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Supplier integration in category management means that a supplier takes part in the activities that are traditionally performed by retailers. These activities are the selection of which products to sell, decisions on how to price and market the products, and making sure that the products are delivered to the stores in a timely manner. Depending on the situation, an integration of suppliers in these activities can be more or less suitable. As more research is needed to understand when supplier integration in category management is suitable, the purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyze how situational factors affect the relationship consequences of supplier integration in category management. Specifically, the relationship consequences are expressed in terms of relationship performance and interdependence between the firms. The study builds on empirical data about British and Swedish builders’ merchants and their suppliers, with a particular focus on timber suppliers. Data has mainly been collected through participative observations and interviews. Five situational factors that improve the relationship performance of supplier integration in category management are identified: large retailer firms, supplier product knowledge, homogeneity of market demands for the supplier’s products, mutual trust and a shared view on customer value between the supplier and retailer. Three situational factors are identified that affect the interdependence between the retailer and the supplier when supplier integration in category management is implemented: supplier product knowledge, whether the supplier or the retailer initiates the integration and whether coercive or non-coercive power has to be used in the implementation. This thesis contributes to retail literature by highlighting the need to include situational factors in the analysis of supplier integration, clarifying which activities are comprised by category management and suggesting a theoretical foundation based on the resource-based view and the transaction cost framework to analyse relationship performance in retailer-supplier dyads. When making decisions on integration, managers of retailers and their suppliers are advised to consider the fit with their overall strategy, the fit with the surrounding situation and the effects both in terms of interdependence and relationship performance.

Quality Management (QM) and Supply Chain Management (SCM) have been considered as two of the most important business strategies. They have become the prerequisite for success and competitive advantage in the global market. Supplier Integration is a subset of supply chain, and supplier relationship is no longer a competition, but competition and cooperation. Integration capabilities between suppliers can be regarded as a competitive advantage. The better supplier integration capabilities, the better supply chain performance. That would further enhance the competitiveness of enterprises. This paper explores the relationship between QM practices and Supplier Integration of supply chains. The entire population of suppliers to aerospace industry in Taiwan was surveyed to measure use of QM practices. QM is modeled as a second-order construct reflected by six QM practices (small group problem solving, top management leadership for quality, information and feedback, process management, customer focus, and supplier involvement). The results showed supplier involvement is the only factor which has statistically significant effect on supplier integration. Our study reflects the underlying fact of the aerospace industry in Taiwan; i.e., it is a manufacturing industry with no design capability. For a manufacturing industry without design capability, supplier involvement is the most important construct for effective supply chain management.

This master's thesis is aimed at analyzing the integration processes between the European Union and Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan is a major oil and gas supplier, while the European Union actively seeks diversification of energy resource supplies for the purpose of reaching higher energy security. The aim of the research is to investigate the relations between Azerbaijan and the European Union. The nature of relations between the two stated subjects are being analyzed, and the main preconditions favoring such relations. In order to provide comprehensive analysis, the situation of Azerbaijan's relations with the European Union with the same bilateral relations with the EU of Turkey, Ukraine and China are being analyzed within this thesis.

