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1. Introduction
In the last decades business tendency has moved toward expanding product variety and shorting product life cycle. Moreover, customers increasingly require specialized and customized products with smaller lot sizes and shorter delivery lead-times. This critical business environment has determined a change in the market which has become more complex and competitive. Consequently, companies’ managers have to develop new strategies to improve supply chain through flexible and efficient customer-centric products and processes, and also have to implement innovative methods to reduce costs but maintaining a high quality (Tan et al., 1998; Handfield and Bechtel, 2002; Spekman and Carraway, 2006; Al-Hakim and Lu, 2017). The realization of a network of business relationships across the entire supply chain is a consolidated and successful approach to respond to the demand of supply chain improvement and it is recognized as one of the most important drivers to guarantee competitive advantages (Giffi et al., 2016). The realization and actuation of this multiple relationships approach allows the collaboration and the integration of businesses at many levels and from various functions and offers the opportunity to create a synergy between all the companies involved in a specific supply chain. The approach generates a continuous knowledge exchange, which has a positive impact on products quality and innovation (Fawcett et al., 2009; Sundram et al., 2016). The suppliers’ involvement in the supply chain positively influences the realization of new products, thus resulting in cost reduction, quality increase and fast release on the market. All these elements attract new customers and the effect of customer involvement guarantees an immediate feedback about the new product. The approach makes possible for all the members of supply chain to realize profits: strategic relationships influence the company ability to achieve flexibility, the suppliers establish a stable link with buyers throughout the deal life cycle and customers are satisfied of the purchase (Lambert and Cooper, 2000; Li and Nagurney, 2015; Fossas-Olalla et al., 2015).
Selecting suppliers and deciding suppliers’ strategies is one of the major key for an effective, optimized and accountable supply chain. Suppliers ensure the constant flow of goods and products, and they are involved in a wide part of business, above all due to the growing tendency to outsource logistics, manufacturing,...