Title: Managing Bullwhip-induced risks in supply chains

Authors: Denis R. Towill, Stephen M. Disney

Addresses: Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, Aberconway Building, Colum Drive, Cardiff CF10 3EU, Wales, UK. ' Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, Aberconway Building, Colum Drive, Cardiff CF10 3EU, Wales, UK

Abstract: We discuss the exploitation of a well-established replenishment rule, the order-up-to policy, to control the supply chain risk resulting from the Bullwhip effect. To avoid this risk within supply chains, two specific recommendations are highly important. First, we provide strong evidence that availability of high fidelity up-to-date delivery lead-time information is essential. This inevitably requires transparency and trust between various |players| within the supply chain. For many practical reasons this is easier to recommend than to actually achieve. Secondly, such reliable data needs to be automatically fed into the replenishment system to enable it to function in an adaptive mode. This step offers a reasonable guarantee of a well-controlled performance. It is also advisable that at the design stage, replenishment rule parameters should be set so that |conservative| operation is achieved. The new theoretical advances described in the paper are validated via simulation models of the delivery process.

Keywords: automatic pipeline inventory; order-based production systems; APIOBPCS; bullwhip effect; simulation; inventory variance; lead-time estimation errors; lead times; stability; supply chain management; SCM; supply chain risk; risk management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJRAM.2008.021376

International Journal of Risk Assessment and Management, 2008 Vol.10 No.3, pp.238 - 262

Published online: 20 Nov 2008 *

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