Ines Alves de Queiroz, M.Sc.
     Forschungszentrum Informatik an der Universität Karlsruhe (FZI)
     Karlsruhe
     Haid-und-Neu-Str. 10-14
     76131 Karlsruhe
     Germany
     Phone: 0721-9654-564
     Fax:     0721-9654-565
     queiroz@fzi.de

The pressure for shorter product life cycles, improved quality, increased variety and increased competition that face today’s manufacturing businesses create a relentless pressure for change and consequently the need for companies to stay abreast of the latest development in world best practices.
One area of work that serve to integrate a number of best practices is the area of supply chain management (SCM). SCM is the management of materials and information flows both within and between facilities which occurs in the context of procurement, manufacturing, sales, distribution of goods, information and services across the entire supply chain (SC).
The integration of configuration systems for supporting SCM of configurable products and services is still an open research issue. The importance of SCM is generally recognized. In this paper I argue that system development is now entering a new phase of maturity with the advent of the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software packages, and a new software concept. Future research opportunities are outlined.
Key words: supply chain management, enterprise resource planning, IT systems