| Summary: | 碩士 === 大同大學 === 事業經營研究所 === 89 === As for PC manufacturing sector, its product life cycle is extremely short; therefore, its main components'' price drops at least once every 2 to 3 months, and the stock can easily become obsolete in half a year. As a result, computer manufacturers face even more challenges and risks in every phase of operation, for example, raw materials acquisition, product dispatching, assembly, transportation, delivery, etc. Global operations and logistics prevent single company from bearing all the supply chain risks. Instead, under this operating model, all the clients, manufacturers and suppliers need to be closely interdependent on each other through highly shared information and resources, in order to merge into a virtual company that shares both profits and risks.
With advancement in information technologies (IT), the role of IT in global operations and Logistics is not solely a tool of exchanging information anymore. Almost all the research papers concerning global operations and logistics will not forget to mention the importance of IT to global operations and logistics and what kind of IT being applied in it. However, those papers seldom talk about the information needs of each sector of global operations and logistics, and how IT supports and provides those needs. As a result, we will try to answer the above the doubts in the next section, and give a clear analysis on how important the IT is to global operations and logistics by a case study about T Company, one of the PC manufacturers in Taiwan. There are three research objectives in this paper: analyzing the information needs in each sector of global operations and logistics, IT supports and provides information needs, and the value of IT to global operations and logistics.
First, by discussing information technologies about the PC industry to comprehend the information needs of the industry. Through a case study to analyze what changes will happen when a company introduces global operations and logistics. The company introduces the new information technologies for those changes. How do the technologies help the enterprises to support their information needs? What do the effect make after introducing new information technologies?
It was discovered by this study, most information technologies about PC manufacturing sector are not quite different from other manufacturing sector. The difference is that PC manufacturing sector having to have an iner-enterprise business process standard. It is mandatory after introducing global operations and logistics and RosettaNet emerges. For achieving global operations and logistics objectives, T Company links suppliers and customers with CSP (Commerce Service Provider) technologies. And it is planning to implement Data Warehousing and OLAP (On-Line Analytical Processing) technologies. T Company is planning to carry out BPR (Business Process Reengineering) inside to improve its operation processes.
After introducing global operations and logistics, the operation processes have been changed. It affects operating performances, organization structure, employees’ operation models, employees’ behaviors, attitudes of employees, and culture of organization. The reciprocal of information technologies and above issues in turn affect the cost-effective analysis for introducing new information technologies.
Because T Company is in the midway of introducing new information technologies, many tangible benefits have not realized yet. But concerning what have come up such as decreasing response time, reducing administration costs, lower inventory, cutting down working capital (to save interest spending), improving quality (to reduce quality costs), enhancing IT application popularization and profundity, increasing sales revenue, increasing profits margin, improving the integrity between assembly sites and customer’s sales channel and improving customer satisfaction, it is persuasive that in the foreseeable future, the benefits will sure increase without curtailment. With regard to intangible benefits and long-term development, it is beneficial to implement IT. The value can be found by the above-mentioned reasons.
Finally, we make two Recommendations to industry, advancing industrial standard and driving BPR.
And we make four Recommendations to government, clearly recognizing the competitive advantages to create predominance, promoting the existing international industry standards, constructively guiding and encouraging investments, and establishing related laws and regulations.
|
|---|
