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Chapter 1: The impact of the Information & Comunication Technology on the supply relationships

1.1 Introduction

The change of the economic and social scenes has deeply transformed the organizational and managerial systems.
The convergence, to leave from years ninety, between Information Technology (I.T.) and Telecommunicationses (TLC), the creation of Internet and its development re-enter between the elements that have meaningfully modified the way to face problematic managerial are old that new.
End from the half of the years the 80 enterprises have modified the processes operated to you under the push of the market and the new productive philosophies which "just in Time" exported all over the world from the Japanese industry.
Pursuing the objective to shorten the times of refueling, the logical new of the production processes melt on one review in the entire chain of business through the control of the entire process: from the suppliers to the customers.
It changes deeply the management optical: the effectiveness of the entire production process, becomes more important of the effectiveness of the single department.
The natural reaction is the tendency to the coordination of the production process through one more penetrating managerial integration and operating, eliminating, for how much possible one, the barriers between partner trade them.
The happened one of an enterprise in a market is, therefore, more and more conditioned from the competitiveness of the chain of the value in which it is position.
In other words, for how much an enterprise is efficient and effective in pursuing it objects to it of market, it could find in series difficulty to you if to mount must interact with inefficient, far subjects from the real requirements of market, importing inefficiencies and inability.
Therefore to manage the entire chain of the value of the company begins to become a true one and own necessity sets up also from a global market, in which the competition it grows in every field and where the happened one depends also on the ability to manage the entire chain of supply, production and commercialization.
With the concept of "supply chain management", introduced in the following paragraph, this phenomenon is wanted to be identified just.

1.2 From the logistics to the supply chain management

The evolutionary passages of the supply chain management can be analyze to you, rifaring also to one B.J subdivision us. The Londe², in three large ones is made.
The first phase was focused above all on the physical distribution of the finished products.
The period of reference goes from 1960 to 1975 approximately, in which the companies they considered the intermediate workings and the raw material like separate parts of theirs business.
The strong expansion of the market above all addressed the attention on the productive equilibrium between output and demands for the customer.
In a second phase the logistics assumed the role of one more and more important business function.
The management of the number of the warehouses the management of the supplyes, of the transports, became fundamental levers for an enterprise.
The importance of operating integration acknowledged, recorded, in fact, important investments for the informatization of the relative processes you to the flows of the goodses in escape.
The progressed companies more transformed their distribution of type "push", governed from the warehouse lyings, to one of type "pull", based on the demands for the customer.
In the third phase the attention is moved towards the management of the relations, the information and the physical flows beyond the borders of the enterprise.
The logistics is understanding with one valence the much widest one.
It is comprised as the management of the supplyes is tied to the management of supplyings and the programming of the production.
Along this channel that connects the production to the consumer multiple activities are carried out.
Every operator has tried in the time to render the most possible efficient own activity, while they remained to improve the interface activities.
This is the task of the management of the chain of the supply.
The attention mails around the management of the chain of the supply has grown more and more also thanks to happened of some initiatives for the restructure and integration of the logistic chain undertaken from important international groups in the course of years Ninety like Hewlett-Packard, Compaq or Toyota and Mitsubishi.
From these successes the competitiveness of the entire one network of which an enterprise has been put in evidence the effectiveness of the Supply Chain Management in improving it makes part, with benefits in terms of better relationships with the suppliers, distributors and customers, greater efficiency in the planning and manufacturing control, reduction of the supplyes, reduction of the times of delivery.
Therefore the integrated management of the logistics in the chain of supply (later on SCM) places the objective to optimize and sincronaze all the flows (is physicists who of information) that the enterprises pertaining to one cross all supply chain, from the first suppliers to "mount" until the final customer.
The areas of common management in the within of the SCM are typically those of supplyings, the warehouse and the production let alone those of the planning.
The management can happen through independent units of business coordination specifically created for this scope or from one net of connection between the been involved enterprises.
In the first case the structure will be more formal and rigid, in according to more elastic and agile.


Figure 1.1: Example of management and integration S.C.M.

To prescind from the adopted organizational structure and the degree of integration trades caught up they, the requirement to which the SCM answers remains that one to operate in more reactive way on the market trying, at the same time, to optimize the processes of the single enterprises, holding very present the means, the resources and the structures of the entire process, through co-ordinate actions.
Example model of Supply Chain, introduced in figure 1, the enterprises of the same row operate like an unit commercially integrated, are towards the suppliers of raw materials that towards the customers, managing in common are made of acquisition of the raw materials, of their working and distribution, let alone of the planning of the inner processes to the chain of the value.


  • Note 2: LONDE B.J., DAWSON L.M.(1969), Early development of physical distribution thought in Readings in physical distribution management, MacMillan Publishing Co, New York

 


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