Axia Value Chain Index

Project Overview

The proposed project is to conceptualize an index or set of indices that could be used to measure and report North American and/or global value chain activity. There are metrics that are used to measure components of supply chain activity but none provide a comprehensive overall value chain metric. Some of the metrics include the Institute of Supply Management Purchasing Managers Index (originally from MSU) and the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals State of Logistics. Other authors on the research team (Calantone, Closs, and MacDonald) have proposed other means to measure overall supply chain performance but they have not been comprehensive either.

The rationale for this research is to develop an aggregate metric that can be related to the Axia Institute and publicly report the level of supply chain or value chain activity as well as the quality or effectiveness of individual firms’ supply chain systems. The development and reporting of such a metric could provide the Institute with significant visibility and provide an ongoing source of funding as organizations would be willing to pay for such benchmarking information. While researchers on the team have been involved in investigating similar indices before, there has been limited success due to poor data availability and limited tools. The recent availability of much more comprehensive data bases and analytical tools along with the field research experience of the researchers makes another consideration of a comprehensive value chain metric appropriate. The breadth and experience of the team along with the Big Data Analytics could provide value and visibility to the Institute.

Research Project Grand Challenge

The scope of this Value Chain Index research aligns with several key grand challenges identified by the Axia Institute including:

• True supply chain business intelligence and decision-making tools. Planned research on reporting value chain activity and performance levels would substantially increase the overall visibility regarding the magnitude and importance of value chain activities in society. One of the real problems in obtaining visibility regarding the importance of value chain is that there is no comprehensive credible metric.
• Managing the explosion of data and information needs in measuring and reporting value chain activity levels.

Development of a global metric (based on country or regional activity data) would be very useful in determining the relative performance of regional supply chain operations.