The Ripple Effect Of Structure-based Supply Chain

Since the later years of 20th century, enterprisers began to recognize that Supply Chain Management is an important way to increase performance of enterprise. SCM also became a focus in the academic environment. Supply Chain Structure is an important aspect of SCM but has had not enough research on it. Based on the SCM practice, this paper opens the black box of nodes in Supply Chain and discovers the rule of the internal functions in nodes exterior. Using Ripple Effect ,which had been brought forward only in 2002, as an index of Supply Chain performance, this paper quantitative analyses a three-stage simple Supply Chain by establishing structure models before and after transformation, corresponding mathematics models to explain the relationship between structure transformation, Ripple Effect and Supply Chain performance. This paper give new sought of SCM and promote developing of Ripple Effect Theory. It can afford assist to managers or creators of SC in their work.This paper studies Supply Chain Structure from systematic viewpoint by analyzing its characteristics and sorting SC Structure according to various standards. After that, it shows various structures SC's performance and behavior. Structure analysis should be going on from two angles which are layer and stage. Combining with these two angles, structure redundancy of SC can be found which has been neglected in past studies.As an index of SC performance, Ripple Effect theory is developed in some extent from this paper. Different between ripple transfer periods and ripple effect periods is defined. Elasticity of Absolute Ripple Effect and Cross Elasticity of Absolute Ripple Effect are defined. On the basis of impact situation, this paper defined pot impact and plane impact, single impact and continuous impact. It defines impact cycle and ripple cycle. Ripple cycle is an inherence character of SC and will not various by various impact cycles. It points out the System Ripple Effect of SC and found that continuous impact can restrain the Inherent Ripple Effect. According to these results, a simple framework of Ripple Effect Theory has been founded.