Systems engineering approach to the design of decision support system for an e-procurement process

The importance of information technology as a strategic factor in an enterprise has been widely recognized. To be able to survive and grow in the era of global competition, e- procurement process is put under intense pressure to find ways to sustain their competitive position in their respective e-markets. Since a qualified potential supplier has become an important component of supply chain management, development of an effective and rational supplier selection model is naturally desirable. A framework for decision support system (DSS) has been modeled to enable the selection of potential suppliers. The DSS selects key suppliers based on the company´s core process requirements (decision support strategies) and standardized selection criteria. This is done by the data cube construction and analysis of the online analytical processing (OLAP) technique. The supplier screening process is done by means of evaluation and short-listing procedures based on the chosen decision support strategies. The e-procurement process is then initiated with this selected list of potential suppliers. This framework resulted from the application of systems engineering methods to map a set of requirements and a conceptual hierarchical control framework (based on dynamic optimization) onto a system specification.