The Improvement of Supply Chain Performance of Thung Sumrit Jasmine Rice to Enhance Firm Competitiveness: The Case Study of Pimai Agricultural Cooperative, Pimai District, Nakhon Ratchasima

Abstract

Abstract
Rice is the staple crop in Thailand. Formerly, many approaches have been used continuously
by Thai government in order to develop Thai rice industry. However, at present, Thai farmers
still face many problems including rice price, rice seed quality, paddy quality, and information
flow. Additionally, rice mills also have such problems as investment capital problem, production
technology and delivering process. Thus, nowadays, Thai rice problems may be caused partly by
lacking of supply chain performance studies and improvement.
Thus, this research aims to study the ways to improve rice supply chain performance by
focusing on Thung Sumrit Jasmine Rice of Pimai Agricultural Cooperative, the important organization
in Nakhon Ratchasima that aggregates paddy from its members, as the case study. In-depth interview
was conducted with those people who were 10 executives and 2 officers from 9 agricultural
cooperatives and questionnaire was used to gather data from 400 farmers who were members
of Pimai Agricultural Cooperative.The data were analyzed by using frequency, percentage, mean,
standard deviation and simple regression.
The findings showed that the important drivers of supply chain performance were information,
inventory, transportation and facilities management. Information management had significantly positive
relationships with inventory, transportation and facilities management at 0.05 level. Moreover,
the results from in-depth interview found that the ways the cooperative could use to improve supply
chain performance of Thung Sumrit Jasmine Rice were to 1) preserve consistent quality of white rice
2) offer price based on quality and use flexible price policy 3) allow customer to return product
promptly if any problems are found 4) promote informal communication within organization
5) outsource transportation service to agricultural cooperatives network 6) join any activities
arranged by cooperatives network 7) provide marketing promotion activities 8) apply barter system
9) usually ask for future demand information from its customers.