Comparison of push and pull control strategies for supply network management in make-to-stock environment

Because operational planning and control (OPC) decisions by one company in a supply network impact decisions at other companies, decisions should not be made independently but should be coordinated. However, there exists little guidance on how to cooperatively plan and control inter-firm operations. More research is needed to examine OPC strategies for integrated planning and control of manufacturing and distribution operations in a supply network.; The primary objective of this study is to explore the performance differences of “push” and “pull” OPC strategies. The pull strategy is more common in current supply networks. The push strategy requires more integrative approach in generating the plans. This project developed a realistic OPC software system and used it to investigate the impact of the push and pull strategies on total inventory, throughput, and customer service level under different environmental conditions (forecast error and levels of inventory buffer) in a make-to-stock environment.; The results suggest that control strategy, forecast error, and levels of inventory buffer all significantly affect each of the performance measures. Under all combinations of different conditions of inventory buffer level and forecast error, push outperforms pull in terms of throughput and customer service level while pull outperforms push in term of total inventory. In terms of throughput and customer service level, push is more sensitive to forecast error but less sensitive to levels of inventory buffer than pull.