m. fehresti sani

The integration of supply chain has always been a challenge for many companies. Despite the agreement on the strategic importance of supply chain integration, limited researches have been done on the relationship between supply chain integration and its impact on performance. In this study, sample size was 75 managers and experts from agriculture supply chain sector. Hence, interpretative structural modeling and structural equation modeling were used for analyzing the data (smart PLS). The results infer that the integration of marketing and supply chain management would improve supply chain performance through some factors. The results indicated Knowledge Management (KM), Human Resource Management (HRM), Information Technology (IT), marketing planning and supply chain planning are the most important indicators in improving Guar supply chain management. The Guar supply chain performance would be improved through the relationship between IT and HRM.

The sugar industry has many backward and forward linkages in the supply chain. In this industry, a chain of agricultural, industrial, oil, transportation, and commerce sectors is engaged to transform raw materials into product and shipping it to consumers. In this research, the efficiency of decision-making units in Iranchr('39')s sugar supply chain is evaluated using network and simple Data Envelopment Analysis methods. Results of the first level of decentralized sugar supply chain in Iran (extraction of sugar from sugar beets) indicate that the average technical efficiency in terms of a constant return to scale and the allocation, economic, and scale efficiency are not at appropriate levels. In the second level of supply chain, weakness was observed in allocative and economic efficiency. The results showed that the Provinces of West Azerbaijan and Khorasan-e Razavi offer desirable conditions for sugar beet production in terms of efficiency. Supply chain management has been used as a tool for timely delivery of the product to market at a lower cost to increase the efficiency of the entire sugar supply chain. A move toward vertical integration in sugar production is also proposed to benefit integration.