Weekly Blog #8

Before this week when I heard of electronic auctions or electronic market I immediately thought of EBay. I would never have thought that it was also related to supply chain management. This week in class we learned about supply chain management with its different strategies: pull and push strategies. Another thing we also learned this week was electronic actions or electronic markets and how they can be used for supply management streamlining. One of those markets is COVISINT, an electronic auction platform that started connecting the big three auto manufacturers (GM, Ford and Daimler-Chrysler) and their suppliers. Before COVISINT all their suppliers used different IS systems and in many cases they weren’t compatible. It created inefficiencies and communication issues. COVISINT was created by the big 3 to create a market their suppliers could access and compete against each other thus lowering prices. The following recent article: COVISINT explains how right now Covisint has more than 250,000 subscribers at 30,000 companies in 86 countries. It now not only works with the auto industry but also in manufacturing, healthcare, aerospace, public sector and financial services.