Abstract:
Transportation and warehousing logistics are
activities that require strong information systems and
computer support. This IT support has expanded with
the advent of e-commerce. This has led to the
development of e-commerce based systems by
companies such as FedEx and UPS which allow their
customers to track and monitor the fulfillment of their
service on the Internet, provided the goods are being
handled by the one corporation, with an integrated
system. However, with the advent of B2B (Business to
Business) and P2P (Partner to Partner) e-commerce,
there has been an increasing tendency to set up
consortia that represent several players in a given
field. Such consortia consist of companies or
organizations in a given field that get together and
produce a single site in order to increase traffic
through the site compared to other competitor sites
and/or extend beyond their region of operation.
A new form of collaboration is likely to develop in
the near future leading to the concept of an extended
logistics enterprise. This extended logistics enterprise
provider assembles a number of companies (or
Partners) that are physical logistic providers into
strategic alliances that allow sharing of their
facilities.
This paper deals with the concept of the extended
logistics enterprise and explores the software
engineering issues underlying the development of
such complex systems.
