Supply Chain Cooperatives in Taiwan's Machine Tool Industry

Increasingly sophisticated machinery, short product life-cycles, and demanding user requirements have increased competition in the machine tool market. Because all machine tool companies have limited resources, they must seek competitive advantages. Strategic collaborations have become particularly important to Taiwanese machine tool manufacturers, who increasingly seek to integrate the upstream, midstream, and downstream parts of their supply chains. To evaluate modern SCM in the machine tool industry, one must consider the entire process, including the initial cooperative stage, the middle stage of supply-chain strategy, and the final performance evaluation stage. This study has used questionnaires to collect quantitative data regarding machine tool companies located in the central area of Taiwan. Further, this study has applied theories of transaction cost, resource base, and organizational learning to analyze the performance of SCM in Taiwan¡¦s machine tool industry. The analysis involves cooperative types, abilities, and strategies as intermediary factors. Results show that the cooperative type has significant impact on SCM effectiveness and strategy, and the mutual influences of cooperative ability and type positively affect the performance of SCM.