D. Tech. (Department of Business, Faculty of Management Sciences), Vaal University of Technology. / The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between e-procurement, supplier integration and supply chain performance in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the Gauteng Province of South Africa. Most studies on e-procurement, supplier integration and supply chain performance have focused on large companies. Current knowledge involving SMEs and e-procurement is still limited. This study, therefore, was conducted to fill this gap. With rapid changes in technology and globalisation of markets, firms, especially SMEs, need support to adapt to technology and make use of e-procurement functions to compete with larger firms. The paradigm used in this study was post-positivism. A quantitative research approach was adopted in this study. The target population for this study consists of all owners and managers who are currently employed in SMEs in the Gauteng Province, South Africa. To measure the study constructs, the survey material was designed in the form of a structured questionnaire. Participants were asked to complete three test instruments, namely, an e-procurement questionnaire, supplier integration questionnaire and supply chain performance questionnaire as well as their profile and SME profile. A total number of 350 questionnaires was distributed to the identified sample of SME owners and managers of which 294 responded and finally 283 questionnaires were usable and used for data analysis. The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed to establish scale accuracy. All measures conformed to acceptable model fit and composite reliability (CR) and revealed that the scales used in this study are reliable. The reliability results confirmed that all constructs reached the generally agreed upon minimum scale range for Cronbach’s alpha of 0.70. Finally, the structural model was tested; four out of seven hypotheses were supported. Validity in this study was achieved through face, content, convergent and discriminant validities. The principal finding of this study reveals that e-design has a positive and significant linear relationship with supplier integration. In addition, the results showed that e-sourcing has a positive and insignificant linear relationship with supplier integration. The insignificant relationship could be indicative of the fact that enterprises are not fully utilising the e-procurement systems in selecting their suppliers to effectively improve their collaboration with supply chain member firms. The findings further reveal that e-negotiation has a positive and significant linear relationship with supplier integration. The study’s empirical findings also indicate that e-evaluation has a negative and insignificant relationship with supplier integration. Further, e-informing was also found to have a negative relationship with supplier integration. The study additionally revealed that supplier integration has a positive and significant linear relationship with tangible supply chain performance. Lastly, the SEM findings show that supplier integration has a positive and significant relationship with the intangible supply chain performance. After reviewing the results, the conclusion was drawn that theoretically, this research has contributed to literature by providing additional information on supply chain management, e-procurement, supplier integration and supply chain performance. The results presented provide useful information about the relationship between e-procurement, supplier integration and supply chain performance in SMEs, with implications for supplier firms and other relevant stakeholders. These results contribute to the expanding body of knowledge on supply chain aspects. The current study added practical value by developing an integrative model which might be used by SME practitioners in South Africa. The study recommends that the collaborating firm owners and managers consider increasing the levels of supplier collaboration by having regular meetings, training workshops or courses and conferences to improve their supply chain performance. Furthermore, it is recommended that SME owners and managers must effectively implement e-design systems to increase the chance of integrating with their suppliers, thereby increasing the chance of improving performance as well as cutting supply chain costs. Areas for further research and limitations for this study have also been highlighted.

This thesis explores the supplier perspective of supplier involvement in product development. Supplier involvement in product development is crucial for many companies to increase resource flexibility, access competence, reduce costs and time to market, among others. The existing literature focuses primarily on the customer perspective of supplier involvement, e.g., challenges and critical factors customers should consider. A few studies have focused on the supplier perspective. This research gap is addressed in this thesis by studying the conditions influencing the suppliers’ involvement in customers’ product development. This thesis explores two research questions: “What are the challenges suppliers experience when being involved in customers’ product development?”, and “What mitigating mechanisms and critical factors influence suppliers’ involvement in customers’ product development?”. The identified challenges originated [FF1] both from the customer and the supplier, indicating that both types of challenges must be focused on. The study also identified interdependencies between the challenges, implying that one challenge may lead to the occurrence of other challenges. The study suggests mitigating mechanisms to deal with the identified challenges. The identified critical factors influenced both the efficiency and effectiveness of supplier involvement in product development, e.g., lead-time, development cost, product quality, and cost. The study indicates that adopting a dual perspective and considering the challenges and critical factors for both the customer and the supplier, can support the involved supplier. The results build on findings from a case study including four SMEs.

Background: The needs of the consumers seem to develop at the same rate as the technology advancements and put more pressure on firms to produce new and innovative products at a faster pace. Research has shown that external sources can have a significant effect on the firms’ innovation performance, but the results are partial contradicting and more research is needed. Purpose: Investigate customer and supplier involvement in product innovation in Swedish manufacturing firms. Delimitations: The study was carried out to manufacturing firms in Sweden, as Swedish firms are the most innovative in Europe at this point in time. Only large and medium sized firms were under investigation as larger firms are more eager to innovate than smaller firms. Method: The research had a deductive quantitative approach. The data was collected through a questionnaire sent out by e-mail and 124 firms participated in the study. After assessing validity and reliability, the hypotheses were tested by multiple and single regression analysis. Conclusions: Firms that strives to improve their new product development process should seize their customer’s knowledge and use it to co-develop new products. Another important factor was to use lead users, as these will improve the innovativeness even more than “ordinary” customers. The study found no support for early supplier integration in the new product development process.

