Do companies in the food sector measure up? : a case study of Ireland, implications and lessons to be learned for EU member states.

Ireland's geographical isolation in Western Europe is a challenge that most Irish business sectors must learn to deal with on a daily basis. This paper reports on an in-depth study into the food industry in Ireland. It reports on improvements made in the supply chain operations of the Irish food industry over the past two years. The implementation of effective supply chain management principles has enabled these food companies to reduce their overall costs, improve their service and enhance their revenues. This research into the improvements in the practices of the food sector through the adoption of supply chain management practices is grounded in the identification and definition of sector appropriate key performance indicators (KPI's). The paper then goes on to show how the performance of Irish food companies compared when benchmarked against international standards. In the final part of this study, all respondents from the 2003 survey were split into groups of small, medium and large sized companies. This offered an insight into how the three separate entities compared with one another in terms of their logistics development and capability. The results showed that all three groups had unique strengths and weaknesses in relation to the management of their logistics activities that were not present in the other two groups. For the covering abstract see ITRD E126595.