Title: Achieving agility in supply chains with the help of IT

Authors: T. Tuominen, N. Kitaygorodskaya, P. Helo

Addresses: Faculty of Technology, Department of Production, University of Vaasa, Finland. ' Faculty of Technology, Department of Production, University of Vaasa, Finland. ' Faculty of Technology, Department of Production, University of Vaasa, Finland

Abstract: Agility can be defined as an ability of an organisation to respond rapidly to changes in business environment. Given that today|s markets are characterised by constant change and unpredictability, organisational agility is gaining more and more importance as an essential prerequisite for sustainable competitive advantage. This paper discusses a role of Information Technology (IT) in achieving agility in supply chains and presents Agile Supply-Demand Networks (ASDN) software that helps to improve supply chain agility. An example provided to illustrate ASDN functionality shows that it is a powerful decision-support tool with diverse features for analysing supply-demand networks and, furthermore, allows the information spread along different functional departments and organisations in a meaningful way.

Keywords: supply chain management; SCM; agile supply chains; agility; flexibility; information technology; software.

DOI: 10.1504/IJECRM.2008.018809

International Journal of Electronic Customer Relationship Management, 2008 Vol.1 No.4, pp.374 - 389

Published online: 18 Jun 2008 *

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