Investigation of the Impact of Supply Chain Integration on Product Innovation and Quality

This paper addresses integration issues in supply chains, and tries to investigate how different aspects of integration are linked with some product features. inteqration, in this study is interpreted as internal, upstream (supply) and doumsiream (demand). two product featuresconsidered in this study are product innovation and product quality. to examine the relationships between supply chain integrations - as mentioned above, and product features, this research followe asurvey method used in the automotive industry. the results imply that supply. chain upstream integration has a higher impact on product quality, compared to internal and supply chain downstream integrations.it is also found that the influence of supply chain downstream integration on product innovation is greater than other variables. in brief, this study mainly tackles the importance of specific levels of supply chainintegration and its effects on two product features.