Information Sharing in a Supply Chain

Advances in information system technology have had a huge impact on the evolution of supply chain management. As a result of such technological advances, supply chain partners can now work in tight coordination to optimize the chain-wide performance, and the realized return may be shared among the partners. A basic enabler for tight coordination is information sharing, which has been greatly facilitated by the advances in information technology. The paper describes the types of information shared: inventory, sales, demand forecast, order status, and production schedule. We discuss how and why this information is shared using industry examples and relating them to academic research. We also discuss three alternative system models of information sharing — the Information Transfer model, the Third Party Model, and the Information Hub Model.