THE MISALIGNMENT CYCLE: IS THE MANAGEMENT OF YOUR SUPPLY CHAIN ALIGNED?

Purpose of this paper
The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework for describing and analyzing misalignments in supply chain management, which relate to changes in supply chain structures, processes, and management components.

Design/methodology/approach
Based on the systems approach, a single-case study with embedded design including several embedded cases from the same supply chain was deployed. This was done according to the abductive research approach, which is favourable when extending existing and developing new theory. In order to describe the case study, data was collected through observations, interviews and workshops, and later analyzed through pattern matching. The
case studied was the Swedish cash supply chain, which was appropriate since it has gone through several changes in its supply chain structure and management.

Findings and original/value of paper
A framework to describe and analyze misalignments in the supply chain was developed. The framework proposed consists of two steps:
1. Identify changes in the supply chain, and
2. Identify misalignments. For every step respectively, a specific and more detailed framework was developed in order to facilitate the identification processes.
With the framework a researcher or practitioner gets a structured approach to map the management of a supply chain so that its current misalignments can be identified.