Twenty-first century supply chain management: a multiple case study analysis within the UK aerospace industry

In recent years, to stimulate the development of Lean Supply Chain Management (SCM) in SMEs, the UK aerospace industry has developed a change programme named “Supply Chains for the 21st century” (SC21). This programme promotes the use of a simple standard improvement framework, which defines performance goals and standardizes the approaches and tools for continuous sustainable improvement. However, its effective impact on Lean SCM and performance measurement systems (PMS) has not been widely covered in the literature. Adopting a qualitative research methodology approach, this study investigates five significant organizations to explore and contribute to knowledge on Lean SCM and PMS challenges related to the adoption of the SC21 programme. From an academic point of view, the paper highlights the key role of SC21 in accelerating the competitiveness of the aerospace industry by fostering managerial development of supply chain partners. In particular, it highlights the importance of PMS as well as collaboration between supply chain partners for efficient and effective SCM. From a practitioner’s perspective, the SC21 performance award is highlighted as a very successful approach in bridging the gap of differing agendas between supply chain partners. SMEs, with support from their larger supply chain partners, can embrace performance measurement practices to improve their performance. More established SMEs with a headcount of more than 50 employees are capable of developing and documenting strategic plans and more sophisticated PMS.