Throughout the recent years, the information intensity that has been created from ICTs and especially the Internet has been proved as a great and constant obstacle in the supply chain management of businesses. In the era of internetworking competition it is not wise anymore for a business that wants to be viable to think about its own mission, objectives and value chain as a separate part from its suppliers’ and distributors’ value chains. Strategies that cause cost reduction, quality and efficiency improvement and competitive advantages in general should not anymore be considered for a single company’s functions, but for the whole Value Production System in which they participate.

The problems in the supply chain that appear to be obvious in today’s working environments, have to do with complicated external and internal ordering, receiving, delivering and logistics in general, that cause accumulative compromise to the value of the products and services delivered. Furthermore, because of the common sense that the supply chain has to do only with material flows and managing financial assets, managers appear to forget that a crucial factor for adding value to the final product of the Value Production System is the management of the information flows. Delivery of this information among the different supply and value chains is the key to an organization’s viability.

In order to address to the above problematic situations, information systems and ICTs can provide important help and therefore should be cautiously managed and not neglected. The information systems strategy of the various business units should be driven from the information systems corporate strategy. The use of ICTs such as extranets, ERPs, CRM’s, Web 2.0 and of course the Internet, can prove to be key factors for managing the information flows from the upstream to the downstream and keep up with environment changes. In addition, Strategic Information Systems (SIS) like GDSs (Global Distribution Systems) in the tourism industry or Electronic Distribution Systems (EDSs) through Value Added Networks (VANs) as long as Content Management Systems (CMSs) are very useful for a company in order to create business processes that are interoperable with their collaborators’ and present cross functional integration. A simple example is the forecasting of our distributors’ or suppliers’ inventory using real time, accurate information.

wine production process modification

we have designed a system that runs on our intranet which collects information from the sell side or customers shopping behaviors, blog comments and other data like seasons and demand curves and uses this information to predict customer requirements and this information is sent to the buy side to give the supplier an idea of the customer and to guide the wine production process to directly meet client demands hence promoting the focus on the customer even from the buy side and this information can be used to enhance the wine production process as will be explained below.



after harvesting of the grapes the stems are removed and separated into green for white wine and red for red wine and this is where we have added a system which utilizes client information from WOU to determine the percentage of grapes required for adequate production and more specifically the percentage of both kinds of grape to process to meet the specific immediate needs of the sell side. With this information the producers can maximize output based on good knowledge of future demand trends thereby reducing unnecessary shelf time of goods which is equivalent to more sales and ultimately more profit for the buy side. The CRM tool in the flow chart symbolizes the information supplied by WOU and its use goes beyond the wine percentage determination but it also helps determine specific packaging requirements and variations of red wine needed (lighter or darker) since they undergo different processes at the skinning stage (the darker wines require the skin to stay on longer for deeper coloration). These changed not only add value by reducing unnecessary shelf life but they also speed up the production process by enhancing division of labour.


Finally the buy sends product promptly since it receives its supply order from WOU with the client information ahead of the clients order which saves time and since the supply is tailored to fit the customers demand WOU is relieved of lengthy and bulky warehousing which saves Wines OF Uruguay time and money and the quick customer focused supply means that WOU are set to impress the customer with prompt service hence the happy customer who is also a loyal customer.

Wine Making Process Redesign

This week we conducted an initial research on how to improve the process of wine making with ICT. During the last lecture we learnt that it is crucial to be able to add value to an existing process of an organization by improving certain key procedures of it with ICT, or totally redesign it. However, another fact of great importance is that we should be aware of attributes of the process such as variety and volume of the referenced product, in order to alter it until a certain level to improve its efficiency and consequently the general functionality of the organization. Taking these under consideration, we came up with the uploaded diagrams as a first draft view of improving wine making processes in general and how a business like WOU can contribute to the process, in order to increase its value by providing important customer information.

From the first diagram we quickly identified that this process is highly standardized, but could benefit (create more value) from some environment feedback and therefore be altered to this direction. So, we thought of replacing the procedure of choosing to make red or white wine with a sophisticated and functional inspection tool. This tool will be able to keep track with internal data and communicate with other internal systems like for example the stock database, but also communicate with a database/knowledge base that will be systematically updated with environmental changes. These changes can be for example a sudden fall in the demand for red wine from the UK wine consumers, or a recent trend to a specific type of wine. The system will automatically adapt to these conditions and provide procedures that follow, with the right inputs. For example, the desteming procedure will know automatically the quantity of red wine that should be produced, regarding the market demand, the available stock, the amount and type of the grapes harvested etc.. Furthermore, this agent will align all phases of the process, in order to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the whole procedure (e.g. after calculating automatically the amount of white/red wine produced, inform stages like bottling for the amount of bottles required).

To sum up, we considered that a procedure like this could be altered in a way that its standardization would not be affected (wine making procedure, bottling to labeling) and really add value to the whole business structure by improving key issues of success like speed (automation), cost (less personnel units) and customizability (up to date with environment and mainly customers).