Robust retail supply chains - the driving practices

Abstract

A robust and responsive supply chain reflects the efforts put in by any company towards achieving strategy fit. This paper is an effort towards exploring and simulating the major driving practices of any supply chain in retail sector which can make it a robust supply chain. A set of variables (practices) have been identified from literature and through discussion with retail sector representatives. Interpretive structural modelling (ISM) technique has been used to identify the interrelationships among the selected variables (practices) and presenting them in the form of a conceptual model reflecting the order of complexity. The analysis indicates that a group of variables are having low dependence and high driving power and can strategically influence the group of variables which are having low driving power but are having high dependence to develop a robust supply chain.