Inter-Enterprise Process Integration for E-Supply Chain Business Practices

Abstract

For every industry, the demands for optimization and greater efficiency become particularly urgent when the flow of business information goes beyond the borders of organizations. Driven by the need to attain even greater corporate competitive advantages, many organizations already have reengineered their internal processes, and the focus has shifted to their trading partners. With network connectivity, supply chain integration is now the core strategic competence that enables many companies to act as one. he development of an integrated supply chain by way of the Internet is one of the most important business trends in today’s e-business practices. This chapter focuses on the development of an object-oriented enterprise business blueprint for e-supply chain inter-enterprise process integration. The approach described here will illustrate how the enterprise applications can be developed and woven into the very fabric of business practices by using object-oriented techniques. In contrast to an isolated IT system, this approach allows business processes to permeate different organizations, and communication in this system becomes process-to-process oriented.