| The increasing complexity of supply chain leads to the increasing trend of interactions among supply chain nodes. But the complexity will also cause the increase of uncertainty in supply chain. Bullwhip Effect is a typical complex phenomenon caused by the uncertainty in supply chain. It misleads production schedule, causes too much inventory investment as well as useless transportation, all of which will have negative effect on service level and the efficiency loss in supply chain. Bullwhip Effect is the most performance index in supply chain structure and operation, so it is very important to closely study the cause, quantization method and control of Bullwhip Effect.So based on the current researches, this paper studies Bullwhip Effect from the angle of complexity. Taking Bullwhip Effect as subject and complexity theory as platform, the goal of this research is to uncover the causes and quantization method of Bullwhip Effect from the angle of complexity, at last to draw conclusions about how to control it, which can provide reference for the control of information flow in supply chain, as well as prove both academic and practical value of this research.Main conclusions of this paper:firstly, this paper uncovered five complexity causes for the creation of Bullwhip Effect, which are uncertainty of demands, variable nodes in supply chain, diversity of gambling, complexity of supply chain structure and nonlinear time delay. Secondly, this paper gave the measurement of information entropy for supply chain binary and multiple models. Based on supply chain catenarian model, this paper measured the complexity of supply chain nodes with entropy, this result can be seen as the measure of the Bullwhip Effect. At last, based on previous studies, the controlling methods are concluded as following:induce the uncertainty of demands, build long-term cooperation mechanism, avoid gambling activities among partners, restructure the supply chain and cut down lead time. |
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