A Study On Information Flow Integration In Supply Chain Management

In the era of economic globalization, the concept of integrated management has become a strong power to drive towards further development of supply chain management. Competitive advantages of individual enterprises have not been prominent anymore, and the mode of competition has been transferred from competition among enterprises to that among supply chains. As one of the three major flows of supply chain, information flow serves as a bridge and a means of control of supply chain. As a result, the integration of information flow plays an important role of binding in improving the overall competitive power of supply chain. By analyzing the information flow of supply chain, this paper builds a conceptual model of information flow integration. From the perspective of information sharing brought by information flow integration, the paper creates a mathematic model of the total cost of supply chain and makes a comparison of the total costs before and after information sharing by the means of digital simulation. Six study methods have been used in this paper, namely multi-disciplinary study, qualitative study, quantitative study, model study, documentation study, and case study. Contents of the paper are as follows:Chapter 1 clarifies the purpose of studying information flow integration and the research background. It reviews related documentations. Innovations and deficiencies are pointed out as well.Chapter 2 adopts a step-by-step method to set forth some related theoretical background of information flow integration of supply chain according to the research topic. It first briefly introduces basic concepts and the model of integration of supply chain management. The integration model is the basic structure of supply chain according to which the information flows. The paper then expounds the information flow in supply chain, including connotations of information and information flow, four modes of information flow operation and their advantages and disadvantages. These have laid solid theoretical foundation for the study to come.Chapter 3 makes an analysis of the necessity and feasibility of information flow integration in supply chain management. However, as a complex and comprehensive system project, integrating information flow may come across obstacles and difficulties on its way. This also remains a difficulty in academic circle for discussion and solution.Chapter 4 creates the conceptual model of information flow integration of supply chain and the mathematic model of total costs of supply chain. This conceptual model divides the information flow in chain into four levels and proposes correspondent integrated systems according to the different levels. The case of Dongfeng Peugeot Citroen Automobile Company was chosen for an analysis of the integrated system mentioned. This chapter studies total costs of the three level supply chains, and takes the information sharing after information flow integration as the starting point to create the mathematic model. Information sharing can bring in enterprises in chain with demand information sharing and collaborative pricing. Based on these two benefits, random data simulation can be realized by self programming. Advantages and disadvantages are analyzed then. Chapter 5 summarizes the whole paper, points out places for perfection and prospects for future study of information flow integration.