Importance of Partnership in Supply Chain Management: A Critical Analysis

Running head: SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
Supply chain management
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

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Introduction
The current approach of the supply chain management process is drastically changing
mainly with the inclusion of newer technologies as well as concepts. Addition of these newer
concepts is important for this sector in order to gain competitive advantages and sustainability.
Gaining the long term sustainability is getting more important for the entities operating in the
logistic and supply chain sector due to the reason that it will provide them long term viability.
There are number of articles being published about the changing scenario of the supply chain
management sector across the world from different perspectives. The chosen article published in
the tandlnews in March discussed about the importance and utility of partnership in the supply
chain management (tandlnews.com.au 2019). This article is being chosen due to the reason that
partnership between different entities in gaining sustainability in the supply chain process is a
coming of age concept and it needs for discussion and analysis.
This essay will discuss about the importance of the chosen article and the content will be
critically analyzed. In addition, the positive and negative elements of this article will also be
identified and recommendations will be discussed based on the negative elements.
Critical analysis of the article
It is stated by the author that the strategic partnership between Nike, Toll and Stockland
led to the facilitation of whole of building carbon neutral certification from the National carbon
Offset Standard. It is further discussed that this warehouse facility of Nike is being designed in
the way, which will have the least impact on the environment and will have least amount of
carbon emission in any forms (tandlnews.com.au 2019). The changes in terms of the
infrastructure being done in the facility are also being discussed in this article. It is stated by the

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authors that green certification of the facilities is helping Nike to add more value for their end
customers and positioning as a sustainable brand in the market. Thus, the major focus of this
article is towards the advantages being gained by the entities from having the green certified
facilities and it is creating value for all the involved stakeholders in the long term. However, on
the other hand, there are number of others elements also being identified being associated with
this article. For example, the information presented in this article helped in indentifying the
importance of partnerships and strategic alliance with expert entities in the supply chain
management (Morgan, Richey and Autry 2016). This is due to the reason that in thus article it is
stated that the expertise of Toll in the logistics helped Nike to have the most effective and
efficient forms of business factors in their supply chain process. Nike is good at their customer
level products but not having the expertise in supply chain process. On the other hand, Toll is
one of the leading players operating in the logistic and supply chain process. Thus, the capital
and economies of scale of Nike and logistic expertise of Toll helped in having the most
sustainable supply chain process.
This can be further criticized that modern day supply chain process cannot be competitive
enough without the involvement of the specialized third party vendors. This is due to the fact that
in the current business complexities, it is difficult for the business organizations to initiate the
both the backward and forward integration effectively. In this case, partnership with the third
party vendors can help in gaining competitive edge (Chen and Notteboom 2014). In the case of
Nike, their strategic alliance with Toll helped in bringing the efficiency in their supply chain
process. This is due to the fact that Toll is having the expertise and specialization in bringing the
sustainability in the logistic and supply chain process. However, on the other hand, this article
lacks the information regarding the cost involved in gaining the green certification of the