Information and transportation technology Essay

Information and transportation technologies are critical in supporting a leagile supply chain design because both resources are needed to integrate well the manufacturing of products and operations processes including delivery to the customer and customer feedback systems. In a leagile supply chain, lean material flow is upstream of agile material flow. For it to succeed as an agile process, it must be fully documented, understood and engineered. This is readily enabled by initially engineering a lean process and then adapting it by removing specific constraints and capacity limitations, thus enabling agility (Mason-Jones, et.al. , 2000). Integration and coordination are vital parts of this supply chain design and through enhanced collaboration and information exchange using information technology, success can be achieved. Transportation technology is one important component of logistics which directly supports a leagile supply chain. Because of flexible movements of materials needed for production and products from suppliers to customers and vise-versa, a very efficient transportation technology is vital.