An IT-based coordination support for production and marketing decisions

This paper is concerned with the critical issue of allocating limited corporate resources among multiple products and between production and marketing functions of a functionally decentralized firm where the two geographically remote functions independently make decisions pertaining to their own decision-making domain. We attempt to demonstrate how IT can contribute to enhancing the quality of coordinating production and marketing functions from the perspective of resource allocation. To this end, we propose a prototype named ITBCS (IT-Based Coordination System) that works under LAN supported computing environments. We develop a comprehensive coordination scheme that can handle various cost functions for the resource constrained, multiple product case that has been little discussed in literature. A preliminary version of ITBCS has been implemented for hypothetical situation where LAN electronically wires distributed marketing and production computing nodes. Managerial implications are also discussed.