Strategic fit of the Italian supply chains: An experimental Study

Almost 20 years ago, Marshall L. Fisher asked on the Harvard Business Review "What is the right supply chain for your product?" To search for an answer, he proposed a matrix to understand if the nature of a company's products and the priority of its supply chain match or not. The aim of this work is to determine quantitatively the level of strategic fit of Italian companies from different sectors (e.g. automotive, rubber and plastics, fashion and apparel and machineries and equipment). To achieve our goal, we built a multiple-choice questionnaire with 11 questions on a company's supply chain and 9 questions on its products, to determine products characteristics and supply chain priorities. Also, the questionnaire is provided with some general questions to describe the characteristics of the company. The questionnaire was sent to around 2,000 companies, and we received 172 answers. Firstly, we built the Fisher matrix, and found out that around 61% of companies resulted to match supply chain priorities with product's characteristics. Around 27% of companies, instead, presented a responsive supply chain with functional products, and another 12% of companies have an efficient supply chain with innovative products: both these solutions present criticalities. Finally, we investigated the degree of coherence of the different sectors, and this produces interesting suggestions, both for researchers and practitioners.