Information Management Systems in the Supply Chain

This chapter analyzes the importance of technologies as drivers for managing supply chains. The focus will be on the advantages of the use of information technologies to improve company's efficiency to be competitive and for the reduction of costs, improvement of operations, improvement of relationships with customers, suppliers and partners, shortening of delivering times, streamlining and optimization of business processes and operations. The use of new technologies contributes to improve efficiency of supply chain management: raw material suppliers, component manufacturers, finished product manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers. Technologies allow an integrated approach to planning, control and monitoring of product flows, from suppliers to end users. They aim at improve customer service at reduced overall costs, and leads to the development of important relationships with logistics providers, suppliers, and customers in order to enhance information exchange and the coordination of business activities, which are the key advantages of an integrated supply chain with the collaboration among all the participants in the value chain.

Information Systems Management in the Supply Chain in an Official Pharmaceutical Laboratory

The official pharmaceutical laboratories are strategic to the government in actions such as production of specific medicines (neglected medicines), research and development in new neglected molecules, public policies, price regulators etc.; especially to the health public in Brazilian population. In this sense, it is important that the information's system of the supply chain in this laboratory must have effectiveness of the activities and processes in the in order to cooperate efficiently and effectively with strategic planning. This work aim to analyze the quality of information's in the catalog of materials as a potential instrument to improvement the process purchase flows standardization, economy in purchases and essential information to the decision-makers. A methodology is proposal to the management in the information's system in purchase department with a standard in the quality catalogue in order to subsidize buyers regarding the detailed description of the purchase item and your specifications. The work conceptualizes and highlights the quality of information and its relevance by adding values to the services and products in supply chain of the official pharmaceutical lab. In this case study was shown details of problems from initial quality description to the final acquisition. In conclusion, to promote the management in the quality of the system information of the catalog of materials is necessary. Therefore, it's possible a better supply chain in public entity, even in an official pharmaceutical laboratory.

Analysis of the Possibility to Implement the Transics System and GBOX Assist Systems in a Selected Company

The aim of this chapter is to present the implementation of a fleet management systems (FMS) in selected transport companies. Transport management systems (TMS) / FMS evolve as a result of developing novel functionalities. The greatest challenge is TMS integration within the existing IT infrastructure of the company. Calculating return on investment (ROI) based on data analysis is important to select the optimum FMS. During the implementation of an FMS, of importance is to adapt the system to the business processes and train the employees in software usage. The architecture of an FMS affects the process of its implementation. Its implementation has many benefits and greatly improves company performance, including profitability.

Importance of Stakeholders Identification in Information Distribution Chain Management for Public Value Detection in Public Initiatives

The generation of public value by public organizations for citizens, in diverse social and economical topics, has been an object of analysis and strong debates in social sciences and administration and management sciences. New paradigms arisen recently, looking to satisfy economical and social agents' needs, but they hardly combat the lack of efficiency and mainly efficacy perception people have on public initiatives. The concept of public value can be defined as something that improves the life conditions for a community and whose benefits are appreciated by that community. Defining what is valuable for society, and considering this definition to establish the goals and the extent of a public initiative, is one of the toughest challenges in public administration. The results for a specific public initiative must the needs and expectations of society and, at the same time, observe the laws and regulations, and follow the experts' advice. The outcomes and expected value are conditioned by the capability to access information and by the way this information is transmitted to stakeholders. In this article, we propose a questionnaire to identify and map key stakeholders for a specific public initiative, in order to identify and understand the potential interested individuals and groups. This helps public officers to identify the best way to share information with those interested, and to evaluate the generation of public value. By using this questionnaire we were able to identify the key stakeholders for an exports encouragement program in a medium-size city in Brazil, whose vision must be considered to create public value for this public program.

Information Management for Network Transformation in Industrial Enterprises Associations

There is no doubt that nowadays internationalization is increasingly attractive for companies that want to become more competitive. However, many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) still are resource-constrained, lacking adequate information and facing problems to establish and manage relationships to operate in a sustainable way in international markets. Despite receiving some support from governments and from other institutional entities, these difficulties faced by SMEs call for a stronger support, which can be played by industrial enterprises associations (IEAs). This chapter brings the perspective of five different companies that are associated with IEAs. The main objective is to have their opinion about the role of IEAs as information managers and promoters of collaborations, mainly for internationalization processes. Another objective is to understand the acceptance by these companies regarding the use of collaborative platforms, managed by IEAs, for supporting their information and collaboration management activities.

