An EDI Transaction Set Development Lifecycle (TSDL): A Case Study in the Food Manufacturing Industry

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is widely regarded by organizations worldwide as the business standard for the timely and secure exchange of electronic business transactions in an expanding global marketplace. While numerous research efforts have explored how the adoption, implementation, and integration of this technology can impact an organization\u27s technical, organizational, and competitive environment - few studies have documented the process used by organizations to implement EDI transaction sets with trading partners. This paper advances an innovative lifecycle used by a food manufacturing company to successfully design, implement, and test an EDI transaction set. This paper also describes how this transaction set development lifecycle (TDSL) can be integrated into an organization\u27s standard systems development lifecycle (SDLC) to ensure the timely completion of IT projects. Finally, a discussion of the impact of the TDSL on the organization\u27s business practices is presented

Strategic Fit of Supply Chain Management Information Systems: A Measurement Model

This study expands upon current conceptualizations of fit between a firm’s competitive strategies and infor- mation systems capabilities. Limitations of existing theories have hindered the development of operationalized models for measuring the strategic fit of a firm’s information system. Using configurational theory and the concept of emergent strategies and capabilities, this paper develops a model for measuring the strategic fit of a specific type of information system: supply chain management information systems (SCM IS). Findings from a multiple-case study of five manufacturers indicate the developed model can give an accurate, reliable, and useful analysis of the strategic fit of a firm’s SCM IS. The operationalized model is sufficiently grounded theoretically and empirically to enable further study of the strategic fit of IS and its relationship with firm performance

THE IMPACT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ON ADMISSION DECISIONS

Information systems have been adopted in many fields, no less so in the health industry. Indeed, keeping abreast of the advances of the technological age, many medical organizations have invested heavily in information technologies (IT), aiming at improving medical decision-making and increasing its efficiency. Despite their obvious advantages, the systems do not always immediately provide the vital medical information required for critical decision-making, and the decisions that are based on this partial information may result in a decreased level of quality of care and unnecessary costs. The objective of this research is to evaluate the contribution of IT to decision-makers (physicians) at the point of care of emergency departments (EDs) by investigating whether the information systems (IS) have improved the medical outcomes, in the complex and highly stressful environment of the ED, with time constraints and overcrowding. We evaluated the contribution of the medical information to admission decisions by using two research methods: the track log-file analysis (with statistical tools) and an experimental study. The results were obtained using a unique database containing 3,219,910 referrals to the ED on seven main hospitals in Israel. Our results lead to the major conclusion that viewing medical history contributes to many clinical and admission decisions and clearly reduces the number of avoidable admissions

Information Technology and Inventories: Substitutes or Complements?

Is information technology (IT) a substitute or complement for inventories? This study answers this question by understanding substitution and complementarity of IT and inventories insofar as they impact profitability of a firm. We use data on IT expenditures and inventories of U.S firms and find support for the substitution between IT and overall inventories. Because overall inventories comprise raw-material, work-in-process and finished goods inventories, should we take this result to imply that substitution argument applies uniformly to all types of inventories? The answer is no. Our disaggregated analyses indicate that while IT can be a substitute for raw material inventories, IT is a complement for finished goods inventories. We discuss implications of these findings for research and practice

Vendor managed inventory performance in Malaysian manufacturing companies

The implementation of the Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) in the Malaysian manufacturing sector can be viewed as a solution to mitigate the increment of operational costs and low performance in customer services. Many factors contributed to the performance of the VMI programme, but only a few attempts were made to determine the contribution of the VMI elements and the organizational factors on VMI performance; and the influence of the types of products in this relationship. The objectives of this study were to determine the relationship and to examine the impact of the VMI elements, the organizational factors on VMI performance, and the moderating effect of the types of products on the relationship between the VMI elements, the organizational factors and VMI performance. The study used the survey method. Data were tested from 101 manufacturing companies listed in the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers. The findings from the Pearson Correlation test showed that inventory location, managerial commitment, decentralized decision- making, information- system capability and trust have significant and positive relationships with cost performance. Meanwhile, inventory location, demand visibility, inventorycontrol limits, managerial commitment, information- system capability, and trust have significant and positive relationships with service performance. In addition, the multiple regression analysis showed that demand visibility, inventory- control limits, inventory location, trust, and managerial commitment contribute to VMI performance. The hierarchical regression analyses revealed that the types of products have a significant moderating effect to warrant desirable performance from demand visibility, inventory location, inventory control limits, and inventory- ownership. Therefore, the implementation of VMI in the Malaysian manufacturing sector needs to share demand information, apply minimum and maximum limits for inventory control, locate storage locations near customer premises, establish trust, and provide sufficient managerial commitment to benefit from the VMI programme. This study also suggests that the application of inventory- control limits on innovative products would decrease the cost performance of VMI. Also, inventory- ownership by the supplier on functional products would decrease the service performance of VM

Advocating for Action Design Research on IT Value Creation in Healthcare

Today there is mixed evidence that health IT decreases costs and/or improves care quality in the US. Some of the same factors that have driven delays in realizing the benefits from IT investments in other industries (i.e., time consuming process changes) are apparent in the U.S. healthcare industry, which is only now digitizing its fundamental patient data, the electronic health record. The healthcare industry itself is in transition and new IT may not provide full benefit unless it is accompanied with a restructuring of healthcare delivery. Traditional ex post approaches to measuring IT value will limit the ability of healthcare IT value researchers to add value to practice now especially as government incentives in the US drive significant investment. But generalizing results from traditional IT value research to the healthcare setting is risky due to differences between healthcare and other industries. I advocate for action design research that uses existing theory as a foundation, but adapts it to the specific unique characteristics of this industry. By actively participating in the design and evaluation of new socio-technical systems, IT value researchers can generate grounded theory to explain value creation in healthcare while influencing practice now