The Design of Service System for SMEs Collaborative Alliance: Cluster Supply Chain

Abstract

In order to help small and medium enterprises (SMEs) cluster to face the global challenges, the definition of “cluster supply chain” is put forward as a new type of management pattern, which is the combination of industrial cluster and supply chain management. However, the related research on cluster supply chain is still in its infancy, and it is difficult to put theory results into practice. Based on the background, this paper presents an analytic framework to bridge the gap between theory and practice in the field. The framework includes four views - business modeling, specification modeling, realization modeling, system evolution, and integrates methods from value network modeling, agent oriented modeling and service oriented analysis &design. In the end, we utilize a case study of China textile industry for demonstrating how to apply the framework to provide new insights into the construction and development of cluster supply chain.