Information Sharing In Supply Chain

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Information sharing in coordination of supply chain Supply chain management is often defined as the management of a network of all business processes and activities involving procurement of raw materials, manufacturing and distribution management of Finished Goods. The management of such a network requires “the coordination of production, inventory, location, and transportation among the participants in a supply chain to achieve the goal of the supply chain in a responsive and efficient manner”. Seemingly, the objective of every supply chain is to provide the Right Product, At the Right Time, Right Place and at the Right Cost to the Customer. In order to meet this goal, coordination comes to play in the supply chain management as an intra-organizational…show more content…
When these companies form a supply chain, they need to coordinate each of their functions and time horizons with regards to other companies of the supply chain. (3) A coordination mechanism is necessary to manage the dependent relationships between companies in a supply chain.(4) Clearly, the many participants in health care supply chains including manufacturers, health care product intermediaries (wholesalers, distributors and group purchasing organizations), health care providers (hospitals, physicians and pharmacies), insurance companies and purchasers (government, employers, individuals and employer coalitions) and their different nature makes the coordination of the heath care supply chain more complex. According to existing literature, there are three types of mechanisms: 1- Supply chain contracts: which help to manage supplier-costumer relationship and risks; 2- Information sharing: members of a supply chain coordinate their functions based on the information they receive from orders, inventory and other members. This information helps reduce inventory costs and lead time if it is shared in a timely and efficient way; 3- Joint decision-making: models such as CPFR and SCOR allows companies to evaluate and improve their…show more content…
information sharing plays a critical role in the success of such products. As soon as a promising molecule is discovered, the company starts the flow of information by asking physicians, experts and KOLs for their input on pre-launch processes and keeping them informed on the progress of their new drug. As the launch of the new drug gets closer, the company uses medical journals and direct communications with physicians to ensure the new drug’s information reaches the potential costumers and create demand. In this path, the companies and organization between manufacturer and physicians such as distributers do not influence sales as much as physicians do and thus are overlooked in this process of information sharing. In addition, the information shared is highly technical and requires the highly educated or trained personnel to handle it. To sum up, in this path of sharing information, the demand for new product is created and the inputs of physicians and KOLs are shared with the manufactures. Finally, the effectiveness of the supply chain relies on how well these paths are managed alone and considering the other one. As mentioned before, the number and nature of supply chain members in health care could act as a barrier to information sharing mechanism. To overcome this barrier and to move towards a coordinated supply chain the use of all three coordination mechanisms is suggested. It is worth
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