Electronic commerce for manufacturing supply chains

This paper discusses approaches to electronic commerce (EC) that original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) use to interact with their suppliers. The paper is based on empirical work completed in a major OEMs supply chain with particular focus on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The work completed over the past three years highlights the importance of a flexible strategy when interacting with vendors and the need to describe the characteristics of the supply chain. Greater than one-half the value-added of manufactured goods are attributable to suppliers, and OEMs have increasingly focused their EC initiatives towards automating supplier management.