Inter-organizational information systems in meat chains: the linkage between supply chain organization and system requirements

Abstract

The German meat sector is faced with increasing cost pressures and a high demand for quality and safety. Both issues require powerful and holistic IT solutions in order to achieve knowledge transfer, process alignment and transparent information flows across the supply chain. In recent years, new Inter-Organizational Information Systems (IOS) were developed for the red meat industry. However, the acceptance of IOS at the farm level is still relatively low. Since there is hardly any relevant literature on IOS in the meat sector, this study contributes to the general research on IOS, the status quo of data flows in the pork supply chain as well as a systematization and evaluation of the most relevant existing internet based IOS. Furthermore, special needs for IOS on the spot market which is the dominating organizational form in the German pork sector are defined and contrasted against the current supply of systems. It was found that none of the existing IT solutions adequately meet the requirements which are important in complex spot market relationships. Consequently, we recommend a higher consideration of supply chain organization in IOS research and development.