Texto 1 Cluster Development And Knowledge Exchange In Supply chaIn

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Cluster Development and Knowledge Exchange in Supply Chain
P. Sureephong, N. Chakpitak, L. Buzon, and A. Bouras

Abstract— Industry cluster and supply chain are in focus of every countries which rely on knowledge-based economy. Both focus on improving the competitiveness of firm in the industry inthe different aspect. This paper tries to illustrate how the industry cluster can increase the supply chain performance. Then, the proposed methodology concentrates on the collaboration and knowledge exchange in supply chain. For improving the capability of the proposed methodology, information technology is applied to facilitate the communication and the exchange of knowledge between the actors ofthe supply chain within the cluster. The supply chain of French stool producer was used as a case study to validate the methodology and to demonstrate the result of the study. Index Terms—Knowledge engineering, Logistics, Knowledge Exchange.

I. INTRODUCTION HE knowledge-based economy is based on the production, distribution and use of knowledge and information [1]. It is affected by theincreasing use of information technologies to increase the competitive advantage in the economy. The main objective of the industry cluster development and supply chain management is to maintain competitiveness of the each industry in the market by using available information/knowledge. Though, industry cluster and supply chain are not the same aspect. Industry cluster is more in the macro-economiclevel which focuses on collaboration between partners in the same industry. But, Supply chain is more in the micro-economic level which focuses on the information sharing between companies who are in the same production chain. But, there are some focal points between two aspects which will be explained in the next section. A. Industry Cluster The concept of industry cluster was popularized by Prof.Michael E. Porter in his book named “Competitive Advantages of Nations” [2]. Then, industry cluster becomes

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current trend in economic development planning. Based-on Porter’s definition about industry cluster [3], in this study the cluster is “geographically proximate group of companies and associated institutions (such as universities, government agencies, and related association) in aparticular field, linked by commonalities and complementarities”. From the study of in 2005 [4] about the critical success factors in cluster development, first two critical success factors are collaboration in networking partnership and knowledge creation for innovative technology in the cluster which are about 78% and 74% of articles mentioned as success criteria. This knowledge is created throughvarious forms of local inter-organizational collaborative interaction [5]. Another key success factor that supports the cluster development is Cluster Development Agent (CDA). CDA is a person who conceptualizes the overall developmental strategy for a cluster and initiates implementation. He is also the facilitator between the various cluster players and the target cluster. From statistic in clustergreen book [6], 89% of successful clusters have full-time CDA. B. Knowledge Sharing and Collaboration in Cluster After the concept of industry cluster [2] was tangibly applied in many countries since 1998. Companies in the same industry trended to link to each other to maintain their competitiveness in the market and to gain benefits from being a member of the cluster. The major key successfactors are knowledge sharing and collaboration within the cluster. This knowledge was collected in form of tacit and explicit knowledge in experts and organizations within the cluster. Actually, knowledge is not a new idea [7] [8], as philosophers and scholars had been studying it for centuries. Due to the fact that the other three production factors (Land, Labor and Capital) were abundant,...