The recent advancement of information technology has helped the partners of supply chains to share information with each other. But the frequently raised question is about the benefits that can be gained through such sharing of information. In the supply chain literature, different models have been developed in recent times to study the value of information sharing. In this paper, the models dealing with benefits accrued due to information sharing between the partners of a supply chain have been reviewed and classified. An effort has also been made to identify the critical issues and the scope for future research.
Globalization
of businesses has increased competition, awareness of customers,
and their demand for timely and value added services. As a
result, a company needs more innovative methods and techniques
for managing its supply chain. Business environment is compelling
producers, distributors, and raw material suppliers to coordinate
their operations to have efficient and effective supply chains.
Different entities of the supply chain may be owned by one
individual / organization which is known as centralized supply
chain and on the other hand, in some cases, different individual
/ organization controls the different entities of the supply
chain which is called as decentralized supply chain. Most
supply chains of today belong to the latter category. Thomas
and Griffin (1996) have mentioned that supply chain management
(SCM) strategy is to coordinate the various organizations'
objectives in order to increase the performance of the entire
supply chain in terms of cost, delivery time, customer service,
etc. Performance of supply chain management depends to a large
extent on the coordination between the different members of
the supply chain. Therefore, one of the major challenges of
supply chain management is the development of effective coordination
mechanism between the various entities of supply chain. But
coordination between entities of supply chain without sharing
of information is hard to achieve.
Cooper,
Lambert and Pagh (1997) have mentioned that information systems
in the supply chain must be able to track and communicate
production and customer requirements at different levels in
the supply chain. Without coordination and subsequent information
sharing, improvement at one level of the supply chain may
be lost due to inefficiencies at another level. As for example,
reducing inventory at one level may not be beneficial if it
is accumulated in any succeeding stage. To avoid this undesirable
situation, a considerable amount of supply chain management
literature is devoted to the understanding of the value of
information in achieving coordination between the different
members of the supply chain. |
