The effects of business systems leveraging on supply chain performance: Process innovation and uncertainty as moderators

Rooted in the profit-seeking motives of social exchange theory, this study aims to investigate the factors that facilitate leverages of firm’s business systems and their sharing of information with group members, as well as the impacts of business systems leveraging (BSL) on information sharing and supply chain performance. Simultaneously, the moderating effects of uncertainty and the degree of process innovation on the relationship between BSL and supply chain performance are also estimated. The analytical results indicated that proactive technological orientation, information technology (IT) connectivity, supply chain member pressure, and member relationship quality encourage firms to combine their business systems with those of other business partners. Interestingly, in a situation where there is high demand and an uncertain supply, the impact of BSL on supply chain performance is low, while the moderating effect of process innovation on the relationship between BSL and supply chain performance is significant. Finally, it is suggested that firms implementing BSL work to upgrade their technology maintain tight relationships with supply chain partners and create innovation in all aspects of their business processes in order to survive in the highly competitive IT environment.     

A structural equation model for analyzing the impact of ERP on SCM

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain management (SCM) represent important information technology investment options for operation or IT managers, and have been acclaimed in the practitioner and academic literature for their potential to improve business performance. The purpose of this article is to provide further insights into the adoption of ERP systems and the impacts on firm competence in SCM. We propose a model featuring ERP benefits to firm competences in supply chain management. We also hypothesize that three constructs of ERP benefits positively impact firm competences in SCM. To clarify the relationships among these constructs, structural equation model (SEM) is conducted to examine the model fit and nine hypotheses. The SEM results clearly demonstrate that there exist close interrelations among the benefits of implementing ERP systems and firm competences in SCM. The data from Taiwanese IT firms was collected through interviewing of experts and surveys. The results provide empirical evidence that the beneficial impacts of ERP on the supply chain do lead to better overall SCM competence. That evidence confirms that operational benefits, business process and management benefits, and strategic IT planning benefits of ERP in turn enhance firm competences of SCM in operational process integration, customer and relationship integration, and planning and control process integration.     

面向操作系统可靠性保障的开源软件供应链

软件可靠性是软件工程领域中的研究热点之一,故障率分析是软件可靠性的典型研究方法.然而,软件构建模式已从单体模式演进到以开源软件为代表的规模化协作模式,操作系统作为代表性产物之一,所含开源软件之间通过组合关系和依赖关系,形成了一个包含上万节点的供应关系网络.典型方法缺乏对供应关系的考量,无法准确识别和评估因此而引入的软件可靠性问题.把供应链概念体系拓展到开源软件领域,提出一种基于知识的面向开源协作模式下软件供应可靠性的管理方法：面向开源软件生态进行本体设计,构建开源软件知识图谱,实现知识的提取、存储和管理,以知识为驱动,结合传统的供应链管理方法,提出一组面向开源软件供应链的可靠性管理方法,构成一套开源软件供应链管理系统.实验以Linux操作系统发行版的构建为例,展示了开源软件供应链对操作系统可靠性的支撑能力.结果表明,开源软件供应链将有助于理清和评估大型复杂系统软件的可靠性风险.     

Open Source Software Supply Chain for Reliability Assurance of Operating Systems

Software reliability is one of the research hotspots in the field of software engineering, and failure rate analysis is a typical research method for software reliability. However, the software construction mode has evolved from a single mode to a large-scale collaborative model represented by open source software. As one of the representative products, the operating system includes open source software connected through combinations and dependencies to form a supply network of tens of thousands of nodes. Typical methods lack consideration of supply relationships and cannot accurately identify and evaluate the software reliability issues introduced as a result. This paper extends the concept of supply chain to the field of open source software and proposes a knowledge-based management method for software supply reliability in a collaborative model. The ontological body is designed for the open source software ecosystem firstly, and then the nowledge graph of open source software is constructed to achieve the extraction, storage and management of knowledge; driven by knowledge, combined with traditional supply chain management methods, a set of reliability management methods for open source software supply chain is proposed, which constitutes a management system of open source software supply chain. With the construction of a Linux operating system distribution as an example, the experiment demonstrates how the open source software supply chain supports the reliability of the operating system. Results show that the open source software supply chain will help to clarify and evaluate the reliability risk of large complex system software.     

