The e-MAX system was designed, developed, and deployed as a joint effort of the Department of Information Technology and Philips Lighting Poland.

Philips Lighting Poland is a part of Royal Philips Electronics - the world leader in the lighting industry. It runs several factories worldwide, including eight in Poland. The headquarters of Philips Lighting Central and Eastern Europe Division is located in Pila, a city in north-western Poland.

In 1998 Philips Lighting Poland started to cooperate with the Department of Information Technology to work out electronic business solutions for the company. The effect of this cooperation was business processes reengineering concerning sale activities, and development and deployment of the Internet e-Procurement System called e-MAX.

The e-MAX system is meant for Philips Lighting authorized business partners to let them doing business with Philips in a new manner. The e-MAX system permits not only to place orders, but first and foremost monitor and negotiate order fulfillment conditions. According to the results of research conducted by DIT, the ordering processes in the wholesale commerce are different from the ones in the retail commerce. In the e-MAX approach applied to wholesale commerce, all the orders are considered conjointly as a process of continuous negotiations between two parties - the producer (here: Philips Lighting) and the customer (here: Philips Lighting business partner). These negotiations are required due to availability of products, delivery value and volume, and customer financial conditions. For instance, some products may be immediately available, if they are in stock, or after some time needed to get them from another factory, otherwise. Delivery volume must be optimized due to truck capacity. Delivery value cannot exceed the available customer credit.

The e-MAX system is operational since the summer of 1999. After one year 60% of Philips Lighting turnover in Poland was going through this system. At the beginning of the year 2000 Philips Lighting Poland decided to establish the Russian and English language version to serve customers from Central and Eastern Europe. It was started in the summer of 2000.

Recently, Department of Information Technology and Philips Lighting Poland again joined their forces to work out the electronic business solution for the whole region remaining under Philips Lighting Poland management. The project is called e-MAX-MultiLingual and is meant for 30 countries from Central and Eastern Europe and Middle East to serve customers from these countries in their national languages.

Technologie