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Role of IT in logistics industry
Information technology
development for the last ten years has been taken on a different
model - to share and exchange information more effectively and efficiently.
The World Wide Web (Web) provides the platform on top of the well-honed
Internet (TCP/IP) to allow the efficiency to be accomplished uniformly
without incompatibility issues. The Web has been successful in bringing
information portals into its ubiquitous existence from individual
profile to complex exchanges of e-commerce transactions. Services
Web is now on the horizon to further bringing the business process
into the Web. E-business has been talked about much. In order the
e-business to reach the widespread adaptation as e-commerce would
take more convincing and understanding of its benefits and risks.
Semantic Web will eventually be realized to effectively allow the
sharing and exchanging of information without much friction among
different partners. Effective and efficient information flow in
the industry is the key to bring the logistics chain into the mainstream
as supply chain has since the last decade, allowing individual stage
management, chain management and plug-and-play chain interconnectivity
and interoperability.
Recent and future development of Web technology would no doubt provide
a springboard for the logistics industry to integrate into the new
digital economy. IT enables the industry to better prepare for globalization
and interoperability that are inherently critical for survival.
The growing pains of the industry are much more acute than some
other industry due to the current low level of IT sophistication
of a large percent of logistics service providers (LSP). A brief
discussion is given next, followed by the introduction of a fourth
party logistics platform to facilitate cyber logistics - effective
information flow that drives the execution of the physical flow
of a logistics chain.
The
Center of Cyber Logistics (or Cyber Logistics Research Center),
is a research center under Li & Fung Institute of Supply Chain
Management & Logistics, The
Chinese University of Hong Kong. The Center was first established
in early 2000 affiliated with the Department
of Decision Sciences & Managerial Economics (DSE), Faculty
of Business Administration, The
Chinese University of Hong Kong and Department
of Management Sciences, Faculty
of Business, The City University
of Hong Kong
© Center of Cyber Logistics,
2000-2007.
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