Collaboration in steel product industry - Developing order-delivery process in manufacturing network

Globalization and rapid technological evolution has significantly increased the need for companies to develop collaboration in manufacturing. This new situation in industrial competition emphasizes the importance of scale, cost, quality and time, based on customer-oriented operation modes. There are limited possibilities for individual companies to improve their competitiveness. The management of entire company networks and the collaboration between companies in network have become to a strategic task for them. The need of improving supply chain management capability of companies is becoming increasingly recognized. As companies continuously seek to provide their products and services to customer faster, cheaper, and better than the competitors, they have come to realize that they cannot do it alone, rather in order to succeed, they must work on a cooperative basis with the best companies in their supply chains. One of the main bottlenecks currently is that knowledge and information exists, but it cannot be utilized effectively. This in proportion means waste of resources into non-value adding activities. The purpose of this paper is to present the steel product industry network in Raahe region. It is done in terms of its activities and modes of supply chain operations. The critical issues and major drawbacks of supply chain are identified and illustrated by following one sample product process (order-delivery process) through its value chain. Study will give some answers how to streamline operations, remove unnecessary intermediate stages and activities, and facilitate uninterrupted material flow demands considerable integration within the value chain. In this paper, we also point out how agent technology can be applied to support collaboration in information sharing, operation cooperation, and dynamic supply chain configuration. Practical key objectives of the network's supply chain activities are defined as openness and transparency and the efficient communication in order to achieve these, quick and accurate deliveries, continuous cost reduction, and improvement of potential of the companies.