Strategic Supply Chain Management in a Large Bakery

STRATEGIC SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT IN A LARGE BAKERY
Miranda Robinson, Walter Fernandez, Sigi Goode
School of Accounting and Business Information Systems, The Australian National
University, Canberra, Australia
Corresponding author: [e-mail]
ABSTRACT
Electronic Commerce has ignited a range of risks and opportunities in the field of Supply
Chain Management (SCM). To minimise these risks and maximise potential payoff, carefully thought out research into the area is needed.
This paper investigates the use of electronic commerce in SCM, using a case study of a large Australian bakery. This study examined how the firm uses E-Commerce to enhance
SCM, looking at their past, present and future implementations of E-Commerce in the
Supply Chain. Amid increasing importance of electronic commerce to the bakery, preliminary analysis indicates five key areas where electronic commerce has positively affected the supply chain. In addition, a number of costs were observed, some previously unforeseen. Areas for future research are also discussed.
Keywords: strategy, internet, commerce, adoption, supply chain management

Introduction
Information and communication technologies have been undergoing “substantial evolution and development” (Sarkis and Talluri 2004). E-commerce, “the marketing or exchange of products, services or information through the use of information and communication technologies” (Chaffey 2002, Awad 2003), comprises computers, the World Wide Web and the Internet, wireless communications, mobile computing and others. Shaw et al. (1997) postulate that the rate of technology change is so rapid that is affecting every aspect of how business is conducted. One of the major areas where the Internet has had a substantive influence is SCM (Lancioni et al. 2003a).
The Internet has unveiled new opportunities in SCM (Lancioni et al. 2000, Lee and Whang
2001, Swaminathan and Tayur 2003) in terms of both research and practice (Nagurney et

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