Research On The Information Coordination And Performance Of Coal Supply Chain Based On Information Sharing

In the development process of coal industry in china, there exist some problems in coal-related industries and its supply chains such as its inefficiency and poor competitiveness due to the lag in management theories and management models. In the face of dynamic market conditions, complex clients’demands and economic globalization, "horizontal integration" management will be applied to strengthen the supply chain coordination, which has become an essential approach to obtain competitive advantage for coal industry and its supply chain. Information sharing, as a prerequisite for the coordination of logistics, information flow and capital flow, plays an important role in coordinated operation of supply chain. Meanwhile, information coordination degree is the key factor affecting the overall performance of supply chain and "coordination investment decision-making". Therefore, the relationship between information coordination and performance attracts much attention from academia and business world. From present study in China, empirical studies on how information coordination degree evaluation and information coordination factors impact on performance are seldom carried out and if any, static research methods are more adopted. Dynamic research methods are rarely applied, which cannot meet the research needs of complicated dynamic system and result in lack of guiding significance to management practices.According to what have been mentioned, this paper focuses on performance and information coordination on supply chain under information sharing conditions and explores further how the information coordination factors on supply chain affect the performance and the relationship between them.The first three chapters are the foundation of the research. In Chapter One, significance of the research in information coordination on supply chain and performance are presented according to theories of supply chain management and present situation of its development. Based on reviewing and summarizing the research literature home and abroad, this paper proposes research contents, research framework, research ideas and research approach. In Chapter Two, some core concepts are defined, such as information sharing, information coordination of supply chain, coal supply chain and coordinated performance, theoretical framework of this article are constructed by integrated use of the fundamental theories such as information theory, synergy theory, coordination of supply chain and dynamic analysis of system impact factors. Chapter Three describes the structural features of coal supply chain involved in this paper (coal distribution enterprises as the core enterprise of four-level supply chain network structure) and proposes the establishment of core enterprise-oriented information sharing mode and analyzes the basic characteristics of coordinated supply chain and network organization operation.In the main part of the paper, information coordination degree measurement, coordinated performance evaluation and how information coordination factor impact performance are studied through model construction, empirical research and simulation analysis. In Chapter Four, Mehmet’s "DSCC" approach is referenced and optimized in order to construct the coal supply chain information coordination index system and evaluation model and carry out an empirical study based on the 9 supply chains operation data from the case of enterprise supply chain network. In Chapter Five, on the basis of the establishment of performance evaluation system of coal supply coordination and by using a combination of qualitative and quantitative fuzzy AHP, comprehensive evaluation and empirical research are carried out for the operation performance of the supply chains selected by the case companies. The empirical results from these two chapters show that coal supply chain information coordination degree and coordinated performance are positively correlated. Besides, by using the impulse response analysis, information coordination single factor which affects operation of the supply chain system are under impulse analysis and draws the coefficients between factors and coefficients between factors and system. In Chapter Six, the system dynamics simulation is applied to the study of how information coordination on coal supply chain affects coordinated performance and through comparative analysis of unsteady relationship between coordination investment and performance under variable conditions, change speed of system coordination performance are contrasted under different conditions and strength ratios from information coordination factors to coordinated performance are calculated. And thus, comparative analysis are carried out in order to provide further scientific data and decision support for coordination management decision-making on coal supply chain.Based on the research above, the main conclusions of this paper are summarized as follows:1) Information sharing plays an important role in the information coordination operation on coal supply chain. Establishing the core enterprise-oriented information sharing service platform and applying the core enterprise information hosted model are more conductive to the strengthening its agility, stability and information sharing throughout the supply chain system.2) The empirical research results show that there is a positive correlation between information coordination degree on coal supply chain and performance. The higher the degree of information coordination is, the higher the supply chain performance levels are. The lower the degree of information coordination is, the lower the supply chain performance levels are. Impulsive response analysis shows that the change of information coordination single factor has an effect on the other factors and overall system performance. Among the factors, factors such as sensitivity, information categories and the breadth of information have greater impact.3) According to the value of weighing factor by the impulse response analysis and simulation analysis, the strength of information coordination factors on the overall system performance is ranked. Meanwhile, the study found that by any change of information coordination investment proportion of each subsystem, the change speed of system performance levels is different. Increasing the proportion of investment in the core business and customers will improve the performance most significantly. Compared with improving individual investment proportion for processors and customers, improving individual investment proportion for core enterprises will bring about more obvious performance improvement. However, the sole improvement of mine investment will reduce the overall rate of performance improvement. Thus, giving priority to factors with high strength rate and improving coordination information investment ratio of subsystem can improve the system coordination performance level. With equal investment increase, incremental in performance levels in different periods are different. The initial performance improvement is not obvious; the most significant improvement appears in the medium term; the effect in the late phase will gradually slow down.As a whole, through empirical research and simulation analysis of coal supply chain, this paper discusses how information coordination factors affect coordinated performance and further illustrates the positive relationship between information coordination and performance. This paper explores the research methods and provides a new research path for the proposition analysis of information coordination on supply chain and performance, and enriches and develops the coordination management theories and methodology of supply chain.