Collaborative Demand and Supply Planning Networks - Enterprise Information Systems Design, Implementation and Management: Organizational Applications - page 498

Table 1. Examples of E-Business impacts on supply chain integration and business processes (Lee &
Whang, 2001)

Business Processes

Dimensions of SC
Integration

Procurement Order Fulfilment Product Design Post-Sales Support

Information
Integration

Supplier information
sharing

Information sharing across
the supply chain

Design data sharing, prod-
uct change plan sharing

Customer usage data
linkages

Planning
Synchro-nisation

Co-ordinated replenish-
ment

Collaborative planning and
co-ordination, demand and
supply management

Synchronised new product
introduction and rollover
plans

Service supply
chain planning
co-ordination

Workflow Co-
ordination

Paperless procurement,
auctions,
auto replenishment, auto
payment

Workflow automation with
contract manu-facturers or
logistics providers, replenish-
ment services.

Product change manage-
ment automation, collab-
orative design

Auto replenishment of
consumables

New Business
Models

Market exchanges, auc-
tions,
secondary markets

Click-and-mortar models,
supply chain restructur-
ing, market intelligence &
demand management

Mass customisation, new
service offerings

Remote sensing &
diagnosis, auto-test,
downloadable upgrades

Monitoring and
Measurement

Contract agreement com-
pliance monitoring

Logistics tracking, order
monitoring

Project monitoring Performance measure-

ment and tracking

to achieve seamless inter-organisational interfaces
by specifying control principles and operations
models for the flow of materials and information
(Holweg et al., 2005).
Collaboration in the network is decentralised
and each actor performs individual planning, with
the aim of optimising operations in a local per-
spective. Companies in non-hierarchical networks
face challenges that make collaboration difficult.
Firstly, the networks themselves are dynamic and
hard to define, and a single company is often part
of several different manufacturing networks simul-
taneously. The focal company and other network
members frequently face situations with conflict-
ing interest and trade-off situations. A typical
scenario is when orders from different networks
compete for scarce resources and deadlines and
delivery times are short. Frequently, these require-
ments cannot be fulfilled because there is a lack of
information about the current state of the produc-
tion and network processes. In addition, customers
might request changes to orders that are already
in production, making it difficult to make quick
decisions based on a complete, real time overview

of possible options and associated consequences.
Secondly, products are becoming more and more
sophisticated and intelligent, with service and
value added elements embedded in the products
themselves. Further, with an increasing level of
customisation, and demands for high quality, low
costs, short and precise delivery times, and high
flexibility, the management of the operations in
the networks represents a significant challenge.
Other examples of E-Business Impacts on
Supply Chain Integration and Business Processes
are seen in Table 1.
One would imagine that the main improve-
ments from implementing information exchange
solutions would be a reduction of resources to
enter/update information in the ERP-system, but
experiences from Electrolux in Australia shows
that even more time is released from (not) an-
swering all kind of order related questions on the
phone, not only in the administration but also in
the production.