Planning and Leveraging Event Portfolios: Towards a Holistic Theory

This conceptual paper seeks to advance the discourse on the leveraging and legacies of events by examining the planning, management, and leveraging of event portfolios. This examination shifts the common focus from analyzing single events towards multiple events and purposes that can enable cross-leveraging among different events in pursuit of attainment and magnification of specific ends. The following frameworks are proposed: (1) event portfolio planning and leveraging, and (2) analyzing events networks and inter-organizational linkages. These frameworks are intended to provide, at this infancy stage of event portfolios research, a solid ground for building theory on the management of different types and scales of events within the context of a portfolio aimed to obtain, optimize and sustain tourism, as well as broader community benefits

Vendor Managed Inventory: why you need to talk to your supplier

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the concept of Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) from an inter-organisational perspective. Extant literature on VMI tends to investigate the concept from a focal perspective, even though VMI has originally been born as a collaborative arrangement. Design/methodology/approach The paper is based on a literature review and an empirical study. It provides a comprehensive literature review on VMI and an illustrative case study of a supplier and a buyer jointly implementing VMI. Findings The findings of this paper are twofold. First, a literature review uncovers that contemporary research has delimited the analysis of VMI to a focal company perspective as current VMI cost models tend not to capture the picture of the complete supply chain. Second, it demonstrates through an illustrative case study that adoption of an inter-organisational approach to VMI is vital if companies are to optimize their buyer-supplier relationships. Research limitations/implications Future research should test the implications proposed in the empirical section, as this piece of research can be seen as exploratory case study research with the aim of analytical generalizations. Practical implications The inter-organisational VMI cost perspective in supply chains should be emphasized in purchasing departments since such a perspective significantly raises the awareness of the costs incurred in a supply chain. Originality/value Existing research has not explicitly focused on inter-organisational costs incurred by companies implementing VMI. This study seeks to bridge this research gapPeer Reviewe

Costs, Benefits and Value Distribution – Ingredients for Successful Cross-Organizational ES Business Cases

This paper introduces my PhD research project on developing guidelines for creating successful business cases for Enterprise System implementations in network settings. Three important aspects that were found to be important in such business cases are: the costs, benefits and the value distribution within a network. Each of the three aspects is addressed in this paper and the relationships between them are pointed out. A research model is presented showing how all three aspects contribute to the main goal of defining successful business case guidelines

Vendor Managed Inventory: why you need to talk to your supplier

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the concept of Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) from an inter-organisational perspective. Extant literature on VMI tends to investigate the concept from a focal perspective, even though VMI has originally been born as a collaborative arrangement. Design/methodology/approach The paper is based on a literature review and an empirical study. It provides a comprehensive literature review on VMI and an illustrative case study of a supplier and a buyer jointly implementing VMI. Findings The findings of this paper are twofold. First, a literature review uncovers that contemporary research has delimited the analysis of VMI to a focal company perspective as current VMI cost models tend not to capture the picture of the complete supply chain. Second, it demonstrates through an illustrative case study that adoption of an inter-organisational approach to VMI is vital if companies are to optimize their buyer-supplier relationships. Research limitations/implications Future research should test the implications proposed in the empirical section, as this piece of research can be seen as exploratory case study research with the aim of analytical generalizations. Practical implications The inter-organisational VMI cost perspective in supply chains should be emphasized in purchasing departments since such a perspective significantly raises the awareness of the costs incurred in a supply chain. Originality/value Existing research has not explicitly focused on inter-organisational costs incurred by companies implementing VMI. This study seeks to bridge this research gapPeer Reviewe

Multi Agent Systems in Logistics: A Literature and State-of-the-art Review

Based on a literature survey, we aim to answer our main question: “How should we plan and execute logistics in supply chains that aim to meet today’s requirements, and how can we support such planning and execution using IT?†Today’s requirements in supply chains include inter-organizational collaboration and more responsive and tailored supply to meet specific demand. Enterprise systems fall short in meeting these requirements The focus of planning and execution systems should move towards an inter-enterprise and event-driven mode. Inter-organizational systems may support planning going from supporting information exchange and henceforth enable synchronized planning within the organizations towards the capability to do network planning based on available information throughout the network. We provide a framework for planning systems, constituting a rich landscape of possible configurations, where the centralized and fully decentralized approaches are two extremes. We define and discuss agent based systems and in particular multi agent systems (MAS). We emphasize the issue of the role of MAS coordination architectures, and then explain that transportation is, next to production, an important domain in which MAS can and actually are applied. However, implementation is not widespread and some implementation issues are explored. In this manner, we conclude that planning problems in transportation have characteristics that comply with the specific capabilities of agent systems. In particular, these systems are capable to deal with inter-organizational and event-driven planning settings, hence meeting today’s requirements in supply chain planning and execution.supply chain;MAS;multi agent systems

ERP AND E-BUSINESS

The Internet has revolutionized twenty-first century business. Organizations today can communicate with customers, suppliers, and sellers at e-speed with the click of a mouse. Yet, with all of the excitement about the external possibilities of the Internet, companies still need efficient internal processes to make and move products, manage finances, recruit and motivate employees, and excel. The companies best positioned to succeed in the near future are those that can balance existing enterprise resource planning (ERP)-based infrastructures and capabilities with exciting new e-business innovations. This paper elaborates the issues of ERP and e-business.ERP, E-Business, network, enterprise, management.

Analyzing inter-organizational systems from a power and interest perspective

Inter-organizational systems (IOS) are ICT-based systems that enable organizations to share information and to electronically conduct business across organizational boundaries. Especially since the increasing availability of the Internet, there have been less technological barriers to implement IOS. However, that does not imply that IOS-possibilities are implemented successfully in all occasions: other barriers may remain. Innovation is not only a technical process of ?solving problems?, it also involves economic and political processes in which interests are articulated, alliances are built and outcomes are struggled over. To explore this observation, this paper presents a model that helps to describe and analyze IOS from a power and interest perspective of multiple parties. To illustrate this model, eight case studies of IOS are discussed, of which two in more depth. After that, we will put the findings of the analysis in a broader perspective. The paper concludes with the assertion that the scope for the design of an effective IOS depends on a combination of technical, economic and social

Workflow Management Systems and ERP Systems: Differences, Commonalities, and Applications

Two important classes of information systems, Workflow Management Systems(WfMSs) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, have been used to support e-business process redesign, integration, and management. While both technologies can help with business process automation, data transfer, and information sharing, the technological approach and features of solutions provided by WfMS and ERP are different. Currently, there is a lack of understanding of these two classes of information systems in the industry and academia, thus hindering their effective applications. In this paper, we present a comprehensive comparison between these two classes of systems. We discuss how the two types of systems can be used independently or together to develop intra- and inter-organizational application solutions. In particular, we also explore the roles of WfMS and ERP in the next generation of IT architecture based on web services. Our findings should help businesses make better decisions in the adoption of both WfMS and ERP in their e-business strategies

The Internet-of-Things Meets Business Process Management: Mutual Benefits and Challenges

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to a network of connected devices collecting and exchanging data over the Internet. These things can be artificial or natural, and interact as autonomous agents forming a complex system. In turn, Business Process Management (BPM) was established to analyze, discover, design, implement, execute, monitor and evolve collaborative business processes within and across organizations. While the IoT and BPM have been regarded as separate topics in research and practice, we strongly believe that the management of IoT applications will strongly benefit from BPM concepts, methods and technologies on the one hand; on the other one, the IoT poses challenges that will require enhancements and extensions of the current state-of-the-art in the BPM field. In this paper, we question to what extent these two paradigms can be combined and we discuss the emerging challenges