

Acrónimo
CLES
Oficial reference
DPI2009-10902
Financial entity
Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación. Dirección General de Programas y Transferencia de Conocimiento
Financial
Public
Principal researcher
Dr. MarÃa Jesús Sáenz Gil de Gómez, Santiago Kraiselburd (ZLC), Fernando Liesa Carrera (ZLC), David Alan Johnston (SSB), Juan Luis Cano Fernández (UNIZAR), Rubén Rebollar Rubio (UNIZAR), Iván Lidón López (UNIZAR), Pilar Lambán Castillo (UNIZAR)
Start
01/01/2010
End
31/12/2010
Duration
01/01/2010 to 31/12/2010
Project Description
The empirical reality of supply chain management is still far from reaching the theoretically promised gains related to a seamless end-to-end pipeline. The good news is that supply chain managers are aware of this gap, and show an interest in learning new capabilities. How they learn these capabilities is not well understood. One source is from people and stocks of knowledge built up within the firm over time. Another well known complementary source is through supplier – customer relationships. Often these relationships are formalized as alliances, partnerships, preferred suppliers and key customers. Some of the outcomes are new product and service development due to synergy of resources, faster speed to market through concurrent design, long-term cost reductions including reduced transaction costs, improved process technology adoption, improvements in conformance quality, risk reduction and reductions in capital investments. Some authors clamor for the gap in the literature about these relationships to be covered from the research point of view. Considering the research gaps mentioned above, the aim of the project is to develop and test a comprehensive framework on collaborative learning within companies, while they are developing innovation projects in the supply chain context. This aim is expressed in several facets:
The main deliverables after the research in the project are to obtain a General framework for understanding and predicting the dynamics of learning in supply chains; the analysis of the best practices for dynamic alignment through collaborative learning in joint innovation strategies, integration, and dyad organizations as well as the recommendations about the potential application of the best practices detected, from the general framework and from the case-studies, in other areas of improvement; and the publications of the main research results.
The research methodology is performed by a longitudinal exploratory investigation through at least 8 leading companies in the world, such as Leroy MerlÃn (Spain), CAT Logistics (US), Jonhson & Jonhson (Canada) and Hewlett Packard (Spain), and their corresponding strategic partners, to explore the performance implications using a combinatorial qualitative approach that leverages the strengths of multi-case study research that permits the contrasting or confirmation emerging results, content analysis though secondary data analysis and survey research.
This research is developed under the collaboration between the MIT-Zaragoza International Logistics Program (Zaragoza Logistics Center), the Project Engineering Group (University of Zaragoza) and the Schulich School of Business (York University, Canada), with the support of the companies involved.
Participating Organizations
Coordinator