Document Type
Article
Abstract
The existing procurement process in shipping is paper-based and labor-intensive. Looking to cut costs and improve delivery times, while simultaneously enabling companies to take a more strategic approach to their jobs, an eprocurement framework is proposed to automate and streamline its procurement process by bringing it online. In this paper we present an intranet Web-based electronic procurement infrastructure. The shipping organizational process requirements was fully analyzed and evaluated. The ships as end-users were provided with access to the application taking into account the existing communication cost and restrictions. The logical Architecture is presented including the schema of the databases, the catalog management, the workflow of the purchase order plus the end-users interaction with the procurement system through Web browser. Then the physical architecture is described when security, load simulation and several well known technologies are applied. In all step the shipping environment and its specific characteristics are fully assessed. The application in its pilot implementation (marine engines spare parts procurement) shows that is scaleable, has a supplier integration strategy that met the shipping company’s core requirement, is relatively eas y to install, configure and use and can be integrated with ERP.
Recommended Citation
Nikitakos, Nikitas and Litinas, Nikolaos, "E-Procurement Framework for Shipping" (2001). ICEB 2001 Proceedings (Hong Kong, SAR China). 98.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/iceb2001/98