Supplier Knowledge Management For Supplier Development

Abstract

Due to rapid and unpredictable changes in the business environment, nowadays organizations have to be innovative to survive in the marketplace.  Many firms have applied knowledge management to reduce production costs, innovate new products, and attract customers and suppliers.  Hence, firm's management has to maintain competitive advantage by providing inputs through a dynamic supplier network. Supplier development programs help businesses to identify collaborative suppliers.  Therefore, Supplier Knowledge Management plays an important role for the firms to create switching costs and raise barriers to entry. In this paper, initially we define knowledge management, and supplier knowledge management, and then a conceptual framework is presented to enhance supplier performance.  We will demonstrate how companies can benefit by adopting supplier knowledge management.