Introducing the concept of information supply chains: the Buddy project

Abstract

The European Community ESPRIT Project Buddy addresses the needs of industrial organisations to reduce information processing time, improve added and residual value of information, and reduce processing and distribution costs and “leadtimes”. It deals with the information supply‐chain as an important entity, whose performance and optimisation very significantly affect the efficiency and performance of industrial enterprises. A conceptual modelling and simulation environment is proposed for analysing information supply‐chain management strategies, policies and decisions. A decomposable, “autonomous agents” approach is adopted to specify information supply chain models. Models in turn are defined in terms of their constituent information supply chain “agents” (e.g. suppliers, buyers, distributors, etc). This includes their structural relationships, interaction “protocols” and co‐ordination policies.

Citation

Walsh, P. and Koumpis, A. (1998), "Introducing the concept of information supply chains: the Buddy project", Logistics Information Management, Vol. 11 No. 2, pp. 74-79. https://doi.org/10.1108/09576059810209937