Title: Developing an integrated supply chain system for small businesses consortium in Australia: a service-oriented PHOENIX solution

Authors: Yongqiang Li; Wei Dai; Anona Armstrong; Andrew Clarke; Miaoli Du

Addresses: College of Law and Justice, Queen Street Campus, Victoria University, 295 Queen Street Melbourne, P.O. Box 14428, Melbourne, Vic 8001, Australia ' College of Business, Footscray Park Campus, Victoria University, Ballarat Road Footscray, P.O. Box 14428, Melbourne, Vic 8001, Australia ' College of Law and Justice, Queen Street Campus, Victoria University, 295 Queen Street Melbourne, P.O. Box 14428, Melbourne, Vic 8001, Australia ' College of Law and Justice, Queen Street Campus, Victoria University, 295 Queen Street Melbourne, P.O. Box 14428, Melbourne, Vic 8001, Australia ' Li's Legalisation Services Pty. Ltd., 32/50, Rosslyn Street, West Melbourne, Vic, 3003, Australia

Abstract: Literature abounds with reports of the potential benefits that supply chain management creates for businesses worldwide. However, small businesses, whilst that they are the backbone of the Australian economy, are a backwater in the supply chain revolution, In particular, they are deprived of access to the benefits of the vertical integration of supply chains owing to size constraints, skill shortages, limitation in social networking and affordability. To address these issues and drawing on resource dependence theory and extant literature, the authors propose an integrated supply chain system for small businesses in Australia - a service-oriented PHOENIX solution. The paper contributes to knowledge by conceptualising the means of access and integration of supply chain management systems. The position paper also adopts scenario analysis in order to exemplify the potential applications and benefits of the proposed system. Giving consideration to the cost issue, the paper proposes that the PHOENIX system can be offered by small business consortiums, e.g., industry associations. Cloud computing and optimisation techniques will be applied to organise the time of use. The paper concludes by acknowledging the limitations and discussing future work.

Keywords: small businesses; small firms; supply chain integration; service-oriented PHOENIX; Australia; supply chain management; SCM; small business consortia; resource dependence theory; scenario analysis; costs; industry associations; cloud computing; optimisation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHPCN.2015.066541

International Journal of High Performance Computing and Networking, 2015 Vol.8 No.1, pp.81 - 89

Received: 11 Sep 2012
Accepted: 19 Dec 2013
Published online: 24 Dec 2014 *

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