An Empirical Study on the Factors Influencing Information Technology Utilization in Supply Chain Management: The case of Yazd's Tile Industry

Recent advances in information and communication technologies (ICT) have transformed Supply Chain Management (SCM). Global technological advancements, competitive and dynamic markets, changes in business processes, increasing expectations level of different stakeholders and demand for more value-added from customer side are only few reasons for change in current Supply Chain Management approach. Therefore, it is imperative that all companies apply appropriate policies along with the latest supply chain technologies to deal with new situations. Despite the unsatisfactory preceding reports on tile industry in Iran, availability of rich mineral resources, low cost energy, skilled manpower, and state support policies have boosted opportunities to the industry in terms of growth and market positioning in regional and global markets. However, because of high profitability of the business, local manufacturers are facing increasing competition from other countries that is considered as a serious threat for the future of Iran's tile industry. The aim of this paper is to study the factors influencing information technology use in supply chain management for tile industry in Yazd province. Thus, based on the existing literature determinants of IT utilizing in SCM were investigated and then these criteria were ranked based on manager's perception by using Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) methods, fuzzy analytic hierarchy process, and technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS).