ISE Graduate Seminar Series

THESIS DEFENSE
Web Service Infrastructure for Supply Chain

Pradip Chandratre
Master of Science Candidate
Industrial & Systems Engineering Department

Date: Thursday, December 8th, 2005
Time: 9:00 - 10:00am
Location: ASI Lab, Room 09-1550 (Kate Gleason Engineering Building)

Abstract:

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 supply 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. However, 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 is continually developing new standards and new designs for constructing inter-organization applications.

This study proposes an information system architecture and demonstrates how it can be applied to the communication problems of supply chain management. It uses rapidly evolving software technologies such as .NET, Web Services, and UDDI. A representative supply chain infrastructure us created as a test bed to demonstrate the ease of creating new communication links with new supply chain partners without having to invest in costly computer technology resources. It will also demonstrate the adoption of OAGIS standard business language and how it can make the task of supply chain communication as easy as plug and play.

Advisors:
Dr. S. Paidy (Chair), Industrial & Systems Engineering
Dr. M. Sudit, Industrial & Systems Engineering

Questions?
Contact Dr. Michael Kuhl at 475-2134 or mekeie@rit.edu