Supply Chains and the Internet

Supply Chains and the Internet

The Internet has served to accelerate and make more transparent Supply Chain Management, and has also made it possible to measure performance more accurately than ever before. Specifically enabling greater knowledge networks, the Internet is making it possible for suppliers to collaborate closer than before. Examples of the benefits of this include the Toyota Production Systems (TPS) and the intensive level of supplier collaboration and coordination that is present in that system, which is turning knowledge into the primary differentiator (Dyer, Nobeoka, 2000). The Internet is also making supply chain sensing of demand signals and the ability to be more responsive to customer demands possible. The emergence of Demand Driven Supply Networks (DDSN) (Crampton-Thomas, 2006) is also made possible due to the Internet as well. Third, the emergence of more integrated business processes including those used new product development and introductions (Burkett, 2005) are more synchronized than ever before. On top of all this the Internet's role in supply chain management is making real-time analytics a reality (Sahay, Ranjan, 2008).

The Internet is going to continuing to act as a catalyst of innovation within supply chain management. The maturation of DDSN networks, the build-out of knowledge networks like TPS and the ability of suppliers to more accurately sense and respond to demand profitably will increase in precision. The use of real-time analytics will continue to grow rapidly in response to economic uncertainty, all leading to much greater supply chain intelligence and integration.