Past Issues

Studies in Informatics and Control
Vol. 11, No. 3, 2002

Managing Innovation in e-Business Based Supply Chain Structures: Role of Demo Models

S. Wadhwa, Jose John, A. Gandhi
Abstract

There are tremendous opportunities for adopting best practice e-Business models or by innovating new models for evolving new supply chain structures. These can be best exploited by re-engineering the enterprises towards new value propositions offered by e-Business technologies. In our view one of the key dimensions that can offer immense innovation opportunities is the decision-information synchronization (DIS) perspective amongst the various chain members in an e-Business environment. One of the challenges faced by the management is to explore several possibilities inspired by the DIS thinking, This paper introduces such possibilities and suggests the use of demo simulation models to show the dynamic nature of the supply chains under several DIS possibilities. Such models inspire confidence amongst the managers to gain more knowledge about the supply chain dynamics. They allow platforms to study the value of infonnation and decision sharing amongst the various autonomous chain members. The synchronization between the need for common information and the autonomous decision making is crucial for the effectiveness of the supply chains. It is proposed that DIS thinking promotes the development of innovative structures in supply chains ranging from a conventional autonomous chain with no sharing of information to totally integrated chains with integrated decisions amongst the chain members. Since information is costly and not all chain members (even in e-Business environments) wish to share information in a timely and complete manner (due to psychological, competitive or other business reasons), it becomes important to develop and use demo models that help alleviate such inhibitions. This is is done by showing the potential benefits from timely and complete sharing of information and decisions. This paper presents some of our ongoing research efforts in this direction of developing DIS motivated demo models for promoting managerial innovations amongst the supply chain structures.

Keywords

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