过程材料

(Chang, 2000). IT plays a crucial role as an enabler in business process renovation. It should be pointed out that a higher level of procedures' automation brings more or less negative results. Even if some of the achievements of such actions are positive, they prevent the managers from seeing all the opportunities offered by the informatization of a redesigned business process and an infrastructure role of informatics. The business process should be analyzed first in order to find out if it is well defined, adequate, and ready for the implementation of new information technology. Only in that way, an improvement of quality, lower costs, and shorter performance times of renovated business procedures and activities could be expected.

As the Internet becomes a very important component of companies' information systems, it plays a significant role. The Internet enables companies of all sizes to develop new on-line business models, which means improving and altering the ways in which companies operate and interact with business partners, customers and suppliers. Companies are now pursuing more intensive and interactive relationships with their suppliers, collaborating in new product development, integrating key business processes and cross-functional information sharing on a range of issues. The Internet enables complete integration of inter-organizational processes in business renovation projects and extends the strengths of business renovation to the new strategic options (e.g. e-logistics), the new possibilities for processes (e.g. order entry, distribution, on-line payment), as well as the technical issues (e.g. integration of Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERP) with Supply Chain Management (SCM), etc.).

3. Supply chain management, logistics and E-logistics

With the development of information technologies and information knowledge, SCM and E-logistics were discovered as a close connection to Logistics. Successful integration of SCM depends on the implementation of E-business in Logistics, called E-logistics. Afterwards, these two terms are shown through the system of E-logistics, with which the use of modern information technology complements SCM and Logistics.

(1)Supply chain management

In the last years, companies have been increasingly realizing that the efficiency of their business is heavily dependent on the collaboration and co-ordination with their suppliers as well as with their customers (Hieber, 2002). In order to increase their competitiveness, they carefully manage the Supply Chain.