Address supply chain visibility from knowledge management perspective

Abstract

Supply chain visibility is an important issue for both academic research and industrial practice. This paper presents a new insight to supply chain visibility for better collaborative decision making from knowledge management perspective. It presents a framework for managing knowledge required for collaborative decisions in supply chain processes. The framework tackles two kinds of knowledge: quantitative knowledge and qualitative knowledge. Quantitative knowledge is discovered from a supply chainpsilas business databases through data mining, and qualitative knowledge like experience and judgment captured from human in the collaborative decision making process. The infusion of quantitative and qualitative knowledge provides better understanding of supply chain processes and the decision contexts for decision makers to make decisions quickly under the pressures of time- and knowledge-based competition. The knowledge is then codified into supply chainpsilas knowledge repository. A knowledge mapping mechanism is also provided in the framework to present visibility to all partners in a supply chain by accessing knowledge from knowledge repository efficiently and effectively at anytime and anywhere.