Improving Supply Chain Performance: A Tool for Diagnosing and Correcting Performance Deficiencies

Since 1994 the Supplier Development Team (SDT) of the University of Sunderland has been managing an EU/DTI funded project aimed at raising the level of performance of SME suppliers to OEM's based in the North East of England. As a result the team have had access to over 60 SME suppliers in 11 supply chains. This source of data has enabled the SDT to evaluate several of the tools currently in use and develop their own methodology based on this and their experience in the field.