An engine heater is used to warm engine cooling fluid in an engine. This specific case pertains to the engine warmers found in the V8 engines of Scania trucks. The purpose of this study is to make the product development more effective by optimizing the cooperation with suppliers. This is achieved by lowering the costs and development time of the product development. The form and extent to which the supplier is involved can vary, depending on whether or not they are to be fully, partially, or not at all involved in the project. The problem is how a recommendation for collaboration should look like. In order to understand how these recommendations should look, one needs to know which variables affect the cooperation between the company and the supplier. This is done to give a recommendation for how the cooperation with the supplier should be, in order to achieve an effective product development (PD) and high product performance. Through research in the form of written literature, a comparison could be made between the different theories of the PD-process and the cooperation and involvement of the supplier in a company’s PD process, with the company’s actual PD process, but also the cooperation levels with the suppliers in the NPD (New Product Development). This was done to identify which variables influence the cooperation between the company and the supplier, and to find out in what phase of a company’s NPD a supplier should be involved. The results showed that the company had not applied a common development relationship. This meant that it had not made use of organizational enablers (Garengo & Panizzolo, 2013), only technological and methodological enablers. The company's communication channels had not included face-to-face meetings, with communication primarily taking place through email or phone calls. This low level of communication has resulted in a low exchange of knowledge (Thomas, 2013), which affected the NPD efficiency in the form of delays to the project plan. The company had not applied the theory of not trusting “the trust” towards the supplier (Garengo & Panizzolo, 2013) nor kept a constant level of formal control. A case study about the development of engine heaters has also been made. This study has had certain specifications put up as boundaries for the work, such as that the engine heater should be designed in a way that it meets certain demands from the company and the customers. In this case our customers are the assemblers from the production and aftermarket. It should be designed as simply as possible, and be able to function in the most unclean environments, with dust, water, mud and oil. The main principle is to replace the current engine heater that is included in the V8 engines of today, with one that has a new design and takes mount ability, demount ability, quality, and production costs into account, and is backward compatible. The thesis has taken the production development method, from the book "Product Design and development" (Garengo & Panizzolo, 2013) into account in the development of engine heaters. Although it does differ on certain points, such as having the project leader in charge of the time management for the development of entire v8 engines. 3 (80) According to the conclusion, when involved in NPD, the company should apply a constant level of formal control for the supplier during the cooperation - and not just during the serial production (Garengo & Panizzolo, 2013) - and also not trust “trust” towards the supplier and informal controls. The company should use face to face meetings as a preferred communication channel (Garengo & Panizzolo, 2013) in order to achieve NPD (New Product Development) high media richness (high knowledge exchange). When NPD is used for complex products, or has a short project period, the company should involve the supplier at an early phase of the NPD process (Zhao, Cavugsil, & Cavusgil, 2014, for an effective project quality regarding the production speed to the market. An organisational enabler, with the help of a guest engineer or a site engineer (Garengo & Panizzolo, 2013, should also be applied. However, when it comes to new products of great importance the company should avoid involving the supplier for the NPD process (Zhao, Cavugsil, & Cavusgil, 2014) and instead only use technological based integration in a late phase of the process, such as the phase where only technological enablers are used (Garengo & Panizzolo, 2013). / En motorvärmare är en värmare för kylvätska till motorer. Dessa finns i fordon och i detta fall riktas det till motorvärmare i v8 motorer som finns i Företagets lastbilar. Syftet med detta examensarbete är att effektivisera produktutvecklingen genom att optimera samarbetsformerna med leverantörer. Detta sker genom att sänka produktutvecklingens kostnader och utvecklingstid. Samarbetsformen av leverantör kan variera under produktutvecklingen. Beroende på om de skall vara delaktiga i projektet helt och hållet, delvis eller inget. Problemet är hur en rekommendation för samverkan ska se ut. För att kunna ta reda på detta så behöver man veta vilka variabler som påverkar samarbetet mellan företag och leverantör. Detta görs för att kunna ge en rekommendation om det bästa möjliga sättet för vilket ett samarbete med en leverantör bör ske för att uppnå en effektiv produktutveckling (PU) och hög produktprestanda. Via forskning i form av läsning av böcker och artiklar kunde en jämförelse göras mellan de olika teorierna om PU-processen och samarbete & involvering av leverantör i ett företags PUprocess, med företagets verkliga PU-process och dess samarbete & involvering av leverantören i ny produktutveckling (NPU). Detta har gjorts för att ta reda på vilka variabler som har påverkat och påverkar samarbetet mellan företag och leverantör, och för att ta reda på under vilken fas i företagets NPU en leverantör bör bli involverad. Resultatet visade att företaget inte har tillämpat en gemensam utvecklingsrelation, detta innebär att man inte använt sig utav organisatoriska möjliggörare (Garengo & Panizzolo, 2013) utan endast teknologiska och metodologiska möjliggörare. Företagets kommunikationskanal har inte tillämpats genom face to face möten, utan kommunikationen har främst skett genom email eller telefonsamtal. Denna låga kommunikationskanal har resulterat i ett lågt kunskapsutbyte (Thomas, 2013) vilket har påverkat NPU-effektiviteten i form av förseningar av projektplan. Man har inte heller tillämpat att inte lita på tillit gentemot leverantören (Smets, Oorschot, & Langerak, 2013) och inte hållit en konstant nivå av formell kontroll. Det har även gjorts en fallstudie om utvecklingen av motorvärmare. Denna fallstudie gjordes och tillämpades för att kunna gå igenom hela företagets verkliga NPU-process steg för steg, och därefter studera hur samarbetet har varit mellan förtaget och leverantören. Denna studie har haft vissa specifikationer som har satt gränser för arbetet, bl.a. ska motorvärmaren designas så att den uppfyller vissa krav och kundernas krav. Huvudprincipen är att ersätta den nuvarande motorvärmaren som ingår i dagens V8 motorer med en som har en ny design som tar hänsyn till monterbarhet, demonterbarhet, kvalitet, tillverkningskostnad och är bakåtkompatibel. Examensarbetet har tagit hänsyn till produktutvecklingsmetoden från boken ”Product Design and Development” (Ulrich & Eppinger, 2012) vid utvecklingen av motorvärmare. Detta har skett med undantag för vissa punkter som t.ex. hur tidsplaneringen för projektet tagits fram, vilket bestäms av projektledaren som lägger fram tidsplaneringen för utvecklingen av hela v8 motor. Enligt slutsatsen så bör företaget vid NPU tillämpa en konstant nivå av formell kontroll vid samarbete med leverantören vid utvecklingsfasen och inte enbart vid serieproduktion (Smets, Oorschot, & Langerak, 2013), samt att inte lita på tillit gentemot leverantören. Företaget bör 5 (80) även använda face to face möten som kommunikationskanal för att åstadkomma hög informationsutbyte (Thomas, 2013). Vid NPU med en komplex produkt eller vid kort projekttid så bör företaget involvera leverantörer vid tidig fas av NPU-process (Zhao, Cavugsil, & Cavusgil, 2014), för en effektiv projektkvalitet gällande produktsnabbhet till marknad. Samt att tillämpa organisatorisk möjliggörare med hjälp av gästingenjör eller platsingenjör (Garengo & Panizzolo, 2013). Däremot vid en ny produktnyhet som är väldigt viktig för företaget så bör företaget undvika att involvera leverantörer vid NPU-process (Zhao, Cavugsil, & Cavusgil, 2014) genom att använda sig av istället enbart teknologisk utvecklingsrelation i en sen fas av processen (Garengo & Panizzolo, 2013). / NCG projekt

