Title: Agile supply chain management: a services system approach

Authors: Paul Moynihan, Wei Dai

Addresses: School of Management and Information Systems, Victoria University, P.O. Box 14428, Melbourne City MC, Victoria 8001 Australia. ' School of Management and Information Systems, Victoria University, P.O. Box 14428, Melbourne City MC, Victoria 8001 Australia

Abstract: A perennial problem with running modern e-business systems (business done via the internet) is to manage supply chains with agility cost-effectively. To get more agility and efficiency, a higher degree of automation is required, as managing multiple supply chains can be labour intensive. This research intends a preliminary step towards automated supply chain agility, integration and optimisation, through a research prototype that models supply chain management scenarios. It will show the potential cost and time saving, as well as an optimisation strategy that could be delivered real-time to support both online consumers and suppliers. The prototype will use the service-oriented architecture (SOA) techniques coupled with knowledge-based system techniques to initialise, coordinate and monitor the supply chains.

Keywords: supply chain management; agile SCM; agile supply chains; knowledge-based systems; KBS; services integration; service-oriented architecture; SOA; optimisation; e-business; electronic business; supply chain integration; supply chain agility; supply chain optimisation; supply chain coordination; supply chain monitoring.

DOI: 10.1504/IJASM.2011.040519

International Journal of Agile Systems and Management, 2011 Vol.4 No.3, pp.280 - 300

Received: 31 Aug 2010
Accepted: 27 Jan 2011
Published online: 01 Jun 2011 *

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