The contribution of internet technology in achieving lean management within British automotive supply chains

Information and digital technologies of Industry 4.0 and Lean supply chain management: a systematic literature review

“…3) SL2.3, E-business web technologies in LSCMWeb technologies and the Internet have played a fundamental role in the development and improvement of interorganizational IDT for LSCM. They have done so by improving customer-supplier relationships by optimizing communications and information flows, thus playing a major role in technology integration of customer and supplier IDT infrastructure (internal/external integration with e-business web technologies) in LSCM(Homer and Thompson 2001;Williamson, Harrison, and Jordan 2004;Adamides et al 2008;Garcia-Sabater, Maheut, and Garcia-Sabater 2012). This customer-supplier integration can be observed in e-commerce(McMichael, MacKay, and Altmann 2000) and the IT-based Kanban systems (e-Kanban)(Wan and Chen 2008) that are another type of web technology for e-business.In addition, e-business web technology adoption has enabled coordination between supply chain members to be improved(Bruun and Mefford 2004;Coleman, Lyons, and Kehoe 2004;So and Sun 2010;So and Sun 2011;Garcia-Sabater, Maheut, and Garcia- Sabater 2012;Kovács and Kot 2017) by significantly reducing waiting times(Iijima, Komatsu, and Katoh 1996;So and Sun 2010;Garcia-Sabater, Maheut, and Garcia- Sabater 2012), inventory levels(Bruun and Mefford 2004;Coleman, Lyons, and Kehoe 2004;Kart, Moser, and Melliar-Smith 2010;Williamson, Harrison, and Jordan 2004;So and Sun 2010;So and Sun 2011) and operating costs(Coleman, Lyons, and Kehoe 2004;Williamson Harrison, and Jordan 2004;Kart, Moser, and Melliar-Smith 2010).…”

“…It has also enabled flexibility to be increased and reduced the risk of the bullwhip effect(Coleman, Lyons, and Kehoe 2004;So and Sun 2010;So and Sun 2011), thus improving service and, consequently, customer satisfaction(Williamson, Harrison, and Jordan 2004). E-commerce web technologies are used in sales, distribution, and customer service processes, where they integrate physical, information, and financial flows between supply chain members(McMichael, MacKay, and Altmann 2000;Homer and Thompson 2001). These technologies are tools that facilitate communication and coordination between supply chain members and allow inventory levels and distribution costs to be reduced, which means it is possible to cater for a large number of customers with the same resources and contribute to obtaining the benefits derived from scale economies(Kinsey 2000;Homer and Thompson 2001).The implementation of Internet-or web environment-based technologies in complex supply chain environments has enabled the adoption of Just-in-Time (JIT) principles and practices thanks to the creation of networks to manage information between supply chain members and general improvements to management-associated processes, with increases to delivery speed and reductions in customer waiting time(Iijima, Komatsu, and Katoh 1996;Missopoulos and Dergiades 2007).Electronic Kanban or e-Kanban have also been implemented in LSCM environments through web technologies and are used to control production and inventory flow(Kumar and Panneerselvam 2006;Wang and Sarker 2006).…”

The Strategic Importance of E-Commerce in Modern Supply Chain

“…Supply Chain Management (SCM) is becoming an increasingly strategic issue in manufacturing and service industries across the world. Major multinationals, for example motor manufacturers, are beginning to realise that real competitive advantage can be obtained by achieving improved effectiveness from local and international supply chain business relationships (Horner & Thompson, 2003). Further, it is becoming clearly demonstrated that the knowledge used by a firm to improve this efficiency is unique to a particular supply chain and is therefore very difficult for competitors to imitate (Robertson et al, 2001), in their own situations, thus developing a degree of sustainability in the competitive advantages created.…”