Business–IT fit in e-procurement systems: evidence from high-technology firms in China

Abstract.  Because of the influence of globalization and updated information technologies (IT), firms in China face an urgent need to adopt e-procurement systems (EP) to deal with their daily procurement activities. However, implementing EP in China encounters various uncertainties from internal and external business environments. To address this issue, this research aims to examine the fit between business and the IT environment and to study its impact on system performance. The literature review allows the proposal of two internal business environmental uncertainties and two external business environmental uncertainties covering the perspectives of process, knowledge, partnership and environment. Based on a multiple-case study performed in four Chinese firms that supply various personal computer components to a Taiwanese original equipment manufacturer via an EP, it was found that the firms' external and internal uncertainty factors affected the performance of EP. In addition, an EP with a low level of integration – the EP type used most frequently in China – can only achieve great performance when the adopting firms faced a low uncertainty of environment, partnership and process, and had low levels of IT knowledge. It was also observed that lack of fit between the business environment and EP produced extra burdens and costs in the buyer–supplier relationship. This significantly reduced the system performance of the Chinese firms. Hence, the contribution of this research can be twofold. First, practitioners in China can use this framework to diagnose their environmental conditions and then choose the appropriate type of EP to implement. Second, researchers can build upon this model to further examine the impact of fit on EP performance and generalize the results.     

网络流量技术应用与分析

随着因特网的高速发展，IP网络承载的数据流量越来越大，需要了解IP网络的整体性能及流量状况来适应业务的发展。本文阐述当前主要的流量技术NETFLOW与RMON2的原理、结构和关键技术，提出了基于NETFLOW技术的应用分析，并对RMON2与NETFLOW的应用进行了比较分析。     

Multi-behavior agent model for planning in supply chains: An application to the lumber industry

Recent economic and international threats to western industries have encouraged companies to increase their performance in all ways possible. Many look to deal quickly with disturbances, reduce inventory, and exchange information promptly throughout the supply chain. In other words they want to become more agile. To reach this objective it is critical for planning systems to present planning strategies adapted to the different contexts, to attain better performances. Due to consolidation, the development of integrated supply chains and the use of inter-organizational information systems have increased business interdependencies and in turn the need for increased collaboration to deal with disturbance in a synchronized way. Thus, agility and synchronization in supply chains are critical to maintain overall performance. In order to develop tools to increase the agility of the supply chain and to promote the collaborative management of such disturbances, agent-based technology takes advantage of the ability of agents to make autonomous decisions in a distributed network through the use of advanced collaboration mechanisms. Moreover, because of the highly instable and dynamic environment of today's supply chains, planning agents must handle multiple problem solving approaches. This paper proposes a Multi-behavior planning agent model using different planning strategies when decisions are supported by a distributed planning system. The implementation of this solution is realized through the FOR@C experimental agent-based platform, dedicated to supply chain planning for the lumber industry.     

基于冲突检测的供应链协同计划

在供应链协同计划中,以供应链整体最优为目标做出的决策有可能引发个体理性和集体理性冲突。针对该问题,在研究供应链协同计划时引入冲突检测方法,建立供应链协同计划冲突检测模型,采用Agent协商技术对检测到的冲突进行消解。仿真实例说明,在供应链协同计划中引入冲突检测方法能及时发现供应链中存在的冲突,有助于提高供应链协同计划的效率和科学性。     

Enterprise systems and demand chain management: a cross-sectional field study

Increased product variety, compressed cycle times, supply chain network based competition and the uncertainty in business environment are forcing organizations to shift their emphasis towards demand chain management. Though enterprise systems and supply chain management software solutions are well in place in most of the large enterprises in Australia, their ability to support demand chain management approach is not yet known. This paper investigates the adoption of demand chain management in Australian organizations using cross-sectional qualitative field study. It found that the adoption is limited despite the organizational capabilities and sound digital platforms. Standardization, integration, visibility and control of processes and information, enabled by enterprise systems, are helping the organizations in improving their ability to sense and shape market demand and customer needs, and build agility into their decision making processes. Attempts to synchronise operating and finance cycles and collecting market intelligence and sharing of that across the supply chain are some of the initiatives that have started showing benefits. Adopting the demand chain management initiatives such as establishment of market intelligence mechanism, building agility into decision making processes, sophisticated usage of optimization tools embedded in software solutions, and process frameworks such as Supply Chain Operations Reference are helping organizations to achieve both agility and control simultaneously.     

A u-IT collaboration evaluation model for value networks

The paradigm of competition between companies has been changed from the competition between individual businesses to the one between the supply chain management. To gain a comparative advantage in this supply chain management, IT collaboration, which has an important strategic location for cooperation between manufacturers, sectors, systems, applications, and processes and supports them, has begun to emerge as an important key. To date, however, most of the studies have searched factors constructing collaborative networks between companies, and there are few studies on performance analysis for activating collaborative networks between companies. Accordingly, this study would like to conduct performance analysis on collaborative networks between companies for measuring performance of constructing concrete collaborative networks and activating improved collaborative network systems from an industrial viewpoint. In detail, it would like to design a model for determinants to make construct collaborative networks and to analyze the utilization level and performance of collaborative networks between companies. In addition, it conducts correlation analysis on determinants of collaborative networks to improve performance of these collaborative networks.     

