Assessing the Challenges and Implementation of Supply Chain Integration in the Cocoa Industry: a factor of Cocoa Farmers in Ashanti Region of Ghana
Alexander Fianko Otchere, Jonathan Annan, Emmanuel Quansah

Abstract
The problem of partial supply chain integration is going on within the cocoa industry in Ghana. The study sort to examine the major challenges within the industry, which inhibits effective implementation and use of supply chain integration; the relative importance index run on the mean factors indicated that, all the factors of internal, customer and supplier integrations were important for all the groups. The study further revealed that the best way of implementing supply chain integration is to start from functional integration through internal to external integrations. Implementing complete integration both upstream, operations, and downstream is better. Some of the major challenges were poor technological innovations, lack of information sharing and poor integrated database. Finally, the Cocoa industry should adopt pragmatic approach to implement all the three aspects of integration and follow the right way of implementing them to reduce the challenges of integration.

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