Since its introduction by management consultants in the early 1980s, supply chain management (SCM) has been primarily concerned with the integration of processes and activities both within and between organisations. The concept of supply chain integration (SCI) is based on documented evidence that suggests that much of the waste throughout businesses is a consequence of fragmented supply chain ...

Supply chain management represents a critical competency in today’s global business environment, but neither commerce through EDI technology nor current Web applications satisfy combined requirements of process integration and flexibility. The present research builds on prior agent work to argue multi-agent systems offer tremendous potential and capability to overcome such limitations. The pape...

The efficacy, quality, responsiveness, and value of healthcare services provided is increasingly attracting the attention and the questioning of governments, payers, patients, and healthcare providers. Investments on integration technologies and integration of supply chain processes, has been considered as a way towards removing inefficiencies in the sector. This chapter aims to initially provi...

The paper deals with business renovation, effective utilization of information technology and the role of business process modeling in supply chain integration projects. The main idea is to show how the performance of the supply chain can be improved with the integration of various tiers in the chain. Integration is prerequisite for effective sharing and utilization of information between diffe...

The paper examines the effect of E-Supply Chain Management Systems in the North American electronics manufacturing services industry. A causal and descriptive research study was conducted based on a survey applied to thirty six individuals in electronic manufacturing services firms in order to determine the impact of esupply chain management on their key supply chain operations. Results of the ...

The supply chain management (SCM) consists of the integration of the business logistics management processes involving not only units within an enterprise but also across units belonging to both upstream and downstream partners, such as suppliers, customers, and logistics service providers. According to the council of logistics management (CLM, 1999), the set of activities to be managed include...

This paper develops an analytical model that explores how important supply chain parameters affect the cost savings to be realized from collaborative initiatives such as vendor-managed inventory (VMI). Results from the model show that benefits, in the form of inventory cost reductions, may be generated from integration depending upon the ratio of the order costs of the supplier to the buyer and...

Electronic business has a strong influence on the relationships between partners within supply chains. Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) need an affordable, integrated set of software tools to support integration of their supply chains and to take advantage of the new ways of doing business in the electronic business environment. The paper reviews evolution and current trends in supply ...

One of the most significant changes in organizational business models has been that it is not the individual organizations that compete with each other; rather they compete as a network of organizations forming the supply chain. To compete as supply chains in a digital economy organizations invest in digital applications, and IT infrastructure for supply chain integration. They also establish l...

In this paper, ontology technology is applied to Supply Chain information integration, in order to provide unified interface for semantic data and to share, reuse knowledge among information resources. Ontology can solve well the semantic heterogeneity problem of distributed, heterogeneous and autonomous data sources; and the problem of semantic interoperability. Since the objects on Supply Cha...