Supply Chain Management în Electronic Businesses

INTRODUCTION

All around us, due to advancing technology, evolve faster than ever before. Nothing has rocked the way in which companies do business as the emergence of the Internet.

Market forces, conducted by the speed of communications that is facilitated by electronic networks, are making product life cycles shorter and shorter. Customer needs and tastes change rapidly. Product inventories are always in danger of becoming obsolete.

To counter this tendency, organizations are increasing their expertise and efficiencies in the process of designing and producing new products and in the process of delivering and servicing existing products. Companies that develop higher skill levels in these areas are clearly better able to ride the waves of change and profit from developments in the markets they serve.

The processes involved in the designing, building, and delivering of products to the customers that need them have come to be collectively referred to as supply chain management.

Electronic management of business supply chains coordinates all business partners in the supply chain over electronic networks and gives all parties an up-to-the-minute overview of all available inventories.

Due to the numerous challenges and difficulties that firms face in present's rapidly changing business environment, establishing an effective supply chain is becoming a core competency for many organisations. Effective supply chain management is no longer an option; it is a requirement for survival. Companies within the supply chain must reach new levels of communication and cooperation. Rather than treating each other as adversaries and attempting to gain competitive advantages at the expense of each other, companies with effective supply chain strategies are able to break the traditional paradigms. To survive in today’s competitive business climate, organizations must take a broad view of their product and/or service flow. They must consider that the opportunities for system optimization offer much greater potential to bottom-line business results than can be obtained from minor efficiency improvements that stem from the more traditional approach to local business management. Supply chain management allows a much more proactive approach to the typical issues facing businesses in the 2000s. It allows managers the chance to see the impact of local decisions within any element of the entire supply chain on the global results of that chain. Conversely, not practicing these supply chain philosophies and not assuming this global view will render those companies noncompetitive. Those who practice effective supply chain management techniques will surpass and ultimately defeat those who do not.

Companies must increasingly recognize the need to explore supply chain management in order to maximize the value being added along the supply chain. The need for implementing SCM is more apparent and pressing than it has ever been. And while some business ventures do recognize and approach this need, they should certainly be aware of some of the problems associated with the implementation of SCM. In order to deal with the accompanying challenges, organisations must embrace IT, e-business, and the Internet that allow increasingly better opportunities for assisting with SCM and improving business performance.

Business can do more now with electronic technology than could even be imagined only a few years ago. And, the rate of development promises to increase. Certainly, those tools will make managing a complex supply chain ever more possible. However, the danger exists that business leaders will assume that the tools in and of themselves will provide all the results that they seek.

This is simply not true. The technology, no matter how advanced it will become, will forever be only a tool and will not accomplish the synchronization of the supply chain without significant behavioral change throughout every element of the system. How elements of the chain work with each other through real-time communication and coordination will make the difference. Technology is only a tool. How we use that technology to help coordinate the efforts of the entire supply chain will determine its value.

This project has the aim to approach the topic of supply chain management as one of central importance for the successful implementation of business today and to explore how electronic businesses are changing supply chain management with reference to its past trends, present operations and future techniques. Since many organizations employing SCM have continously confronted problems with its realization, numerous keys to these problems have been offered. These include the sharing of information with parties along the supply chain as well as the utilization of advances in information technology. In fact, the importance of in-depth knowledge of different e-business models and the Internet as tools of transforming SCM has been suggested.

This project will not only focus on the recognition of the technological breakthroughs, but also the changes that have taken place with the industry after the introduction of e-Business concepts into supply chain management.

CHAPTER I

1. SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

1.1. Supply Chain Management – the concept

Supply Chain Management (SCM) was once a dream, a concept more than a reality, since there were many necessary components of supply chain management that could not be fully achieved. A key barrier to full supply chain management was the cost of communicating with and coordinating among the many independent suppliers in each supply chain. An entire supply chain stretches from the creation of raw materials to the delivery of the finished consumer goods. Because firms are involved in many,many supply chains, active supply chain management is practical only for items essential to the firm’s market success.

Managers are increasingly interested in actively managing their supply chains because of three environmental changes. First, technology has been developed to simplify communication between members of the supply chain.Second, new management paradigms have developed that are being widely shared among supply chain members so that it is simpler for these managers

to coordinate their efforts. Third, the development of a highly trained workforce allows employees at each stage of the supply chain to assume responsibility and the authority necessary to quickly make decisions and take actions required to coordinate the supply chain.