Summary Paper
Curtis Bond BUS632: Advanced Logistics
Instructor: Sanh Tran
August 06, 2012

Introduction
The supply chain of a typical company takes raw materials and transforms them into a finished product which is shipped to a warehouse for intermediate storage and then sent to retailers or directly to consumers (Simchi-Levi, 2009). Until the advent of computer systems, many of the processes involved in the supply chain such as ordering, order confirmation, and billing were done by telephone, fax, or public mail. This process could take two to four weeks from order to delivery if everything went as planned. Should something go wrong, the delivery time escalated rapidly (Bowersox, D., et. al., 2002). This paper will briefly examine how the introduction of technology into supply chain management has impacted three processes of this supply chain: purchasing, operations, and logistics. Through this examination one get a sense of how technology has positively impacted the entire field of supply chain management.
Impact on Purchasing
The percentage of purchases to sales is a significant expense to many companies. It is a major area in which a company can attempt to achieve cost savings. Traditionally, this savings comes about through bargaining for price reductions. Of course, this price reduction comes at the expense of the seller. A modern approach, however, seeks to achieve a win-win situation in the transaction through cooperation between buyers and sellers to seek ways to reduce costs of the product or service (Monczka, R., et. al., 2009). “The use of the IT in managing purchasing in the supply chains has developed rapidly over the last 10 years” (Fasanghari, M., et. al., 2008). This advancement of technology has allowed both the sellers and the buyers to reduce costs. One example is in the area of order placement. “Transactions are a