Leveraging information sharing to configure supply chains

Abstract

As supply chains evolve beyond the confines of individual organizations, information sharing has become the holy grail in supply chain technology. Although the value of information sharing is well recognized, there is little research on how to use it to configure supply chains. This paper proposes a parameterized model to capture information sharing in a supply chain. By changing the parameters of this model, we actually adjust the degree of information sharing and create new supply chain configurations. Configurations are the means of responding to events or changes in supply chains in a timely manner. A complete example is used to demonstrate this methodology. We also perform simulation experiments to compare configurations and to understand the effect of information sharing on supply chain performance. Thus, we show how to achieve supply chain configurability by leveraging information sharing. A supply chain architecture which allows agility, adaptability and alignment of partner interests is also proposed based on this methodology. © 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.