Agile Information Systems for Mastering Supply Chain Uncertainty
Read this chapter. The main objective of this reading is to identify the different strategies and characteristics of supply chains. Pay attention to Figure 1 and the explanation for each. What types of companies do you think use Agile supply chains which deal with evolving and highly innovative products?
Requirements for information systems in agile supply chains
This
section focuses on the requirements for information systems in agile
supply chains. Therefore, it applies the concept of mass customisation
to information systems.
In agile supply chains, it must be
possible to easily set-up, connect and disconnect information systems
needed to achieve a specific value proposition. It must be possible to
design and instantiate new or adjusted supply chain configurations
rapidly and at low costs. The main challenge in achieving this is to
combine flexible customization with efficient standardization in the
design and implementation of the logistics information systems
introduced above. Mass customization is broadly advocated as a core
approach to balance these seemingly contradictory notions. It is a modular strategy that is intended
to accomplish efficiency by reusing standardized components, while
achieving distinctiveness through customer-specific assembly of modules. Mass-customisation
builds on four operational capabilities: i) common building blocks that
can be reused maximally, ii) unified architecture providing a structure
of the defined components that constrain possible variants, iii) a
technical platform for seamless integration of the building blocks, and
iv) configuration tools that support the elicitation of customer
requirements while considering the possible options.
ICT
mass customisation combines the seemingly contradictory notions of
efficient standard software and flexible customised software. It enables customer-specific assembly of information
systems from a repository of standard components. As such,
mass-customisable ICT can be positioned in the middle of a continuum of
standard packaged software and customised software. Software developers
pre-design and realise modules based on forecasted functionality.
Customers get their own ICT configuration, but constrained by the range
of available components, as defined in reference models for the
configuration of systems. These components could be supplied by
different software vendors, which allows for using best-of-breed
solutions in selecting and designing systems.
Following the
identified requirements for mass customisation systems, the requirements
for mass-customisable information systems are :
Generic information model: like product architectures in a mass
customisation approach, information models should be set up as generic
models, which define the class of architectures that can be assembled.
Additional complexity of generic information models is that they
comprise different interrelated model types including business process
models, product models, semantic data models and ontologies, and
information integration standards, e.g. eBusiness messages, web service
standards, RFID protocols, and coding standards.
Modular
software: modules in an ICT mass customisation approach must be
application-independent services, in which policy, input and output
data, and interfaces are well defined (product modularity). They should
not impose technical constraints on development of other modules
(process modularity). Furthermore, it should be easy to replace a
software module of provider A by a module of provider B, and it must be
possible to combine modules of different vendors (network modularity).
Information integration platform: a software platform is required that
the modules can easily be plugged into, that can enact the execution of
modules upon the occurrence of external or internal events, and that
enables the exchange of information between the modules. Contrary to
mass-customisable products, this platform has a virtual nature. It is
not tied to one place. Especially internet-based techniques enable
integration of modules that are located all over the world.
Configuration support: configuration of ICT elicits the required
functionality of specific instantiations of information systems building
upon a generic information model. Since information systems are
composed of many interacting components, ICT configuration must be done
for different levels of abstraction and different types of subsystems.
Consequently, configuring information systems includes many partial
configuration tasks that occur at different moments by different people.
The dependencies between these different tasks must be well
coordinated.
Component availability: the availability of
software modules that, together, provide the desired functionality,
including a specification of the interfaces. A specific characteristic
of ICT components is again the virtual nature. This implies that
components can be duplicated very quickly and at a negligible cost. On
the other hand, availability is dependent on service providers, because
users have access to the modules via an often complex information
infrastructure.