Developing a performance measurement framework to benchmark the South African wine supply chain with a focus on the packaged export supply chain segment

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Over the past few decades, the importance of supply chains and supply chainmanagement has increased significantly. Companies are turning to their supply chains to decrease costs and increase efficiencies. The South African wineindustry is currently under financial pressure and the industry will have to focus on its supply chains to stay competitive.Currently, in the South African wine industry, no supply chain benchmarks exist against which cellars can compare their performance to identify areasfor improvement. The need therefore exists to establish these benchmarks.However, before benchmarks can be established, the question of what to benchmark must first be answered.To address the abovementioned problems, a multi-phased methodology is applied to develop three supply chain measurement frameworks, each usingfindings from the previous as inputs. The aim of the frameworks is to propose a set of metrics that can be used to measure supply chain performance,thereby answering the question of what to benchmark. Other inputs to the development are a review of the relevant literature, structured and semi-structured interviews with various industry players and findings fromother projects which form part of a wine supply chain project hosted by the University of Stellenbosch. The frameworks are each validated by numerousindustry players.This thesis specifically focusses on the packaged export supply chain of natural wine. Seeing that the framework will be used to measure the performance of a supply chain, it can be seen as a decision support tool. Decision support is focussed on the strategic and managerial levels.Through the process of developing the frameworks, it is found that the wine industry has low levels of supply chain management maturity. This is confirmed by a quantitative analysis of the first two frameworks: gathering data from a sample of cellars and freight forwarders shows that little supply chain data is being captured. As a result, sample benchmarks are only established for the first framework.The third framework proposes the final set of metrics, together with methodsfor collecting data, which cellars can use to measure their supply chain performance. It is recommended that cellars start measuring and tracking their own performance. This will enable cellars to identify areas for improvement.It is then each cellar's responsibility to conduct improvement projects.Once a sufficient number of cellars measure their supply chain performance by implementing the proposed framework, benchmarks can be established.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University