Supply Chain Management and Business Performance in Foods and Beverages Companies in Kampala-Uganda

Abstract This research examined supply chain management practices and business performance of Foods and Beverages companies in Kampala District. The study was guided by the following study objectives; To establish the demographic characteristics of the respondents; To determine the level of supply chain management practices in foods and beverages companies in Kampala; and; To establish if there is significant relationship between the performance of the supply chain management and the business performance. A correlative survey research design was used in the study. A well designed questionnaire that included several items explaining the main characteristics of supply chain management practices, levels of supply chain performance and business performance was distributed to 174 respondents though only 153 were returned and then 140 questionnaires only used for the analysis of the findings. The response rate was over 8O.4% representing all different food and beverage firms. Statistical analysis was used to analyze the data and test the two major hypotheses in this study. The results indicated a positive significant relationship between the level of supply chain performance and business performance of the firms. Recommendations of this study included the following; (1) Foods and beverages companies specifically should build strong IT infrastructure in order to facilitate the information sharing internal and external the firms especially, with customers; (2) The companies should ensure and facilitate the relationship between suppliers and retailers in order to increase information flow within the supply chain; (3) The companies that suffer from a lot of barriers facing application of lean system in their companies, should benchmark the successful lean manufacturing systems from other successful companies.