Supply chain coordination and integration

Supply chains and business networks are dynamic, and subject to forces of disintegration and re-integration. The complex and dynamic structure of today’s supply chains calls for mature levels of business network integration and agility. First, we review the business drivers for supply chain collaboration and the role of IT in disabling and enabling collaboration. Then, we propose a new type of alignment – the alignment between inter-organizational services, processes and governance, and the IT and systems that support it. As an example, a case of Portbase, a logistics Inter-Organizational System (IOS), illustrates how both technology and governance can evolve over decades to keep on adapting to the changing needs of the stakeholders and actors involved. At the end of this chapter, we discuss the state of the field and briefly point at the potential impacts of recent technologies.