IMPACT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ON THE SUPPLY FUNCTION OF AN ORGANIZATION
CHAPTER I: Introduction
1.1Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Background of the Study
It has been part of our history that goods produced are not usually consumed by those that produced them or where they are produced. They need to be moved and moved to the location they are needed. These goods passed through a long chain and are usually handled by many people, with each contributing to adding value to the product, from point of extraction to the transformation, and eventually consumption. This extraction – transformation – consumption stage is what is referred to as supply function.
History has also told us that at a point those activities were undertaken crudely and primitively. No easy access to information. In the organization, sometimes information are passed wrongly between buyer and the supplier on what is to be supplied, where it should be supplied and the time to supply it. But as time goes on man develop methods, technique and technology that allow man make this activity easier and more efficient, which is information technology.
Information technology is considered as a pre-requisite for effective control of today’s complex function, indeed a recent study conducted by Forrester Research indicate that US manufacturers are increasingly dependent on benefits brought by information technology to improve supply function agility, reduce cycle time, achieve higher efficiency and deliver products to customer in a timely manner. The implementation of information technology in supply function has also enable firm organization to develop and accumulate knowledge about stores, about its customers, supplier and market demands, which in turn influence performance.
1.2Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Statement of the Problem
Before the introduction of information technology to supply function, the keeping of records (information) manually often resulted in keeping copies of the same document in different places. information is not easily accessible relating to supply function and sometimes information don’t get to the buyer and supplier on time on what is to be supplied and this will tied down activities and it will also affect the organization.
Keeping of stock record is manually done which is time consuming, not cost effective, even the calculation of stock level is very, very difficult and at times it causes delay in the delivery of materials. Not only that before the advent of the use of information technology in supply function stock checking and stock taking becomes very difficult which at times lead to discovery of huge number of items. Either going bad or becoming obsolete. Even the location of material and identification becomes very difficult because identifying and location of materials could be time consuming and this could lead to bottleneck.
It is with this in mind that researchers will attempt to see how the application of information technology can impact on supply function of Peugeot Automobile of Nigeria (PAN).
