Examining supply chain practice in Egyptian sme firms

Abstract

This research examines supply chain management practice in SME firms in Egypt. A well designed survey
include several items explaining the main characteristics of supply chain management which distributed to over
three hundred executives working in different industry in Egypt. The response rate was over 64% representing all
different industries. Statistical analysis was used to analyze the data and test the four major hypotheses in this
study. The results indicate significant difference in only one hypothesis. Recommendations of this study include
the following first Egyptian manufacturing companies specifically public sector should build strong IT
infrastructure in order to facilitate the information sharing internal and external the firms especially, with
customers. Second Egyptian manufacturing companies should ensure and facilitate the relationship between
suppliers and retailers in order to increase information flow within the supply chain. Third Egyptian
manufacturing companies specifically public sector that suffer from a lot of barriers facing application of lean
manufacturing system in their companies, so, they should benchmark the successful lean manufacturing
systems from private sector in order to enhance their lean abilities and their trading partners abilities also as to
enhance performance of supply chain in the public sector manufacturing companies.