Title: Vendor managed inventory via SOA in healthcare supply chain management

Authors: Sultan N. Turhan; Özalp Vayvay

Addresses: Department of Computer Engineering, Galatasaray University, Çırağan cad. 34357, Ortaköy İstanbul, Turkey ' Department of Industrial Engineering, Marmara University, Göztepe Campus, 34722, Kadıköy İstanbul, Turkey

Abstract: As the management of supply chain gains an important role for the companies in order to be competitive in the market, healthcare sector also has effected from this wave. The main difference between the healthcare supply chain management and the other sectors are the key elements. In healthcare sector, pioneers must do highly accurate job because, in this sector, cost of an error may be someone's life. In healthcare sector, Right product must be in the right place at the right time is really a must. This paper shows a new modelling approach of healthcare supply chain in order to ensure this mandatory accuracy by using vendor managed inventory (VMI) technique. The core theme of this paper is that, to provide the best kind of process systems by using service oriented architecture patterns to model vendor managed inventory in order to ensure an effective management in healthcare supply chain management.

Keywords: healthcare supply chains; supply chain management; SCM; continuous replenishment; vendor managed inventory; VMI; service oriented architecture; SOA; web services modelling; healthcare management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBIS.2012.046295

International Journal of Business Information Systems, 2012 Vol.9 No.4, pp.451 - 464

Published online: 16 Aug 2014 *

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