Critical Success Factors for Sustainable Business Networks

In order to ensure product compliance, companies need to be informed about an increasing amount of regulations worldwide and collect related material data throughout the supply chain. As return rates have proven to be low with traditional measures, new solutions need to be established. The approach of exchanging product compliance data using a network-based Information System has shown its potential with the International Material Data System ( IMDS) in the automotive industry. Nevertheless, such Sustainable Business Networks (SBNs) are not used to their full extend and have not reached a high market penetration in any other industries. Therefore this research analyses the reasons for market adoption of SBNs, and extracts the critical success factors in the application area of product compliance. Finally a ranking of the success factors is established leveraging the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP).