Cyber Transportation Logistics: Architecting a Global Value-Chain for Services

Abstract

In today’s global economy, products and services are provided across international borders. The sourcing of these products and services becomes an integral part of international businesses. Information, communication and transportation technologies (ICTT) have made this job significantly more streamlined. However, there is an advantage that big companies, such as Wal-Mart, have over small and medium size ones. While the big companies have the ICTT resources to source globally at will, small and medium enterprises (SME) are much less prepared to do so, resulting in a large competitive disadvantage. By contrasting SMEs with their more successful “big brothers,” we highlight the salient ICTT features in a system architecture. This serves as a checklist for any assistance that might be rendered to SMEs and other entities in overcoming their competitive impediment. These findings are the result of numerous international workshops and conferences held in Hong Kong (the export city for a bulk of the Chinese consumer products) and in Arkansas (the headquarters of Wal-Mart).