Supply Chain Information Sharing And Coordination Methods

With the rapid development of science and technology and productive forces, global information network and the whole world market have already formed, the competition become more intense. Besides, the changeful demands of consumers also contribute to it. Information is the base of the supply chain management, because it can provides the decision makes with the basis to decide on, and integrate the key elements driving the supply chain. As a result, it can make the supply chain more consistent, more harmony and more coordinative. To achieve this, managers must reform their traditional thoughts and old operation patterns. Every node enterprise should share their information correctly, timely and effectively. We should make sure that the node enterprises operate synchronously and consistently. Only to do this, we can lower the cost and improve the efficiency. But in reality, we usually meet many obstacles in the process of sharing the information. Many enterprises are not willing to share the information and they feel difficult to do that. So, this paper tried to do some research on the information sharing both theoretically and practically.The study focuses on the value of the information sharing and coordination mechanism. At first, it introduces the main content and the characteristics of information sharing and the importance of it. Then it sets up a mathematic model to compare the different values for suppliers and consumers in the condition that they share the information or not. And it shows that sharing the information can improve the supply chain and give an example about wal-mart and P&G to support it. But there are differences in the contribution for suppliers and consumers. So, some coordinate mechanisms should be used to ensure the information sharing. It introduces two common mechanisms, which are contract mechanism and trust mechanism. When a contract is set up, we should consider of unchanged total cost, incentive compliancy, individual rationality and dispersed decision-making. Trust is the basis of cooperation and the key to improve the supply chain is to cultivate the trust between enterprises.