#iscm

Undoubtedly, Supply chain manager have to rely on data to make decision, especially in the current ICT age. Information technology (IT) acts as eyes and ears to collect data and analyze information to help manager to visualize the whole chain and to help make better decision.

Let’s have a look of the supply chain in two ways: separated and integrated.

1. Firstly, manufacturer have to predict customer demand, observe the inventory, schedule transportation, determine facility and so on. All of the component of supply chain have to collect data and that relies on IT. For example, manager have to how many inventory left through data collected and to analyze when do I need to reorder?

2. Secondly, The key to nowadays supply chain is to have a big scope from the very beginning to the end, sometime even it is a global scope. However, a manager cannot go downstream to customer and upstream to supplier without the help of IT. IT make it accessible to have accurate and timely data for the decision under the big scope.  

Notes: Bullship effect is a very common and awful situation when there is no coordination between player all though supplier chain. To find out more, please refer to the follow interesting cartoon movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dXCaRetzdw