Service-Oriented Information Systems Architectures In Supply Chain Management For Hybrid Value Bundles – A Structured Comparison

To avoid low-price strategies, companies are seeking intensively for new ways to distinguish themselves from the competition in a global market. A promising answer to this challenge is to extend existing offers from independent products and services to integrated problem-solving solutions for specific customer requirements. These integrated solutions are called product-service systems or hybrid value bundles. Following this differentiation strategy leads to an increasing dependence between the offering company and its suppliers. In contrast to a vendor-centric procurement strategy supply networks act as a major enabler in the provisioning of integrated solution offerings. This raises the question of how such supply networks can be modeled efficiently. Of particular interest is the question which information system architectures are capable for the requirements for hybrid value bundles in implementing strategic supply networks. In this paper a comparison framework for information system architectures is created. By means of a literature review key features and characteristics are identified for this comparative framework. Different information system architectures are examined to the suitability for modeling of strategic supply networks for hybrid value creation. This results in recommendations for the use of appropriate information system architectures for the identification, evaluation and selection of suppliers in the context of hybrid value creation in supply networks