Analysing the product and service aspects of a manufacturing supply chain: a dairy industry perspective

This paper has made an attempt to assess the relative importance of product and service aspects of a manufacturing supply chain. The relative performances of the product and service, from view point of consumers, in a dairy-food supply chain have been assessed critically to make inferences. The paper argues that both product and service aspects are relatively important to a consumer. To be more precise, with the best product (in terms of price, quality etc.) a very low service level will put the supply chain at sub-optimal level of performance. On the contrary, a poor quality product with highest level of service will also not perform well in the supply chain. However, the paper has endeavoured to assess both the attributes and concludes that service aspects (service level requirements) offset the product aspects for better supply chain performance, in comparison. The paper has also identified the critical components of product and service aspects of the dairy-food supply chain which required to be strengthened for better supply chain performance.