Impact Ofict on Scm

On Impact of ICT on Supply Chain and It's Management

Jaroslav Jandoš, Libor Gála

Department of Information Technologies Prague University of Economics W.Churchill Sqr. 4 130 67 Prague 3 e-mail: jandos@vse.cz, gala@vse.cz

Keywords: supply chain, supply chain management, ICT, performance metrics Abstract: This paper aims to show how modern ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) - including ICT supported disciplines Electronic Commerce and Electronic Business - influence Supply Chain and it's management.

1. Introduction

By Supply Chain (SC) we understand "network of organizations that are involved, trough upstream and downstream linkages, in the different processes and activities that produce value in the form of products and services in the hands of (ultimate) customer" [6]. Modern SC in typically • inter - organizational, i.e. includes various (different) organizations • extended, i.e. includes not only customers and suppliers, but also customers's customers and supplier's suppliers • instead of linear character (therefore "chain') of traditional SC is more of network (or web) therefore " supply network". We further use the term SC in sense of Supply Network. Given organization can be part of several SC. Participation in given SC is, for it's participants,of strategic importance. Supply chain management (SCM) can be defined as " the task of integrating organizational units along SC and coordinating flows (materials, information, financial) in order to fulfil (ultimate) customer demands with the aim of improving competitiveness of SC as a whole [6]". From SCM definition the following aspects can be deduced • strategic target of SCM is to support competitiveness of SC by (excellent) fulfilment of customer demand, i.e. by excellent customer service • competitiveness concerns the whole SC, not only individual organizations which are parts of SC. Therefore SC should be managed as a whole. On the market there is competition between (whole) Supply...