An arrangement where companies form a web of close relationships and work together as a system that delivers the right customized product and expected service at the right quality in a coordinated manner and are responsive and adaptable to changes in the environment ( Makatsoris et al., 2004b ).
Published in Chapter:
Human-Centric E-Business
H.D. Richards (MAPS and Orion Logic Ltd, UK), Harris Charalampos Makatsoris (Brunel University, UK & Orion Logic Ltd, UK), and Yoon Seok Chang (Korea Aerospace University School of Air Transport, Transportation and Logistics, Korea)
Copyright: © 2009
|Pages: 7
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-026-4.ch280
Abstract
This article studies the transformation processes occurring in industry and business at large. It deals with the social and economic challenges, and explores the new concepts arising from an unprecedented technology revolution underpinned by advances and innovation in ICT. In addition it sets the scene for a new era of industrial capitalism. Over the last decade of the twentieth century, a large number of companies faced the future with trepidation while others lacked a good strategy (Possl, 1991; Kidd, 1994; Ashkenas, 1997). Many changes had taken place including Just In Time (JIT) manufacturing and logistics, lean manufacturing (Womack, Jones, & Roos, 1990), shorter product lifecycles (Davenport, 1993), more intelligent approaches to IT (Drucker, 1992; MacIntosh, 1994; Nonaka, 1998), and costing (Wilson, 1995; Ansari, Bell, & the CAM-I Target Cost Core Group, 1997), but making money was becoming more and more difficult. It was a time and climate for dramatic new approaches (Warnecke, 1993; Drucker, 1994; Goldman, Nagel, & Preiss, 1995) with greater agility. New technologies were replacing old at a faster rate, and information technology provided better management and control vision, albeit on a limited local scale (Arguello, 1994; Leachman, Benson, Lui, & Raar, 1996; Makatsoris, Leach, & Richards, 1996). Also, push to pull manufacturing (Mertins, 1996) distinctly changed the approach to customers and service, which increased competitive and economic pressures resulted from the global reach of customers, manufacturers, and service providers keen to exploit the wealth of opportunities in both global markets and differences in worldwide regional markets (Bitran, Bassetti, & Romano. 2003). Even players only operating in local markets (Bologni, Gozzi, & Toschi, 1996; Zabel, Weber, & Steinlechner, 2000; Bonfatti & Monari, 2004) could not resist the tide of change. As a result many companies and economies (Hutton, 1995) were in a state of upheaval, and as a consequence some fell by the wayside. This was a climate in which there was an uncertain outcome, and it was into this melting pot that the Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW) were to produce an environment for a much-needed revolutionary change in the industrial approach. Later, broadband for landline and also wireless networking provided a much-needed speedier access.