How to Manage a Sustainable Supply Chain Based on a Collaborative Management Model.

Abstract

Effective supply chain management is crucial to business sustainability and will only be possible based on environmental concerns and adopting agile and resilient practices to adapt to the unstable environment. The main objective of this study is to examine how companies choose supply chain structure based on collaborative relationships, to pursuit global strategies, now that competition stopped occurring between companies only and begins to be discussed between supply chains also. This qualitative research was supported on a case study applied to five companies in the automotive industry, using data collection instruments: documentary sources, interviews, and a questionnaire survey, complemented by site visits. From this case study the conceptual model was validated. It was concluded that supply chain management scopes are not a sum of a set of firms, with its own objectives and strategies, but the result of a single system of integrated, transversal and interdependent processes, based on a holistic approach. This paper proposes a conceptual model to select the best strategies and structure to manage supply chain based on LARG (Lean, Agile, Resilient and Green) approach.