il recently, the technology that make good supply chain management possible and reliable was not really available. There have been major gains in logistical efficiency and this is directly related to advancements in information technology. Gains have been made in recent years particularly in the area of computers, terminals, uniform product codes, electronic data interchange (EDI), electronic funds transfer (EDF), and asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), video conferencing and so on. Most high-powered "packages" have only been available since the early 1990s. These software packages along with other developments have made it possible for companies to have fingertip like access to information and people, even in a global environment. "Another key factor, says John Bermudez, an AMR analyst, is that many companies have spent the last 10 years perfecting their processes inside the plant. ' There is not a lot of room left for improvement,' he says. 'The way to drive down cost now is to go outside the factory and look at your supply chain.'" One last, critical reason for the sudden Interest in supply chain systems has been the shortcomings of traditional enterprise resource planning (ERP)."ERP systems are not constraint-based. They do not take into consideration where all the resources need to execute the plan are in place. Supply chain applications propose a schedule, highlight bottlenecks, and let users adjust due dates or resources until they find a satisfactory schedule. These plans can then be zapped into the transactional ERP system." The Race is OnThere now seems to be a race in the technology field amongst the industry giants to get a product to market. Supply chain management and planning software are still in their infancy. There are a lot of sunk cost in the development of these systems and if a company can get a product to market and make it universal enough for other companies, then there is big money to be made. This...
