Problem situation and research approach

Abstract

In the 1990s, the internal business processes of companies had been reengineered. Today, researchers and practitioners are predicting that the coming decades will be the era of reengineering the entire value chain — from the initiation of the customer request through design, manufacturing, logistics, and service to the final customer again. The winners in the future marketplace will be those linked companies which can combine their internal advantages with those of their suppliers to a powerful value chain that is faster, more agile and innovative, and ultimately more profitable than other competing value chains (Burt et al., 2002; Spekman et al., 1999).