The Coffee Sector: how the Supply Chain Management creates added value for micro-companies

The purpose of our research, then, is to create a conceptual model which proposes SCM being applied to micro-sized companies in the coffee sector. It aims to illustrate an approach to SCM, so that they can operate in coordinated networks, through a se-ries of interrelated and communicating channels in the various phases of the input-output model. This study addresses the aforementioned lack of knowledge and contributes to the current debate on the topic. In fact, our model allows companies to increase their competitive advantage by reaching a certain level of sustainability and some econo-mies of scale, enhancing the “Made in” brand and benefiting from a green approach. Our conceptual model is original in some features compared to previous studies. This is because it combines the benefits of the SCM, which are clearly recognized in literature (Biotto et al., 2012; Hernández et al., 2016) concerning micro-sized compa-nies, which generally tend to avoid applying popular management tools. On the other hand, the proposed model states that these types of companies may also obtain bene-fits from SCM.