SUPPLY CHAIN MATURITY MODELS- A COMPARATIVE REVIEW

Background: Due to the high potential to gain competitive advantage in today's global market, supply chains play a critical role in the current industry. Understanding maturity and its features in the context of the supply chain can help companies achieve higher levels of performance. To assess and measure supply chains, a wide variety of supply chain maturity models have been developed to help companies analyze the existing state in the supply chain, allowing for the achievement of higher levels of maturity and providing guidance in the development of an improvement roadmap.

Methods: The review spans from the early 1990s to 2021 and examines research carried out and published in the literature, including papers on conference proceedings, articles in journals, and technical reports. The previous models, stages, dimensions (areas/elements), and methods are included in this review. Research gaps are also noted, analyzed, and discussed.

Results: The purpose of this study is to perform a comparative analysis of supply chain maturity models to explore the special characteristics of the studied models, which help to identify the differences and similarities between each other, and also to present the various focus areas related to the supply chain. The results show the existence of a large variety of models with a trend to the customs of models for specific area of supply chain. We also identified that most of the models have similar maturity level names and number since they are developed based on previously existing maturity models. The results of this paper are meant to serve as a reference guide for a detailed understanding of documented supply chain maturity models and help practitioners to seek better alignment in regards to supply chain maturity models characteristics.

Conclusions: Supply chains play an important role in the market rivalry nowadays. Understanding maturity and its components in the context of supply chain management can help companies perform at higher levels. Despite the high number of maturity models developed in the field of supply chain, the result of this review shows that there is a need for new studies to fill the gaps in the existing work and to take into consideration the complexity faced in the management of supply chain networks.