Adoption of Supply Chain Management in SMEs

There has been a massive surge of interest in supply chain management (SCM) due to its innovation approach to business and competitive advantage. Large companies are well recognized the benefits of SCM, but small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are lagging behind in appreciating how integrated supply chain drives remarkable changes in business processes and work with positive results in better quality services, cost reduction and efficiency. Specifically, SMEs in Malaysia have insufficient knowledge on SCM and they underestimate the potential benefits of SCM. As SMEs is important growth engines in Malaysia, therefore, a groat potential can be discovered to develop Malaysian SMEs through SCM. As such, this article includes a discussion of the applicability of SCM to SMEs by highlighting the needs and challenges of SMEs. The paper concludes that implementation of SCM could deliver a number of potential benefits to SMEs. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd.