supply channel who sell to the retailer, wholesaler, or manufacturer have been little explored.