Traditional and collaborative supply chains. Bullwhip effect analysis and other related costs

Abstract

The Bullwhip effect is one of the main 
causes of instability in the management 
demand process along the Supply 
Chain. Nowadays there are different 
supply chain management structures 
based on collaboration among the 
companies which integrate the same 
chain. That collaboration may reduce 
the Bullwhip Effect. In this paper some 
of said structures are modelled and 
simulated under Vensim© software, 
in particular, Vendor Managed 
Inventory (VMI) and Electronic Point 
of Sales (EPOS). Simulation results 
are compared to those offered by 
Traditional Supply Chain. Moreover 
these mentioned Supply Chain 
Management Models are built under 
Systems Dynamic Methodology, which 
allow the manager to recreate different 
management scenarios and choose 
those which match with the company 
targets (tactic or operative ones).