A general theory of top-down cascades in complex networks is described which explains two similar types of perturbation amplifications in the complex networks of business supply chains (the ‘bullwhip effect’) and ecological food webs (’trophic cascades’). The dependence of the strength of the effects on the interaction strength and covariance in the dynamics as well as the graph structure allow...

This paper describes the impact of two different information sharing strategies – decentralized and centralized information – combined with two inventory control policies – min-max and stock-to-demand inventory control – on the bullwhip effect. To investigate and measure this impact, simulation models are developed using the Arena 5.0 software package for a four-stage supply chain, consisting o...

VMI (Vendor Managed Inventory) system is known as an effective mechanism to reduce the bullwhip effect between suppliers and buyers, by switching the responsibility of inventory management from buyers to suppliers. Although most attempts of VMI implementation have been successful, there were some failure cases such as in South Korea. VMI system was beneficial only to the buyer and hurt the long...

In this paper, we study the influence of seasonal demands and forecasts on performance an Automatic Pipeline, Variable Inventory, Order-Based, Production Control System (APVIOBPCS) using linear control theory. particular, consider a system that uses forecast based no-trend, additive-seasonality exponential-smoothing model, compare its to equivalent simple exponential smoothing. We find with for...