Proceeding of 2013 International Seminar on Climate Change and Food Security ISCCFS 2013
Palembang, South Sumatra -Indonesia, 24-25 October,2013
73 problems that may exists in the relationship among those two main actors in the supply chain management
at various stages of production process using the case of edamame farmers group in West Bandung Region, West Java, Indonesia. Analysis will be given to answer what kind of challenges do the supply chain in the
current structure on communication? And what kind of communication strategy should be taken into account in the SCM of edamame case?
2. Literature Review
2.1 Supply Chains Management
Supply chain as the modern knowledge in logistics science has been developed and been implemented at various sector as part of the economy. A generic definition of supply chain may be refered to a system of
suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, retailers, and customers where materials flow downstream from suppliers to customers, and information flows in both directions as suggested by Houlihan
[3]
. A further detail and elaboration of supply chain may be found in the literature for example in Drucker
[4]
. The Supply Chain Management on the other hand is the management on in each segment and between supply chain stages so
that all supply chain activities could be optimized to gain maximum profit
[5]
. As a network system, the relationship among the actors of the chain from suppliers, plants, retailer,
distributors as well as sub contractor guarantee the needs to communication. This is important aspects that to some extent neglected in some practices of supply chain management especially in the agriculture sector. In
terms of form communications components, it consists of format and contents and the other is macro context of co-ordination and synchronization
[6]
. Tsai
[2]
further stressed the strategic supplier partnerships and customer relationships as the main components in the supply chain management. Information flow and
sharing among those actors are as Lalonde
[7]
mentioned will be among the pillars of sound supply chain management. In other words the success of any partnership need to be acompanied by an appropriate
communication scheme mainly in the case of complicated structure of supply chain.
2.2 Communication Perspective of SCM
From the organization point of view, the importance of communication has been among the center of communication experts‘
[8]
. With the progress of economic structure driven by globalization like nowadyas, organization usually responses with either forming a corporate or co-operate alliances. Communication will
be critical to maintian the sustainability of the organization mainly in adapting the global change. Similar to the above statement Hines
[9]
indicates that in the case of commodity products, thugh it is common to have adversarial relation between buyer and supplier, it is considered beneficial if suppliers are adopted as partner.
This will enable a better supply chain performance due to many benefits may exist due to sharing in information, risk and other benefit from mutual coordination.
Better communication will let everything in the business will arrive with the right quantities at the right place at the right moment at minimal cost, that will also benefit the farmer as a partner. In general
sense communication may refer to exchange of ideas or information among communicants
[10][11]
. Research on communications aspects of SCM have been discussed mainly in the context of information management
within the context of network organization
[12][13]
.Communication role in SCM has been viewed by some researcher as a managerial issue. The role of communication in the field of supply chain management has
been emphasized as a managerial issue
[14]
. However the development of ICT has also brought about the communication strategic role in managing a better SCM
[13]
. Among the question raised in dealing with communication in the context of SCM then would be what
kind of information to exchange type and content and which media to use. Information management will therfore part of the SCM management in which according to Carroll better information will serve a better
communication and so provide better input for decision making
[15].
3. Materials and Method
