X.  POV - From the trenches

    A.  "No Brainers"

        1.  Procure office supplies electronically

        2.  Purchase production goods on a portal or exchange

        3.  Share engineering documents and other types of files over the WWW

        4.  Allow suppliers to track orders on an extranet

    B.  "Heavy Lifting"

        1.  Migrate electronic data interchange (EDI) transactions to the WWW

        2.  Use Product Data Management (PDM) software to manage product development from design
            through manufacturing and maintenance.

        3.  Engage in collaborative planning, forecasting, and replentishment (CPFR).  In
            other words, share forecasts with your suppliers to enable automatic product
            replentishment.

        4.  Take part in collaborative product design (CPD) - the joint development of new products with
            supply chain members

    C.  And now for the hard part

        1.  Sell these supply chain concepts to your suppliers

        2.  Wean your own employees from fax and phone

        3.  Prepare for bad information - at first

        4.  Fix the supply chain connection to the ERP

        5.  Defuse functional warfare

Check out David A. Hough's (Director of Supply Chain Management at PSC Group, LLC) white paper

"Supplicons™:  Ten Steps to Building a Collaborative Supply Chain"

and the Supply-Chain Council's

"SCOR Reference Model" brochure

by clicking on the graphics below

 

Best wishes from The EDIGuys !