Information sharing to manage bullwhip effect on the stream sites: a case of Khathino Supermarket.

Abstract

Information sharing between supply chain partners can result in improved business processes. Information sharing in the Khathino supply chain lacks consistency. This lack of consistency may be due to misalignment in supply chain operations and internal communication systems. Despite the systems used by the organisation and the regional distribution center in place managing the bullwhip effect remains a significant challenge. The study aims to entrench the magnitude of communication between Khathino warehouse and supermarket through supply chain technological systems and collaboration between supply chain partners. Research objective aim: firstly, to examine the extent of information sharing to optimize management of bullwhip effect; secondly, to examine how information is shared from retail warehouse to the supermarket to ensure stock management and order fulfilment; thirdly, to assess the impacts of supply chain technology as an enabling tool of information sharing; and finally, to establish the extent of collaborative planning to entrench the magnitude of communication amongst warehouse and supermarket to ensure better information sharing. This study used both questionnaires and interviews to collect data from the sample size of 150 respondents and 2 participants. The quantitative approach used descriptive statistics and frequency distribution to analyse individual variables. Pearson correlation, crosstabulation, and chi-square were chosen for bivariate analysis. The qualitative approach utilised thematic analysis to analyse data collected from 2 participants. The majority of respondents (98%) agree that information is shared from the warehouse to the supermarket and from the supermarket to the warehouse to make strategic decisions. This study found empirical evidence that supply chain technology plays an important role to the organisations performance. The study further discovered that ninety-six percent of the respondents from this study agreed that electronically enabled information sharing technologies improve integration, coordination, and cooperation in supply chain networks. This indicates that’s supply chain technology remains the central hypothesis on the company’s performance. The findings of this study show that good supply chain technology is necessary for a significant magnitude of information sharing between warehouses and individual stores. As a result of this finding, the information technologies implemented should include the collaboration of supply chain partners. These management implications show that collaboration is the responsibility of all supply chain partners.