Title: Quantitative analysis of the effects of dual integration on firm's competitiveness

Authors: Atsushi Akiike; YoungWon Park

Addresses: Graduate School of Economics, Faculty of Economics, The University of Tokyo, Kojima Hall 5F, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-0033, Japan ' Graduate School of Economics, Faculty of Economics, The University of Tokyo, Kojima Hall 5F, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-0033, Japan

Abstract: Today, the importance of supply chain has become greater. In this situation, companies should integrate their supply chain. To integrate their supply chain, this paper suggests integration attained by both IT system and human factors as an important method. Integration attained by IT system means companies introduce IT system for companies' supply chain management between suppliers and customers. On the other hand, integration attained by human factors means companies construct continuous and cooperated relationships by physical integration and introduction to just in time system between suppliers and customers like Toyota production system and Toyota supplier system. Existing research deals with these two types of integration separately. In addition, the pursuit of both types of integration at the same time (dual integration) was not taken attention. Therefore, in this paper we conducted an empirical analysis to explore the effects of two types of integration and dual integration on firm's competitiveness by using fifth IMSS data. Our results show that two types of integration have effects on firm's competitiveness. Dual integration also has effects on it. For integration of supply chains, both sides of IT and human factors are considered simultaneously.

Keywords: supply chain management; SCM; IT; information technology; human factors; supply chain integration; dual integration; Toyota production system; TPS; firm competitiveness.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBIS.2015.068478

International Journal of Business Information Systems, 2015 Vol.18 No.4, pp.406 - 421

Published online: 22 Apr 2015 *

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