Despite the importance to researchers, managers, and policy makers of how information technology (IT) contributes to organizational performance, there is uncertainty and debate about what we know and don't know. A review of the literature reveals that studies examining the association between information technology and organizational performance are divergent in how they conceptualize key constructs and their interrelationships. We develop a model of IT business value based on the resource-based view of the firm that integrates the various strands of research into a single framework. We apply the integrative model to synthesize what is known about IT business value and guide future research by developing propositions and suggesting a research agenda. A principal finding is that IT is valuable, but the extent and dimensions are dependent upon internal and external factors, including complementary organizational resources of the firm and its trading partners, as well as the competitive and macro environment. Our analysis provides a blueprint to guide future research and facilitate knowledge accumulation and creation concerning the organizational performance impacts of information technology.

Review: information technology and organizational performance: an integrative model of it business value

Publisher Summary This chapter reviews the supply chain coordination with contracts. Numerous supply chain models are discussed. In each model, the supply chain optimal actions are identified. The chapter extends the newsvendor model by allowing the retailer to choose the retail price in addition to the stocking quantity. Coordination is more complex in this setting because the incentives provided to align one action might cause distortions with the other action. The newsvendor model is also extended by allowing the retailer to exert costly effort to increase demand. Coordination is challenging because the retailer's effort is noncontractible—that is, the firms cannot write contracts based on the effort chosen. The chapter also discusses an infinite horizon stochastic demand model in which the retailer receives replenishments from a supplier after a constant lead time. Coordination requires that the retailer chooses a large basestock level.

Supply Chain Coordination with Contracts

Relationships between operational practices and performance among early adopters of green supply chain management practices in chinese manufacturing enterprises

Perspectives in supply chain risk management

The authors examine the implications of electronic shopping for consumers, retailers, and manufacturers. They assume that near-term technological developments will offer consumers unparalleled opportunities to locate and compare product offerings. They examine these advantages as a function of typical consumer goals and the types of products and services being sought and offer conclusions regarding consumer incentives and disincentives to purchase through interactive home shopping vis-à-vis traditional retail formats. The authors discuss implications for industry structure as they pertain to competition among retailers, competition among manufacturers, and retailer-manufacturer relationships.

Interactive home shopping: Consumer, retailer, and manufacturer incentives to participate in

As a result of imperfect production and inspection by suppliers, pilferage, and/or damage in transit, it is common that procurement orders may contain defective items. This article deals with a continuous-review inventory system with Poisson demand arrivals and constant resupply time. Items in resupply lots may not be of perfect quality. The operating characteristics of such a system are analyzed. For purposes of computational savings, an approximation scheme for the operating characteristics is presented. As a result of the approximation, the determination of the optimal ordering policy becomes much simpler. Extensive numerical tests suggest that the approximation scheme is very effective in giving the optimal or near-optimal ordering policies for such a system.

A continuous‐review inventory model with constant resupply time and defective items

Mixed model assembly alternatives for low-volume manufacturing: The case of the aerospace industry

In this paper we study a multi-echelon production/distribution system where the retail centers are allowed to replenish their inventory through a normal resupply channel or an expedited resupply channel by incurring an additional cost. An approximation scheme to find the operating characteristics of such systems is developed. The results of a numerical study indicate that significant cost savings can be achieved by using the policy suggested in this paper.

Order expedition in multi-echelon production/distribution systems

We develop a model and analyze reverse information sharing, a growing business practice in supply chain management in which a manufacturer shares information about supply with a retailer. We model the manufacturer as a production queue with finished goods warehouse, the retailer as an inventory location, and other customers as an external demand stream. In our model, the manufacturer allows the retailer access to inventory status at the warehouse. To take advantage of this new information, the retailer changes from a single-level base-stock policy to a two-level, state-dependent base-stock policy. We provide an exact method for computing performance and develop a procedure for evaluating optimal policy. We demonstrate the impact of the new policy on the manufacturer and other customers. Numerical computations lead to insights about the value of information to the retailer, and to guidelines for the manufacturer on sharing information.

https://faculty.washington.edu/kamran/docs/publications/reverseinfo.pdf

A Supply Chain Model with Reverse Information Exchange

In this paper, we consider an inventory system where orders may arrive in two shipments, that is, the first shipment of the order may contain only part of the items ordered, while the rest of the items arrive in a second shipment. However, the amount of the first shipment is random. Such situations arise when the supplier partially fills an order if it does not have sufficient stock to satisfy the amount demanded in an order, or when an arriving order contains defective items that can be returned to and replaced by the supplier at some later date. We present the operating characteristics and an approximate cost function for such a system. The properties of the approximate cost function are exploited to bound the search for the order quantity and reorder point that minimize it. Finally, the effectiveness of the approximate cost function in providing near-optimal solutions is evaluated by means of numerical examples.

Kamran Moinzadeh

Papers

A continuous‐review inventory model with constant resupply time and defective items

Mixed model assembly alternatives for low-volume manufacturing: The case of the aerospace industry

Order expedition in multi-echelon production/distribution systems

A Supply Chain Model with Reverse Information Exchange

Approximate Order Quantities and Reorder Points for Inventory Systems Where Orders Arrive in Two Shipments