Supply Chain Management Practices Benchmarks in the Bulk Polymer Industry

In recent years, the use of information technology (IT) and attendant improvements in business processes have led to major changes in the management practices of chemical producers. Traditional manufacturing resource planning (MRP II) systems have been extended forward and backward in the supply chain to enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems that encompass all major business functions of an enterprise.

This PEP Review focuses on the supply chain management (SCM) practices of bulk polymer producers, benchmarking their SCM practices in the following functional areas:

• Planning and integration
• Sourcing of needed goods, materials, and services
• Product manufacture
• Product delivery.

The companies participating in SRIC's survey were asked to rate 72 practices in these areas. We summarize their responses and indicate the relative importance of these practices to a set of key success factors for SCM.

This Review will prove useful to the chemical industry enterprises in assessing and comparing the effectiveness of their SCM processes with industry norms.