Managing a supply chain is one of the most complicated tasks today when erratic changes in demand must be met as soon as possible for staying competitive, while dealing with multitude of business partners that are involved in the chain. It is imperative that any changes in a corporation's product/service demand be immediately communicated with its suppliers and logistic service providers. This task of communication has long been overtaken by computerized systems from the telephones and fax machines. The computer technologies being used so far to connect two businesses are proving to be too rigid in today's world of mergers, acquisitions, and new business deals which bring in the task of tying the disparate computer systems of these different organizations. To solve this problem, the enterprise software industry has developed new standards and a new design for constructing inter-organization applications, collectively known as the Web Service technology. This paper demonstrates how this technology can be applied to the problem of supply chain management. A demonstrative supply chain infrastructure is created which shows the ease of creating new communication links with new supply chain partners without having to invest in costly computer technology resources. The paper will show that the adoption of Web Services, UDDI registry, and standard business language OAGIS will make the task of supply chain communication as easy as plug and play.
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