Supply Chain Management: from Linear Interactions to Networked Processes

Supply Chain Management is a distinctive product, with a tremendous impact on the software applications market. SCM applications are back-end solutions intended to link suppliers, manufacturers, distributors and resellers in a production and distribution network, which allows the enterprise to track and consolidate the flows of materials and data trough the process of manufacturing and distribution of goods/services. The advent of the Web as a major means of conducting business transactions and business-tobusiness communications, coupled with evolving web-based supply chain management (SCM) technology, has resulted in a transition period from “linear†supply chain models to "networked" supply chain models. The technologies to enable dynamic process changes and real time interactions between extended supply chain partners are emerging and being deployed at an accelerated pace.