A Study Of CTM-based Agricultural Supply Chain In Responding To Demand Fluctuations

Agricultural products closely relate to the people’s survival as integral parts of the human beings’daily life. With the improvement of the people’s living standards, consumers demand higher for the quality, nutrition and many other factors of agricultural products. Adjustment of agricultural structure has gradually turned the focus of agricultural development to the circulation of agricultural products. However, such common phenomena as excessive circulation processes, serious loss, and abnormally high logistics costs have restrained the healthy development of the agricultural supply chain in the present stage of China. In order to get rid of the drawbacks of China’s traditional supply chain agricultural products, it is significant to establish the supply chain in a new model which can not only promote the continued increase of agricultural producers, but also protect consumers’interests and safety. As a result, it has become the top priority to establish the operation mechanism based on supply chains’collaboration by studying the current situation of China’s agricultural supply chain and analyzing the primary cause of its low operation capacity. In this way, it is able to improve the operational efficiency and economic benefits of agricultural product supply chain.This paper which is based on the current situation of China’s agricultural products, starts with primary relevant concepts of agricultural product supply chain as well as its management, and subsequently compares the overseas and domestic research status in this field, through which it analyzes the status quo and problems of China’s traditional supply chain of agricultural products circulation. Furthermore, it analyzes the existing Supply chain cooperation model and establishes the agricultural supply chain simulation model on the base of the mode of Collaborative Transportation Management (CTM) which is a new type of supply chain management model. On this basis, the paper presents the simulation of agricultural product supply chain based on Collaborative Transportation Management (CTM) and that which is based on vendor-managed inventory (VMI) by using the ideas and methods of system dynamics modeling from the point of both systematic and dynamic. During the simulation analysis phase, agricultural products are divided into two categories according to whether affected by seasonal factors. In the demand-oriented agricultural product supply chain, different demand functions had been selected to simulate the evaluation index (such as the inventory levels of each node agribusiness, agricultural productivity, bullwhip effect and distributors for order fulfillment) which caused during the responding the demand fluctuations of agricultural product separately by two modes. Compared the results of simulation, it demonstrates that CTM-based agricultural supply chain is better than VMI-based agricultural supply chain in responding to demand fluctuations.This article provides a theoretical complement for the development of exerting supply chain management model and offers help for the practical application of the Collaborative Transportation Management. Meanwhile, it provides new methods and ideas for agribusiness CTM strategy.