Assessing the impact of e-business on supply chain dynamics

The Internet and related information and communication technologies (ICT) have recently enabled the cost-effective dissemination of information between disparate parties in the supply chain. New supply chain strategies, such as vendor managed inventory (VMI), collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment (CPFR) and efficient consumer response (ECR), have begun to exploit these new communication channels, principally at the retail end of the supply chain. The impact of the e-business enabled supply chain on manufacturers and materials/component suppliers is, however, less well understood and exploited. This paper is aimed at establishing e-business enabled supply chain models for quantifying the impact of ICT, in particular its effect on dynamic behaviour. The paper concludes that simple, yet robust, models enable considerable quantitative insights into the impact of e-business on supply chain dynamic behaviour prior to their implementation. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.