Page 123 - DMGT523_LOGISTICS_AND_SUPPLY_CHAIN_MANAGEMENT

Logistics and Supply Chain Management

Notes procurement, marketing, fulfilment, planning, product development, and customer care.
While many of the participating firms offer e-business services, through TradeMatrix they
are also providing the hardware and software infrastructure to allow other firms to initiate
e-business activities. TradeMatrix provides the complete suite of software, tools, and
services to facilitate design and launch of an electronic marketplace and improve trading
with supply chain partners. The establishment of an online marketplace like TradeMatrix
requires a combination of shared technology services and e-marketplace management.
Shared technology services provide a set of guidelines and standards to facilitate
applications design, deployment, runtime operations, and monitoring. The e-marketplace
management provides the managerial and technical expertise for system hosting, catalogue
management, personalization, billing, profile management, relationship management
and services management.
Sun Microsystems and IBM applied the TradeMatrix concept to their own supply chains.
Sun operates in a fabless (no internal component manufacturing) environment with contract
manufacturers who produce its electronic components. With this model, Sun must oversee
and coordinate the business processes of several component suppliers, their contract
manufacturers, and third-party logistics providers. ‘The system has allowed Sun to address
some of its most critical business challenges, including large fluctuations in forecasted
product mix, long product lead times through the supply chain, long collaborative planning
lead times with suppliers, and balancing inventory turns with customer satisfaction. IBM
Personal Systems Group focused its efforts on reducing channel inventory while enhancing
service levels. IBM enhanced communications with distribution channel partners by using
POS data provided using EDI along with other data to create a recommended forecast. The
channel partners collaboratively edit the forecast and provide it back to IBM planners. The
resulting forecasts then form the input to an integrated planning process for supply/
demand matching and allocation. The collaboration reports increased customer service
levels to near 100 percent availability, reduced channel inventory by 80 percent, and
reduced order scheduling time from 10 to 3 days.
Source: www.TradeMatrix.com and www.i2.com/marketspaceslcasasestudies/index.hIm

Self Assessment

Fill in the blanks:
1. …………………… is characterized by an evaluative, tactical, intermediate-term focus that
evaluates past performance and identifies alternatives.
2. The …………………… strategic planning level information must reflect lower-level data
collection and convert this into a wide range of business planning and decision-making
information.

6.2 Principles of Logistics Information

Logistics information systems must incorporate six principles to meet management information
needs and adequately support enterprise planning and operations.

Availability

First, logistics information must be readily and consistently available. Examples of information
required include order and inventory status. While enterprises may have substantial data
regarding logistics activities, these data are often paper-based or very difficult to retrieve from
computer systems. Rapid availability is necessary to respond to customers and improve

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