Essentials for Information Coordination in Supply Chain

Asian Social Science

October, 2008

Essentials for Information Coordination in Supply Chain Systems
Qing Zhang
School of Business Administration, South Central University for Nationalities
Wuhan 430074, China
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Abstract
The supply chain plays an essential role for modern companies to retain their competitive advantages in today 's business environments. As supply chain members are often separate and independent economic entities, a key issue in supply chain management is to develop mechanisms that can align their objectives and coordinate their activities so as to optimize system performance. Information is a keyword in the coordination. In this paper, we provide a review of coordination of operational information in supply chain which is classified into information types, their impact on supply chain performance, and the policy of information sharing. Then the essentials for information coordination are indicated. In the end, future research direction is pointed out.
Keywords: Coordination, Supply chain management, Operational information, Production planning and inventory control 1. Introduction
Supply chain management (SCM) has become an important management paradigm. It is to apply a total systems approach to managing the entire flow of information, materials, and services in fulfilling a customer demand (Chase and
Richard, 1998). Several seminal studies have identified the problems caused by a lack of coordination, and to what extent competitive advantage can be gained from a seamless supply chain (Forrester, 1961; Lee et al., 1997, pp.546-558;
Chen et al., 2000, pp.436-443). Supply chain coordination leads to increased information flows, reduced uncertainty, and a more profitable supply chain .It has become a critical success factor for SCM and effectively improving the performance of organizations in various industries.
From an operational perspective, SCM is to effectively

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