Chemical Industry Supply Chain Innovation: A Case Study of e-Enablement Practice

Today, there exists a shift towards the adoption of sophisticated supply chain integration and e-commerce techniques by leading global enterprises. Supply chain performance improvement initiatives strive to match supply and demand thereby driving down costs simultaneously with improving customer satisfaction levels. A central element of this move has been the evolution of e-marketplaces or trading hubs and portals, which it is suggested, can provide effective mechanisms for achieving synthesis between a wide range of collaborating partners and systems. To succeed in these environments, enterprises need to be highly capable of process management and systems integration, but problems associated with ‘complexity and scope’, undertaking ‘cost/benefit analysis’ and ‘value proposition evaluation’ remain. The industrial case study and academic research briefly presented within this paper, highlights a favourable implementation example of how contemporary business requirements were outpacing available supply chain research and software tools. The revised supply chain model developed through the case study was considered to offer a holistic approach with greater speed of execution, reduced administration costs and improved value-added services. This paper reports findings revealed during the implementation of an e-marketplace integration project by a renowned chemical logistics enterprise.