In addition to the three implementation levels
of SCM proposed by Mentzer et al. (2001), Sohal
et al. (2002) discovered that there are also three
integration levels of supply chain namely reactive,
tactical and strategic. Reactive is the lowest level
of implementation which merely acts to satisfy a
trading partner’s request. Typical application at
this level includes some simple Electronic Data
Interchange (EDI) transactions. Such
implementation merely incurs additional
operational costs. Next is tactical level where the
supply chain activities are integrated to a specific
business process, such as purchasing and
production, in improving its efficiency. At this level,
adequate planning is done and hence, substantial
cost savings are possible to achieve. The ultimate
is strategic level where it seeks to integrate
various business processes across the supply
chain in a planned and staged manner. Such
integration is expected to yield incredible costs
savings in addition to other business advantages.