Research On Knowledge Management In Supply Chain For Inter-organizational Business Processes

With economic integration nowadays, enterprises has come to rely on effective management of their supply chains so as to shape their own competitive edge. Supply chain is a very important and effective knowledge sources outside the enterprise. But current research on supply chain management only tend to study in the fields of customer needs, production and inventory. On the contrary, it ignores the management of process knowledge. The 21st century is the era of knowledge economy, knowledge has become the critical resources for economic growth, social development and enterprise growth. So it is high time that we need to manage knowledge flow in supply chain.As the emergence of a variety of outsourcing, integarated services in the global competitive market ,inter-organizational cooperation make intensify the relationship among the supply chain enterprises. Business processes across organizations boundaries, extending outside the organization. However, due to lack of necessary knowledge exchange and sharing in the cross-organizational cooperation, decision makers among the member enterprises in supply chain result to communication barriers, which affect the operational efficiency of the whole supply chain. Therefore, how to achieve knowledge management in supply chain for cross-organizational business processes so as to promote the realization of knowledge collaborative will be a very important research for the theorists and the real.The main content of this paper is divided into five parts.The first part makes a total instruction to the full text. It describes the researching background and meaning, introduction and then the studies on supply chain management and knowledge management are summarized and analyzed. Finally it shows the technical line and innovation of this study.The second part introduce the theory and the relationship of business process and knowledge management of supply chain. Main elements are: the concept of BR and the characteristics of inter-organization business process; the theory knowledge, knowledge management and knowledge management of supply chain; on this basis, demonstrate interaction between business process and knowledge management of supply chain, to prove the necessity for knowledge management of inter-organizational supply chain. In third part, we build up the model of knowledge flow in supply chain based on cross-organizational business processed. First, in the basis of collaboration diagrams and Petri nets we establish the business process model from inter and within organization of supply chain. Then analysis the characteristics of knowledge and business process, and combined with the theory of Petri nets, we propose knowledge flow model of inter and internal enterprise of supply chain. In conclusion we can built the integration model of knowledge flow in supply chain.In fourth part, we analyze the factors which hinder inter-organizational knowledge transfer and sharing of supply chain, and discuss the game existed in them .In the end we propose incentive mechanism of inter-organizational knowledge sharing of supply chain ,to promote more perfect knowledge transfer and sharing and achieve the aim of cross-organizational knowledge management in supply chain.In fifth part, it is the case for analysis. Combined with example of Bridestone for knowledge management of inter-organizational business process, we elaborate the function of knowledge management in the supply chain to improving business performance and promoting development.Finally, the paper is summarized. Additionly some difficulties encountered in study and further research directions are proposed.