IMPROVING COMPETITIVENESS OF SMALL AND MEDIUM MANUFACTURING ENTERPRISES THROUGH SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT: A CASE OF LEATHER PRODUCTS MANUFACTURING ENTERPRISE IN HAWASSA CITY

Abstract

Small and medium leather products manufacturing enterprises are one of the enterprises provides expectation for the government to achieve target as one of the competitive sector in current market for economic growth, employment generation and building an industrial economy. In the different the enterprises has recorded very stagnant level of competitiveness with dynamic current market cause of gap on practicing supply chain managements. In order to conduct this research, questionnaire was developed and distributed for 132 respondents in eleven leather products manufacturing enterprises those work on different department and level. All the questionnaires were collected by using schedule data collection method; beside the questioner interview and detail observation also conducted with experts to supports the findings from the questionnaire. Then the collected data was analyzed using IBM SPSS 26; in both descriptive and inferential statics. Regarding the descriptive statistic and inferential statistics results the finding shows; the current supply chain management practice level of the leather products manufacturing enterprise is medium, this indicate its influence on their competitiveness. Regarding the correlation, all the independent variables are positively and significantly correlated with dependent variable with a significant level of less than 1%. As per the regression analysis output result the coefficients of four predictor variables are statistically significant at less than one percent (P<.001). Therefore, the purpose of this study is to propose ways to improve the competitiveness of small and medium leather products manufacturing enterprises through Supply Chain management and applying competitive priority on operation. Finally the study proposed adoptable SCM framework and recommended the manufacturing enterprises are using supply chain management practices and applying competitive priority to customer value and need with the proper support and guidance of governments in order to improve their competitiveness