Enhancers for Supply Chain Resilience in manufacturing Firms in Kenya

Abstract

Supply chain resilience is a relatively new area in supply chain research in Kenya and it focuses on the firms’ ability to absorb disruptions. Supply chain resilience can enable manufacturing firms to overcome disruptions and continually transform them to meet the changing needs and expectations of its customers, shareholders and other stakeholders. Thus, the general objective of this study was to investigate enhancers for supply chain resilience in manufacturing firms in Kenya. The study adopted cross-sectional survey design using both quantitative and qualitative approaches. The target population was 613 manufacturing firms in Nairobi and its surroundings (in a radius of 30 km), who were members of Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM) in 2015. The study used stratified random sampling to pick a sample size of 62 manufacturing firms which was proportionate to the population representing 14 industrial sectors in manufacturing firms. Data was collected using questionnaire. Descriptive statistics was used aided by Statistical Packages for Social Sciences version 24 to compute percentages of respondents’ answers. Also, analysis was conducted using a two stage process consisting of confirmatory measurement model and confirmatory structural model. The study found out that strategic sourcing, supply chain re-engineering, operational flexibility and risk awareness were significant predictor supply chain resilience in manufacturing firms with supply chain re-engineering being the most significant predictor among the four. Likewise, the study found out that manufacturing firms’ in Kenya lacked risk awareness as key criteria for selecting suppliers, trade-off between efficiency and redundancy stock. The study recommends that it would be appropriate for management of manufacturing firms to adopt and embrace strategic sourcing, supply chain re-engineering, operational flexibility and risk awareness as a proactive way of creating resilience in manufacturing firms. Equally, the study recommends that manufacturing firms should share resources with their supply partners in a form of leveraging capabilities, resources and assets. Similarly, manufacturing firms should conduct mapping tools to identify bottlenecks and critical path in supply chain and risk awareness as key criteria for selecting suppliers, trade-off between efficiency and redundancy stock. The study demonstrates that there is need for management to be proactive in developing resilience. Mitigation processes are essential to supply chain resilience, irrespective of the type of organization. Also, the study has highlighted the benefits of using proactive actions by focusing on key issues to create the resilience capability within the companies or along their supply chains to overcome critical disruptions as well as daily outages. This study recommends that a similar research can be conducted from multiple informants groups to come up with a variety of outcomes by creating discussion among supply chain managers with different skill, experience and motivation. Also, a similar research can be conducted using longitudinal so as the research to identify the evolution of resilient strategies across number of years.