Supply Chain Management and Its Influence on the Performance of Pharmaceutical Companies

Abstract

Thammarak Srimarut, Witthaya Mekhum.

This study aims to investigate the trends in supply chain management for analyzing the performance of pharmaceutical companies in Thailand. Supply chain management is reflected through SCM1 which indicates the supply chain production flexibility as measured through five items, whereas SCM2 represents the supply chain sourcing flexibility as observed through five items too. For measuring the business performance, three items were added in the study. For the data collection purpose, we have focused on the questionnaire survey technique based on the stated items of both supply chain dimension and performance measures too. Overall data is recorded through a scaling method of five points, where one shows strongly disagree and five shows strongly agree about a particular statement. A sample of 247 respondents of different suppliers and key individuals who were somehow engage with supply chain of pharmaceutical companies were targeted for the data collection. Additionally, our results have considered the age, gender, and working experience as main demographic factors. For data analysis, descriptive results through frequency distribution of the respondents and cross tabulation of the demographic factors were provided and explained. In addition, our study has observed the factors loadings through confirmatory factor analysis for checking the internal reliability of each of the item, whereas overall conceptual framework is observed through structural equation modelling. Results of the study show that there is a significant and positive impact of supply chain production flexibility and supply chain sourcing flexibility on the performance measures of pharmaceutical companies as working in Thailand. As per originality, it was found that very little research has expatriate the supply chain flexibly in terms of production and outsourcing as a performance determinants of pharma industry were observed. Therefore, it is stated that present research is a significant contribution in the literature for various stakeholders. However, future studies may incorporate the other supply chain dynamics like postponement flexibility, key types of the suppliers (Captain category and secondary suppliers) for examining the business performance in pharma sector.