LEVERAGING AGILE SUPPLY CHAINS FOR IMPROVED FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE IN HEALTHCARE SECTOR COMPANIES IN MALAYSIA

This research aims to identify factors affecting supply chain agility (SCA) through the lens of financial ratios and evaluate their effect on a company's financial performance. This research involves companies which were listed in the healthcare sector on Bursa Saham Malaysia (BURSA) with at least thirteen years of historical financial reports. The findings reveal that from the four key SCA attributes included in this research, Supply Chain Resilience (SCR) and Planning and Demand Forecast Accuracy (PDFA) are the two attributes that have a significant impact on financial performance, while Supply Chain Flexibility (SCF) and Supplier Collaboration do not have a significant impact. The findings of this research also demonstrate that Supply Chain Agility attributes are numerous, and if the attributes are included to complement one another, they will have a stronger and more significant impact on improving financial performance. However, if companies implement supply chain strategies that only focus on one SCA attribute at a time, the impact may not be as significant as compared to more comprehensive strategies, which complement one another. The healthcare sector can utilize the findings from this research to improve its financial performance. The result does not encourage the sector to be too flexible, as this will increase complexities and hurt its operating costs, instead, it provides a framework for the healthcare sector to develop strategies to be more supply chain resilient and improve its planning and demand forecasting accuracy and balance focus on the supplier’s collaboration.