Business excellence model for supply chain management

Supply chain management (SCM) has been increasingly adopted by companies worldwide so as to utilize better their supply chain activities for competitive advantages. This paper reviews the relationships between total quality management (TQM) and SCM and concludes that existing SCM models have inadequacies which can be enriched by TQM principles and concepts. The authors selected Kanji's Business Excellence model, which uses TQMprinciples and concepts to help companies achieve business excellence, to fulfil the inadequacies of the existing SCM models and to create a new structured model for SCM. The model was tested with the data using the supply chain activities of 139 companies in Hong Kong. The results support that the structured model provides a good fit for the supply chain activities. Business excellence indices, which can be obtained for companies' SCM, can be further developed based on this new model.