A Telecommunications Approach in Systems for Effective Logistics and Supply Chains

Supply Chain Management (SCM) is a multidisciplinary field. The marketing and organizational aspects, aiming at competitiveness, productivity and efficiency commonly call more directly the attention of entrepreneurs, managers and organizations in this area. However, to achieve these goals, several support systems are needed especially Information Systems. Treated as a problem of Information Technology (IT), these systems do not attract much attention of the supply chain managers. Usually, these systems need to collect information stored in various databases in different companies and formats and geographically scattered. To be successful, information systems need the support of efficient telecommunication systems that enable this collection of information with the agility needed in the modern world of business. This chapter highlights the telecommunications systems that support SCM, its features and limitations. It also shows the technological environment, innovations in telecommunications that are already available and future technologies that could directly impact this type of management.

Information Management and Enterprise Resource Planning

Information technology has become one of the great advantages of modern enterprises, especially assisting in the optimization, information management and value creation. Among the reasons that prompted this change is the use of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), mainly adopted by large enterprises, since its adoption involves high investment and complexity for implementation, hindering its spread among smaller companies. Several studies have discussed the benefits generated by the adoption of ERP systems in enterprises as well as costs involved in the deployment process. The focus of this research is to present and discuss, through a conceptual approach, these different views on the costs and benefits of these systems, focusing on the different ways of generating value systems that provide information to businesses through ERP. The results showed that the discussion about the value of ERP for companies not yet consolidated and with increasing importance of information systems, ERP was regarded as a strategic tool in the search for greater competitiveness, transcending its value and importance for companies of their internal processes for a relationship of greater importance in business strategy.

Port Single Window and Logistics Single Window

A port is a confluence point for the various means of transport, responsible for the handling of the industries and other sort of companies goods located within their area of influence, which is called hinterland. The agile handling of ships and cargoes is a key factor for the competitiveness of a port, and the information management is ever more a strategic issue within this scope. Nevertheless, the different features of the various means of transport, the multiple players involved in port intermodality and logistics, as well as the cultural, technological and procedures simplification asymmetries of both the authorities representing the public interest inside the port and the private parties involved in the port business offer difficulties to the development of an agile and electronic integrated relational model. The “Single Window” philosophy implemented for the management of port information has been achieving very positive results, as far as maritime transport concerns (a sector with very specific characteristics), being absolutely imperative to apply this philosophy to all the means of transport and port logistics. The agility of information in intermodality is still an incipient reality, and the present project takes a careful look at this problematic. Our case-study is Port of Sines and we will make an analysis of the present situation and present a possible development to new conceptual developments in this area.

Information and Knowledge Management Perspective Contributions for Fashion Studies

In this chapter a focus on practical organizational aspects is considered: how to understand the development of concrete, objective processes such as logistics and supply chain management for fashion production and commercialization, with the help of information and knowledge management (IKM). For this study, some restrictive fundamentals are applied. The basic methodological aspect is to consider a “collection” as a line of artifacts of clothing produced according fashion concepts and propositions, resulting in several tangible products – as the clothing itself, complementary accessories, usage-oriented implementations – and intangible factors – such as image, communication messages, brand, artistic and cultural propositions, among many others (Sauro, 2009; Godart et al., 2015). It is a remarkably complex result, resulting from an intense creative process that receives internal and external influences, regarding organizational boundaries, which has to be limited to a focus for a particular study, as it is considered for this chapter. It is important also to mention that “collection” as referred here, approaches mainly clothing, although the term is also related to several other artifacts and products, such as shoes, jewelry, particular accessories, etc.

The Impact of ICT on Supply Chain Agility and Human Performance

Supply Chain (SC) has become a key element for companies to increase their productivity and competitiveness. However, the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) has also played an important role in the performance of these companies. Therefore, this chapter analyzes three latent variables in order to know the importance of ICT in both supply chain agility and the performance of human resources. Information was obtained from a questionnaire administered in the maquiladora industry in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. A structural equation model is generated to understand the relationships among latent variables, and three hypotheses are raised based on such interactions. Finally, results indicate that supply chain agility and the performance of human resources are directly linked to the use of information and communication technologies.