A01 chaf6542 06 se fm indd

IS infrastructure for supply chain management

Information systems need to deliver 

supply chain visibility

 to different parties who need to 

access the supply chain information of an organisation, whether they be employees, suppli‑

ers, logistics service providers or customers. Users need to be able to personalise their view 

of the information according to their needs – customers want to see the status of their order, 

suppliers want to access the organisation’s database to know when their customer is next 

likely to place a major order. Security is also important – if a company has differential pric‑

ing, it will not want customers to see price differences.

These requirements for delivering supply chain information imply the need for an inte‑

grated supply chain database with different personalised views for different parties. A typical 

integrated information systems infrastructure for delivering supply chain management is 

illustrated in Figure 6.14. It can be seen that applications can be divided into those for plan‑

ning the supply chain and those to execute the supply chain processes. Case studies 6.1 and 

6.2 are both good examples of how new technologies are used to collect demand data and 

transfer data between different databases and applications. A key feature of a modern supply 

chain infrastructure is the use of a central operational database that enables information to 

be shared between supply chain processes and applications. This operational database is usu‑

ally part of an enterprise resource planning system such as SAP, Baan or Prism and is usually 

purchased with the applications for supply chain planning and execution. Some of the plan‑

ning applications such as network simulation and optimisation are more likely to be supplied 

by separate software suppliers. The use of Internet technologies to deliver information over