Improving service management in supply chains

Business associates work in groups forming networks in order to satisfy customer requirements with best possible price-quality ratio. In order to achieve effective coupling between provided services and specialization of services coordination between partners is needed. Partners in supply chains have mutual agreements of the service level (SLA), which satisfies requirements of customers and service providers in the network. Our goal is to develop methods and tools for service-oriented software development emphasizing business aspects and quality of software structure. We design a service map for service workflow definitions, utilize Service Level Agreement (SLA) based on ITIL, and clarify protocol requirements using distributed coordination in the SOA environment. We propose a service management pattern for business process negotiations in supply chains. Different service workflow structures are analyzed and their usability in different kind of supply chains is evaluated. We shortly validate our method with experimental results achieved in the Service-Oriented Software Engineering (SOSE) -project in co-operation With ICT companies and their customers in electricity and telecommunication domains in Finland.