Integrating information resources in supply chains: A simulation analysis of delivery performance and resource utilization

Substantial economic and technological changes have altered the business environment and changed business models. Widespread use of electronic and communication technology has opened traditional markets to global and domestic competitions. Accessing information in a timely manner and managing relationships between organizations has become a source of competitive advantage for businesses and supply chains. Successful supply chain management relies on transparency and real time accessibility to information that require effective integration of information resources. Internet technology has facilitated the flow of business data by creating a common protocol and infrastructure for communications. This technology developed for providing information to human users and facilitated machine interoperability and interpretability of the Web contents. This interoperability is the major goal for a number of protocols, technologies, and initiatives. Extensible Markup Language (XML) provides the basic capability to interpret the Web contents and creates a base for a series of languages and protocols such as Web Services. These technologies and protocols build steps toward information integration over the Web. The Semantic Web Technologies promise integrating resources based on their semantics. Integrating information resources is currently limited to the networks of businesses that design their systems and bridge them based on a common protocol. Integration of resources without a common schema enables existing systems to integrate their data sources and make them available to other businesses. Research on the effect of implementing these technologies for integrating information resources on supply chain performance, particularly on small and mid-size businesses, is scant. Research on the commercial trucking industry and interviewing managers provided insight about the level of information integration and business rules in the industry. A simulation experiment designed using current business rules and alternative changes with technologies that integrate information resources. This study simulated a market segment in which both large trucking companies, with advanced information system infrastructures, and small companies, including individual truckers, compete. The study concluded that integrating information resources and their availability through the Web could significantly improve delivery performance of the commercial trucking industry as a whole in terms of on-time delivery fulfillments, as well as supporting the potential for reducing the number of trucks and increasing their utilization to maintain service levels