The Structural Cause And Simulation Analysis Of Bullwhip Effect

Firms have been gradually regarding the competing as part of a supply chain against other supply chains, rather than as a single firm against other individual firms since the 1980s.It bring much new hard work for the supply chain management. Supply chain management has been the important subject all over the world. Interest in the bullwhip effect, the peculiar phenomenon in supply chain management, has steadily increased when it is regarded as the major cause of supply chain inefficiency. It is important to analyze the bullwhip effect systemically and comprehensively.Bullwhip effect in supply chain is discussed in this thesis. Its structure is arranged as follow: The first chapter introduces background and significance of the research as well as the results of previous research. The second chapter introduces some basic theories about supply chain and discusses the definition, harms, the causes and some control measures of the bullwhip effect. The third chapter reviews"beer game"briefly and then it demonstrates the existence of bullwhip effect by simulation. The fourth chapter develops four models which have different SC nodes and different delay time and it demonstrates the dialectical relationship between them and bullwhip effect. The fifth chapter develops a realistic netted supply chain and analyses the characteristic of it by simulation. The sixth chapter takes market demand which have normal distribution or uniform distribution as an example and then it demonstrates the dialectical relationship between related factors such as mean and variance and bullwhip effect. The seventh chapter compares and analyzes influence of different Ordering Policies on bullwhip effect and it demonstrates validity of VMI in weakening the bullwhip effect. At last, this article points out some other parts that need to be studied further and makes a predictive prospect.