制造业供应链产销协同计划冲突协商模型

面对市场竞争日益剧烈和客户需求多样化的趋势,制造业供应链的制造商和经销商努力实现产销协同计划。然而在产销协同计划中时常出现冲突,及时有效消解冲突,能提高整个供应链的协作效率,改善供应链上企业间的合作关系;反之,会降低供应链的运作效率,削弱供应链的竞争力。针对这类冲突问题,引入让步协商策略,在有限信息共享条件下,建立供应链产销协同计划冲突协商模型;设计具有历史提议回顾特点的协商流程;通过文化基因算法,产生反提议生成策略;通过算例验证文化基因算法及冲突协商模型的有效性。     

Modeling of a Fuzzy Expert System for Choosing an Appropriate Supply Chain Collaboration Strategy

Nowadays, there has been a great interest for business enterprises to work together or collaborate in the supply chain. It is thus possible for them to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. However, determining the right collaboration strategy is not an easy task. Namely, there are several factors that need to be considered at the same time. In this regard, an expert system based on fuzzy rules is proposed to choose an appropriate collaboration strategy for a given supply chain. To this end, firstly, the factors that are significant for supply chain collaboration are extracted via an extensive review of literature. Then, a simulation model of a supply chain is constructed to reveal the performance of collaborative practices under various scenarios. Thereby, it is made possible to establish fuzzy rules for the expert system. Finally, feasibility and practicability of our proposed model is verified with an illustrative case.     

Close-optimal production and procurement policy for a X-network of added value using lexicographic linear goal programming

One of the main challenges of operation managers of firms is to setup feasible production and procurement plans. This is also the case of more complex structures such as supply chains. In almost all firms, specific tools like ERPs are used to support managers in their decision-making tasks. These tools manipulate huge amount of data such as the order backlog, or technical, marketing, suppliers and customers data. They work often based on the MRP principles and suggest production and procurement plans after a sequential procedure which begins by the material requirements calculation followed by the load balancing process. Very often, the load balancing is under the control of managers who try to take account of implicit constraints that cannot be modelled easily. This is a difficult and often risky task because the managers do not know what the best solution of the planning and procurement problem is. In other words, there is a lack of a kind of “the best feasible production and procurement target”. The main idea of this article is to suggest a complementary method for planning based on a specific mathematical programming approach which provides plans considering simultaneously all material and capacity constraints over the entire planning horizon. These plans can be considered as that necessary closed optimal production and procurement target for a company or a supply chain which uses an MRP-based planning tool. The lexicographic linear goal programming provides a suitable multi-criteria modelling paradigm for the production and procurement planning problems, especially for the supply chains. The study is focused on a common supply chain structure formed by several suppliers on one side and several customers on the other, connected together by a business-to-business relationship over a rolling horizon. The structure is modelled thanks to the Petri Nets supporting the definition of the global problem model. The model is then applied to a study case extracting from the car assembly industry.     

Challenges in business systems integration

Four main frameworks for intercompany relationships (SCOR, CPFR, ISA95 and OAG) are discussed and compared. The link between the frameworks and different supply chain integration applications such as ERP, CRM and VMI are pictured. Finally the state-of-the-art, future state and challenges of the supply chain integration applications are discussed. It is concluded that the main challenge with respect to frameworks supporting business systems integration is to extend them with implementation functionality to better support business system application development. An example of this is customer requirement fulfillment processes such as product development and order fulfillment. Not only do they cross the borders of the company's departments (sales, logistics, purchasing, etc) but also various companies in the supply chain. In spite of this development, business integration across systems and borders are still not matured and to a large extend based on human interaction.     

On-demand e-supply chain integration: A multi-agent constraint-based approach

With e-business emerging as a key enabler to drive supply chains, the focus of supply chain management has been shifted from production efficiency to customer-driven and partnership synchronization approaches. This strategic shift depends on the match between the demands and offerings that deliver the services. To achieve this, we need to coordinate the flow of information among the services, and link their business processes under various constraints. Existing approaches to this problem have relied on complete information of services and resources, and have failed to adequately address the dynamics and uncertainties of the operating environments. The real-world situation is complicated as a result of undetermined requirements of services involved in the chain, unpredictable solutions contributed by service providers, and dynamic selection and aggregation of solutions to services. This paper examines an agent-mediated approach to on-demand e-business supply chain integration. Each agent works as a service broker, exploring individual service decisions as well as interacting with each other for achieving compatibility and coherence among the decisions of all services. Based on the framework, a prototype has been implemented with simulated experiments highlighting the effectiveness of the approach.     

