The rise of the hyper-chain: business e!ects of emerging internet-enabled information systems. Early experiences from the wood/furniture sector

The Internet is often regarded as a revolutionary technology that in the long run will have immense consequences, both on our everyday life and on how business is conducted. Although still mainly used for content publishing, there are an increasing number of reported cases where it has enabled signi"cant business success. This paper attempts to provide evidence that Internet-enabled business information systems coupled with graphics technologies and open, co-operative technologies such as Standard for Exchange of Product Data (STEP) will soon be a common practice. What is perhaps even more important are the business e!ects these rapidly proliferating technologies will ultimately have. We believe that a great impact on the layout of business value chains should be anticipated. More speci"cally, we expect symptoms of value chain deconstruction and re-synthesis along new operational paradigms. Perhaps the term hyper-chain would best describe what we foresee as a result of this drastic transformation of the layout of business value chains. In any case, a much more e$cient operational environment will emerge, along with new business opportunities, to the clear bene"t of the end user. Enabling data sharing and business interactivity across the Wood sector value chain by developing a custom set of Internet based IT Tools (WIT), a European Esprit project, has stimulated this work and has provided some small but convincing evidence on the arguments raised and on the positions adopted herein. ( 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.