3. Mediación cognitiva
3.1.4. Objeto de la percepción
Goldman et al. (1995) describe information systems as the central, critical and fundamental part of any change to agility. This creates a digital supply chain (Hines, 2001) or what many authors chose to call an ‘information enriched supply chain’, in which the storage of expensive items that no one wants to buy is not necessary as inventory is substituted by information (Christopher et al., 2000). In these supply chains success depends on retailers identifying and monitoring the level of demand on a real time basis, communicating changes in demand instantly to suppliers, suppliers adapting their manufacturing to these changes in demand and then promptly despatching production to the point of sale(Christopher et al., 2004). In volatile environments such as the fast fashion industry, substituting inventory for information is essential.
A large number of studies, such as Garber and Sarkar (2007), have found that a company's IT and information systems can play an important role in determining how flexible a company's supply chain is. Many companies have invested in expensive enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to streamline their financial and human-resource reporting systems but have not extended these systems to their supply chain partners. This is specifically problematic for today's enterprises, as they are inextricably linked to their supply chain partners. ERP systems continue to define the enterprise as being principally focused on
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internal transactions, decisions, visibility, and reporting. This view can limit the supply chain's flexibility (Garber and Sarkar (2007). Even though advanced information technology is now available to aid integration between companies across the supply chain (e.i EDI, Web interfaces, supplier networks, and point- to-point links) most companies still use the phone, fax, and e-mail to exchange data with supply chain partners. These methods not only slow down the supply chain but also introduce an element of error and uncertainty. Clearly, there are far better ways to connect with suppliers.
These new state-of-the-art technologies available would allow almost limitless visibility into sales-order data and inventory levels, furthermore, the cost to make these connections has gone down significantly in recent years. The benefits of such a system can be seen in examples such as a global telecommunications company, which replaced its costly manual reporting structure with state-of the-art technology that allowed it to manage an end-to- end supply chain and respond faster to market demand. The new IT system is expected to reduce costs by more than 30 percent by removing manual labour and duplication of effort (Garber and Sarkar, 2007).
However, the use of inter-organisational information systems also presents a number of challenges for supply chain flexibility and responsiveness (Stevenson and Spring, 2007). For cost effectiveness, and to gain the full benefits, it is important for as many companies as possible to be incorporated (Holmstrom et al., 2002). But it has also been noted that inter-organisational technology is not widely used everywhere (Cagliano et al., 2005), particularly in SMEs with limited financial resources. Secondly, our case studies have demonstrated that for supply chains to be fully flexible high levels of re-configurability are essential and it is important to be able to dissolve links in the supply chain easily and form new ones once new market opportunities have been identified. However, linking information systems implies a degree of commitment, while inter- organisational information systems are not as flexible as they might be (Golden and Powell, 1999). Stevenson and Spring (2007) highlight that previous research suggests that the integration and flexibility of inter-organisational information systems are linked, but are inversely related: an increase in integration reduces flexibility and vice versa.
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This thesis’ case study findings confirm the fact that due to the high levels of re- configurability encountered in the supply systems employed, the level of information integration was very low, especially further up the supply chain. This was further exacerbated by the fact that, through the use of intermediaries, the level of complexity with which fashion retailers were confronted with was greatly reduced, but due to the addition of extra links in the supply network, the supply systems became longer. This had the potential of slowing down the speed at which demand information travels upstream the supply chain, a fact confirmed by all the suppliers interviewed.
Also, the lack of direct contact between the retailer and the garment manufacturer was quoted in all of the case studies as the reason for much delays and miss-communications. It was the retailer, rather than the manufacturer, that was mainly responsible for disrupting the relationship and de-emphasising the service values. As a result, the appealing, logical notion of ‘customer responsive supply chain management’, which has been so elegantly described in the normative literature (Storey et al., 2005), was thus found in practice to be prone to a number of critical organisational and behavioural barriers to its smooth enactment.
The case study findings highlighted the poor level of information systems adoption to enable communication along the supply chain. Intermediaries trying to check on progress at the manufacturing stage could at best telephone although once the product was in their distribution pipeline back to the retailers distribution facilities more sophisticated product tracking was apparent. Internet strategies previously identified as opportunities to integrate complex supply chains from concept design to store, and on to the final customer (Hines, 2001) were not identified in any of the case studies conducted. The somewhat advanced notion of a virtual web-based real time demand shared across the supply chain, at least down to the clothing manufacturers, seemed still some way in the future. However, during the course of the research it became apparent that the larger retailers all had sophisticated internal communication systems suggesting it is not the lack of technology or technical knowledge that inhibits them from embracing Quick Response methods. It appears to be the
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unwillingness to commit time and money, as well as changing attitudes towards suppliers that is at the heart of this problem. In essence, information sharing is limited to the minimum necessary to complete the transaction (Birtwistle et al., 2003). However, as highlighted earlier in this section, many of the reasons related to the poor information integration across the supply network through the implementation of IT systems was due to the high levels of reconfigurability that these supply systems exhibited.
As such, the case studies conducted revealed that information technology was adopted in-house by fashion retailers in order to capture market trends and reduce demand uncertainty, but further evidence of systems adoption to aid supply chain integration and communication upstream the value chain was not found. An unwillingness to commit time and money, as well as changing attitudes towards suppliers, was found to be at the heart of this.
7.6. Summary
In this chapter, the key case study findings presented in Chapter 6 were compared against the general framework for agile supply chain management introduced in Chapter 3. It revealed that companies need to build ‘fit-for- purpose’ supply chain networks, and a framework was constructed to aid the design and management of these networks. Lean, Agile, and Leagile supply chains were found to have different flexibility requirements, and it was suggested that these can be rationalised by considering ‘sourcing’ and ‘vendor’ flexibility types. At the same time, the Leagility concept was extended to include two new types of Leagility: Type I where there is high vendor flexibility but switching between vendors is low, and Type II where the converse occurs. Furthermore, it was highlighted that for retailers to achieve high levels of agility in a global and complex sourcing context through rapid supply systems reconfiguration, new supply chain structures and actors, such as trade agents / intermediaries, need to be involved. However, the level of information integration achieved in these structures was limited to the minimum necessary to complete the transaction. This was mainly due to the high levels of re- configurability exhibited by these networks.
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