Memo for LESA Members

Jan. 1, 2003
Dear Logistics Managers and Colleagues, This is Honggeng from the Supply Chain Management Research Group at the Ohio State University. Our research team

Dear Logistics Managers and Colleagues,

This is Honggeng from the Supply Chain Management Research Group at the Ohio State University. Our research team is an experienced team of business researchers working in the broad area of supply chain management. The members of this group have done many analytical and empirical studies in the supply chain management arena. The members of the research team include Dr. W.C. Benton (The Ohio State University), Dr. Michael Maloni, Dr. Carol Prahinski (University of Western Ontario), and Honggeng (John) Zhou (The Ohio State University).

Now we are conducting a survey research about the relationship between supply chain practices and IT management. The current phase of our study focuses in the manufacturing sector. The research will later be extended to the service sector. This study is partially supported by the Alumni Grants for Graduate Research and Scholarship (AGGRS) at the Ohio State University. We wish to get your help on our research study in terms of completing our survey questionnaire, which will take about 20 minutes. To show our appreciation, you will receive a summary copy of the survey results as soon as we complete the study. Your participation is critical to the success of the current study and will hopefully assist you in gaining an in-depth understanding of the supply chain practices and information technology management. Thanks in advance!

In order to ensure the quality of the proposed research, a pre-survey form is provided at http://fisher.osu.edu/~zhou/SCM-presurvey.htm. It will take about three minutes to complete the pre-survey form, which will help us to better design the study. It is understood that you may choose not to participate in the study for some reason after you receive our survey questionnaire. However, if you are unable to participate in our study for some already-known reason, please do not complete this pre-survey form. The deadline for completing the pre-survey form is January 29 (Wednesday) 2003.

If you are interested in our previous supply chain research study report(s), you can request the report(s) in the pre-survey form. Our previous studies include: (1) Communication Strategies and Supplier Performance Evaluations in an Industrial Supply Chain (by Carol Prahinski and W.C. Benton); (2) Supply Chain Partnerships: Opportunities for operations research (by Michael Maloni and W.C. Benton); (3) Power Influences in the Supply Chain (by Michael Maloni and W.C. Benton); (4) Relationship Performance in the Automotive Supply Chain (by Michael Maloni and W.C. Benton).

Best regards,

Honggeng Zhou, Ph.D. candidate

Department of Management Sciences

The Fisher College of Business

The Ohio State University

Phone: 614-688-4630 (office)

Fax: 614-292-1272

Web site: http://fisher.osu.edu/~zhou