BENCHMARKING THE INTERACTIONS AMONG BARRIERS IN DAIRY SUPPLY CHAIN: AN ISM APPROACH

The purpose of this paper is to explore the key barriers in dairy supply chain and to analyze their interactions in the context of Indian dairy industry. A total of eight barriers have been identified through literature review and the opinions of an expert team consisting of managerial and technical experts from dairy industry and academics. A questionnaire has been developed for identified barriers and responses were collected from select dairy industries located at northern India. Interpretive structure modeling (ISM) is used to analyze the interactions among barriers and to propose a structural model. Further, the importance of barriers is determined based on their driving and dependence power using MICMAC analysis. The ISM-based model allocates to 'traceability, unbalanced production line, over-processing' as key barriers, 'wastages and high production downtime' comes next. MICMAC analysis depicts one autonomous barrier, one dependent barrier and six linkage barriers. The ISM-based model and MICMAC analysis will support the decision makers in dairy industry for planning their supply chain activities in an efficient way by managing the identified barriers.