Study of the performance of multi-behaviour agents for supply chain planning

In today's industrial context, competitiveness is closely associated to supply chain performance. Coordination between business units is essential to increase this performance, in order to produce and deliver products on time to customers, at a competitive price. While planning systems usually follow a single straightforward production planning process, this paper proposes that partners adapt together their local planning process (i.e. planning behaviours) to the different situations met in the supply chain environment. Because each partner can choose different behaviour and all behaviours will have an impact on the overall performance, it is difficult to know which is preferable for each partner to increase their performance. Using agent-based technology, simulation experiments have been undertaken to verify if multi-behaviour planning agents who can change planning behaviours to adapt to their environment can increase supply chain performance. These agents have been implemented in an agent-based planning platform, using a case study illustrating a lumber supply chain. The performance analysis shows that advanced planning systems can take advantage of using multiple planning processes, because of the dynamic context of supply chains.     

基于敏捷供应链的协同商务过程管理与控制系统

协同商务过程管理与控制系统是基于工作流思想和技术的一种新的应用模式。介绍了工作流技术;分析敏捷供应链中协同商务过程的特征,并建立了其模型;讨论商务过程的管理与控制模式,构建了基于敏捷供应链的协同商务过程管理与控制系统模型,并分析了其实现技术。     

Generating a causal model of supply chain collaboration using the fuzzy DEMATEL technique

Supply chain collaboration is usually adopted by manufacturers as a strategic measure to increase overall supply chain performance. However, such collaborations arguably have the highest failure record of the various supply chain management practices that are currently being applied. Part of the problem has been the uncertain external environment, an overreliance on technology, and lack of trust among partners. Based on Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) and Relational Exchange Theory (RET), it is clear that environment, asset specificity, and trust are key determinants for the success of collaborations among firms. However, the fuzziness of the interdependency among these determinants and their influences on supply chain collaborative processes still remains unknown. This study thus focuses on Taiwanese manufacturing firms as an example case, and empirically probes the relationships among these dimensions and their effects on these processes. To accommodate the vagueness of human opinions, the fuzzy Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) technique is applied to examine this issue, and to produce a causal relations map. This study also provides a discussion and insights for supply chain practitioners.     

Supporting agile supply chains using a service-oriented shop floor

The globalized nature of current business environments led to the emergence of new networked enterprise organizational paradigms (supply chains, extended enterprises, virtual enterprises, collaborative networks, etc.) to meet changing requirements and tackle profitable but volatile opportunities overall agility is required.Eventually the shop floor will have to react and accommodate (re)adjustments in the supply chain making it an important piece in the competitiveness puzzle. So far, the research focus has been in high level aspects of supply chain management and the integration of shop floor activities in the process has been left relatively unattended.However, shop floor data is increasingly required in business tools that support decision making. In this context, failing to support agility at shop floor level can compromise the agility of the supply chain.Recent developments in networked information technologies and embedded devices allow enabling intelligence in shop floor rendering it an active and live entity that further enhances the dynamics of the supply chain.The goal of the present work, supported by an implemented test case in the assembly domain, is to demonstrate how one is able to seamless integrate the shop floor with external tools and achieve a highly reconfigurable environment that adapts to changing production requirements and disturbances using service-oriented technology.     

The physics of e-commerce supply chains

The Internet is rapidly improving our ability to support information flows across global supply chains. However, the business impact of these IT investments depends not just on the information flows supported by such systems, but also on other non-information related characteristics of the supply chain. It is the complex interplay among these characteristics that results in business performance, or lack thereof. In order to better understand the business impact of IT investments in the supply chain, we are motivated to examine the ‘physics’ of supply chain structures. By physics, we mean the performance patterns inherent in its informational and physical characteristics. Using the systems dynamics methodology, we model basic information and physical characteristics of supply chains and examine their impact on some common measures of performance. Experiments with the models suggest that, in addition to information delays, physical delays also have a major impact on the stability of supply chains, as well as on operating cost. Moreover, the tradeoff between chain stability and responsiveness appears to be nonlinear, suggesting that a small compromise in responsiveness may yield larger gains in stability. Multi-tier chains appear to be less ‘stiff’ in responding to demand fluctuations, implying that their information systems must be specifically designed to overcome this structural tendency. These results have managerial implications in terms of designing the information and physical structure of a supply chain as well as for its operation.