An important observation in supply chain management, known as the bullwhip effect, suggests that demand variability increases as one moves up a supply chain. In this paper we quantify this effect for simple, two-stage supply chains consisting of a single retailer and a single manufacturer. Our...

This paper presents a multistage supply chain model that is based on Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) time-series models. Given an ARIMA model of consumer demand and the lead times at each stage, it is shown that the orders and inventories at each stage are also ARIMA, and...

Using a simulated supply chain experiment based on the well-known "beer game," we examine how changes in order and delivery cycles, availability of shared point-of-sale (POS) information, and the pattern of customer demand affect supply chain efficiency. We find that speeding up cycle time is...

Unauthorized subcontracting — when suppliers outsource part of their production to a third party without the retailer's consent — has been common practice in the apparel industry and is often tied to non-compliant working conditions. Because retailers are unaware of the third party, the...

We develop a theory that shows signaling a firm's fundamental quality (e.g., its operational capabilities) to lenders through inventory transactions to be more efficient---it leads to less costly operational distortions---than signaling through loan requests, and we characterize how the...

The bullwhip effect is the amplification of demand variability along a supply chain: a company bullwhips if it purchases from suppliers more variably than it sells to customers. Such bullwhips (amplifications of demand variability) can lead to mismatches between demand and production and hence...

This paper studies supply chain demand variability in a model with one supplier and Nretailers that face stochastic demand. Retailers implement scheduled ordering policies: Orders occur at fixed intervals and are equal to some multiple of a fixed batch size. A method is presented that exactly...

Consider a supplier selling to multiple retailers. Demand varies across periods, but the supplier's capacity and wholesale price are fixed. If demand is high, the retailers' needs exceed capacity, and the supplier must implement an allocation mechanism to dole out production. We examine how the...

The tendency of orders to increase in variability as one moves up a supply chain is commonly known as the bullwhip effect. We study this phenomenon from a behavioral perspective in the context of a simple, serial, supply chain subject to information lags and stochastic demand. We conduct two...

The authors analyze the bullwhip effect in multistage, decentralized supply chains operated with linear and time-invariant inventory management policies; the focus is on robustness. The supply chain is modeled as a single-input, single-output control system driven by arbitrary customer demands....