Supply Chain Management Practices and Performance of Kenya Tea Development Agency Managed Factories

Abstract

A study was carried out to establish the relationship between supply chain management practices and performance of KTDA managed tea factories. The study sought to achieve two specific objectives: to determine the supply chain management practices of KTDA managed factories in Kenya and to establish the relationship between supply chain management practices and performance of KTDA managed factories in Kenya. The study took the form of a survey of the tea factories. Primary data was successfully collected from 40 tea factories out of the 63 targeted factories. The data was analyzed using frequencies, percentages, mean, descriptive statistics and regression analysis. The findings reveal that good customer relationship management, outsourcing of noncore products and activities, reduction of cycle times across the supply chain and supplier development are the most common and popular among the tea factories followed by other supply chain management practices such as sharing information across the supply chain, purchasing quality products, reduction of lead time and process integration that are adopted to a very great extent. The ten supply chain management practices that formed the independent variables of this study explain 45.7% of the variance in the performance of KTDA managed factories in Kenya. The study recommends that the factories should enhance adoption of the supply chain management practices in order to improve their performance.