ABSTRACT
Business processes have received a great deal of attention since business process reengineering (BPR) became popular in the late 1990s. In fact, it could quite rightly be argued that supply chain has a part to play in every one of the high-level business processes. Supply chain processes are critical to the speed and effectiveness of the business. Supply chain people need to be among those who are looking at new technologies to see the opportunities for developing new supply chain processes. This chapter describes the key Information Technology (IT) packages relating to supply chain and give examples of the best practice issues for each system. From the supply chain point of view, Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) is important as the interface to technical product data and as the driver of good practice on standards. Supply chain processes represent the major part of what IT systems support in most businesses that make or sell a physical product.
