Towards the Internet-based supply chain management for the ship repair industry

A current trend of companies in the manufacturing industry is to operate globally in order to expand the limits of their business and integrate their operations with these of their business partners. The growth of the Internet and the software technologies that arise from it provides the means for this globalization. In this paper, we examine the problems arising from the integration of partners, who use heterogeneous information systems. The paper deals particularly with the ship repair industry as a case study of these problems and their solution. In this work, we demonstrate how modern information technology can support the communication of different partners and enable the information flow within the value added chain. Moreover, we describe how the performance of a supply chain can be improved by applying a generic hierarchical model though the appropriate planning of the critical manufacturing operations.