Supply Chain Management for Superyacht Construction in Taiwan

In the last 20 years, Taiwan's superyacht construction industry has performed well in the global market; however, some yacht builders still practice traditional supply chain management (SCM), which is often inefficient and regularly leads to time and cost overruns. This study aimed to answer two research questions: 1) what SCM challenges does the superyacht construction industry face?, and 2) what SCM strategies and practices should be adopted to improve the efficacy and profitability of superyacht construction companies? Numerous studies have explored supply chains (SCs) and SCM, but few have focused on the superyacht construction industry. Superyacht construction projects are highly complex and involve procuring numerous materials from different suppliers. Communication, negotiation, logistics, and control of such materials are considerably challenging but crucial for success. The author worked in a superyacht construction company in Taiwan and helped convert its traditional SC to a modernized platform incorporating several corporate systems. Accordingly, this paper compares SCM theories and principles proposed in other studies through empirical observation and proposes 10 SCM strategies for the superyacht construction industry, including assessment of criticality for all materials, supplier relationship improvement, and policy implementation by corporate systems. Recently, the superyacht construction industry has faced numerous difficulties, resulting in mergers, acquisitions, and restructurings. The demand for superyachts remains high, but sales are influenced by fluctuations in the global economy. This paper proposes strategies for alleviating SCM challenges and offers practical methods for reducing costs and increasing the profitability of superyacht construction projects.