ABSTRACT
The origins and continuous development of the electronic supply chain management (e-SCM) concept are directly dependent on the enormous breakthroughs that have occurred in
information and communications technologies
(ICT) over the past decade. While it is true that commercial computer systems have been available for over 40 years, it has only been in the past 15 years or so that computers have been able to expand beyond the boundaries of their own architectures to literally “talk” with one another. Until fairly recently, programs, data, and information were conÞned to the four walls of the business. Today, radical advancements in hardware architecture, programming languages, and communications devices have enabled enterprises to engineer systems that allow business partners to peer, as if through a portal, into once inaccessible databases, pass documents freely back and forth without concern for the constraints of time and distance, and interactively enter data, verify information, and assemble real-time networks unencumbered by proprietary systems and software.
