Flows of goods or supply chains; lessons from the natural rubber industry in Kerala, India

There is not 'one best way' of organizing the flow of goods from the producers of raw materials to final customers to satisfy these customers. The relevance of the product for the buyers is an important contingency to determine which type of organization, i.e. relationship between buyers and suppliers, is effective. Kraljic presented a purchase portfolio and Patterson et al., introduced three types of relationships. From combining these two approaches we conclude that, for non-critical items and leverage items a transactional relationship, governed by the market, is adequate; for strategic items a transcendental relationship, governed by clan is optimal, whereas for the bottleneck items a transitional relationship, governed by quasi-hierarchy would be appropriate. When applying this scheme to the Keralite rubber industry we found that, differences between the provision with footwear, a low end product for the domestic market, and dipped goods, high end products for the international market, can be described and analysed. From the analysis we find differences and inconsistencies pointing at directions to improve the provision of the markets with these products. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.