Business Commons^™

Public Healthcare: Changes Introduced When Implementing E-Procurement, Tommaso Federici

Federici Tommaso

The large and growing size of the healthcare public spending for goods and services worries the institutions of many European countries, including Italy, and asks for rationalization initiatives. In parallel, e-procurement solutions spread into Public Administrations (PA's) and introduce innovative processes, primarily in the purchasing phase.

In this scenario, e-procurement has the potential to enable significant efficiency improvements in the public healthcare sector, with the reduction of purchasing and administrative costs. However, most e-procurement initiatives met difficulties and did not fully delivered the expected benefits so far. This is mainly due to the healthcare procurement complexity, specific characteristics and peculiar …

A Framework For Agents Conducting E-Business In A Supply Chain, C.W. Leung, T.N. Wong, Domenic Sculli

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

This paper describes the development of an agent-based framework that supports the purchasing function in supply chain management. The framework has been applied in a case situation for planned order releasing from a manufacturer’s materials requirement planning (MRP) system. The proposed framework incorporates a negotiation protocol that can effectively coordinate the negotiation process between a buyer agent and several supply agents, which may represent the manufacturer and its suppliers respectively. These agents negotiate according to their preferred strategies which aim to conclude a deal that achieves their own objectives. The implementation of the negotiation process involves considerations of the price …