供应链库存管理和共享信息的价值【外文翻译】

外文翻译

原文

Supply Chain Inventory Management and the Value of Shared Information

MaterialSource:/cgi/content/abstract/46/8/1032 Author: Ge´r ard P. Cachon • Marshall Fisher

In traditional supply chain inventory management, orders are the only information firms exchange, but information technology now allows firms to share demand and inventory date quickly and inexpensively.We study the value of sharing these data in a model with one supplier, N identical retailers,and stationary stochastic consumer demand.There are inventory holding costs and back-order penalty costs. We compare a traditional information policy that does not use shared information with a full information policy that does exploit shared information. In a numerical study we find that supply chain costs are 2.2% lower on average with the full information policy than with the traditional information policy, and the maximum difference is 12.1%. We also develop a simulation-based lower bound over all feasible policies. The cost difference between the traditional information policy and the lower bound is an upper bound on the value of information sharing:

In the same study, that difference is 3.4% on average, and no more than 13.8%. We contrast the value of information sharing with two other benefits of information technology, faster and cheaper order processing, which lead to shorter lead times and smaller batch sizes, respectively. In our sample, cutting lead times nearly in half reduces costs by 21% on average, and cutting batches in half reduces costs by 22% on average. For the settings we study, we conclude that implementing information technology to accelerate and smooth the physical flow of goods through a supply chain is significantly more valuable than using information technology to expand the flow of information.

(Supply Chain; Multi-Echelon Inventory Management; Periodic Review Policies; Electronic Data Interchange)

1. Introduction

Information technology has had a substantial impact on supply chains. Scanners collect sales data at the point-of-sale, and electronic data interchange (EDI)

allows these data to be shared immediately with all stages of the supply chain. The application of these technologies, especially in the grocery industry, has substantially lowered the time and cost to process an order, leading to impressive improvements in supply chain performance (see Cachon and Fisher 1997, Clark and Hammond 1997, Kurt Salmon Associates 1993).

As a result of these success stories, there is now a general belief within industry that capturing and sharing real-time demand information is the key to improved supply chain performance. The purpose of this research is to test this belief by rigorously measuring the value of information sharing and comparing this value to two other sources of supply chain improvement: reducing lead times and increasing delivery frequency by reducing shipment batch sizes. Note that the same information technology that facilitates information sharing also contributes to the reduction of lead times and shipment frequency by reducing the time and cost to process orders. Thus, the question addressed in here is not whether information technology improves supply chain performance, but how. Specifically, does the primary gain come from sharing information or from allowing products to flow more quickly and evenly in the supply chain?

We address this question within the context of a supply chain with one supplier and N identical retailers that face stationary stochastic consumer demand with a known distribution. There are fixed transportation times between locations, and shipment quantities equal a multiple of a base batch quantity. There are holding costs at all levels and back-order penalty costs at the lowest level. This model provides a reasonable representation of supply chains selling an established product under constant pricing conditions.

We consider two levels of information sharing. With traditional information sharing the supplier only observes the retailers’ orders. With full information sharing the supplier has immediate access to the retailers’ inventory data. We develop an inventory policy for each information sharing level. Reorder point policies are used with traditional information sharing. The retailers also use reorder point policies with full information, but the supplier does not. Instead, the supplier uses its additional information to better allocate inventory among the retailers and to improve its order decisions (i.e., to better time its own replenishments).

The difference between supply chain costs under traditional and full information is one measure of the value of shared information. However, there may exist even better policies for either information level, that is, optimal policies are