Background: Supplier integration is becoming increasingly important due to the increased globalisation in the business world nowadays. Today’s focal firm does not operate independently, but as a part of its supply chain which competes with other supply chains in the market. The number of the focal SMEs in Europe comprises 99% of companies operating throughout the continent. However, the vast majority of the existing literature is investigating supplier integration from MNEs’ perspectives. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to generate a new supplier integration theory for SMEs. The study aims to compare how SMEs and MNEs conduct supplier integration, spotting the similarities and differences in their approaches and finding out the reasons behind these varying approaches. Method: We choose a relativist ontology and a constructionist epistemology. Within the boundaries of these research assumptions, we follow an inductive multiple case study approach with exploratory characteristics. The case study consists out of 12 cases, six out of the plant engineering industry and six from the mechanical engineering industry. Each industry is represented by three SMEs and three MNEs. Our findings are gathered through coded and categorised interview transcripts, based on which a critical comparative discussion is done. Conclusion: Through our study we find size and industry related differences in conducting supplier integration. Next to obvious circumstances such as limited resources, we identify personal contact, trust creation and industry specifics as main drivers for variation in supplier integration approaches. Furthermore, we conclude that SMEs fit in particular cases better into the reviewed supplier integration literature, since their focus in relationships leads to a more sustainable interest into the partner’s economic well-being. Finally, our findings show mimetic behaviour in SMEs adopting MNEs’ managerial approaches, characterised by classification, evaluation and strategizing.