供应链库存管理和共享信息的价值外文翻译.docx

1、供应链库存管理和共享信息的价值外文翻译外文翻译原文Supply Chain Inventory Management and the Value of Shared InformationMaterialSource:http:/mansci.journal.informs.org/cgi/content/abstract/46/8/1032Author: Ge rard P. Cachon Marshall FisherIn traditional supply chain inventory management, orders are the only information firms

2、 exchange, but information technology now allows firms to share demand and inventory date quickly and inexpensively. We study the value of sharing these data in a model with one supplier, N identical retailers,and stationary stochastic consumer demand.There are inventory holding costs and back-order

3、 penalty costs. We compare a traditional information policy that does not use shared information with a full information policy that does exploit shared information. In a numerical study we find that supply chain costs are 2.2% lower on average with the full information policy than with the traditio

4、nal information policy, and the maximum difference is 12.1%. We also develop a simulation-based lower bound over all feasible policies. The cost difference between the traditional information policy and the lower bound is an upper bound on the value of information sharing: In the same study, that di

5、fference is 3.4% on average, and no more than 13.8%. We contrast the value of information sharing with two other benefits of information technology, faster and cheaper order processing, which lead to shorter lead times and smaller batch sizes, respectively. In our sample, cutting lead times nearly i

6、n half reduces costs by 21% on average, and cutting batches in half reduces costs by 22% on average. For the settings we study, we conclude that implementing information technology to accelerate and smooth the physical flow of goods through a supply chain is significantly more valuable than using in

7、formation technology to expand the flow of information.(Supply Chain; Multi-Echelon Inventory Management; Periodic Review Policies; Electronic Data Interchange) 1. IntroductionInformation technology has had a substantial impact on supply chains. Scanners collect sales data at the point-of-sale, and

8、electronic data interchange (EDI) allows these data to be shared immediately with all stages of the supply chain. The application of these technologies, especially in the grocery industry, has substantially lowered the time and cost to process an order, leading to impressive improvements in supply c

9、hain performance (see Cachon and Fisher 1997, Clark and Hammond 1997, Kurt Salmon Associates 1993).As a result of these success stories, there is now a general belief within industry that capturing and sharing real-time demand information is the key to improved supply chain performance. The purpose

10、of this research is to test this belief by rigorously measuring the value of information sharing and comparing this value to two other sources of supply chain improvement: reducing lead times and increasing delivery frequency by reducing shipment batch sizes. Note that the same information technolog

11、y that facilitates information sharing also contributes to the reduction of lead times and shipment frequency by reducing the time and cost to process orders. Thus, the question addressed in here is not whether information technology improves supply chain performance, but how. Specifically, does the

12、 primary gain come from sharing information or from allowing products to flow more quickly and evenly in the supply chain?We address this question within the context of a supply chain with one supplier and N identical retailers that face stationary stochastic consumer demand with a known distributio

13、n. There are fixed transportation times between locations, and shipment quantities equal a multiple of a base batch quantity. There are holding costs at all levels and back-order penalty costs at the lowest level. This model provides a reasonable representation of supply chains selling an establishe

14、d product under constant pricing conditions.We consider two levels of information sharing. With traditional information sharing the supplier only observes the retailers orders. With full information sharing the supplier has immediate access to the retailers inventory data. We develop an inventory po

15、licy for each information sharing level. Reorder point policies are used with traditional information sharing. The retailers also use reorder point policies with full information, but the supplier does not. Instead, the supplier uses its additional information to better allocate inventory among the

16、retailers and to improve its order decisions (i.e., to better time its own replenishments).The difference between supply chain costs under traditional and full information is one measure of the value of shared information. However, there may exist even better policies for either information level, t

17、hat is, optimal policies are unknown for each level. To account for this possible bias, we develop a simulation- based lower bound over all feasible policies, no matter what the level of information sharing is. The cost difference between traditional information and the lower bound is the maximum va

18、lue of shared information.In a numerical study with a wide range of parameter values we find that information sharing reduces supply chain costs by 2.2% on average, and the gap between traditional information policy cost and the lower bound is 3.4% on average. Cutting lead time by nearly half (from

19、five to three periods) reduces costs by 21% on average, and cutting batch size in half reduces supply chain costs by 22%. We recognize that this comparison is meaningful only if those lead time and batch size reductions can be reasonably expected from the implementation of information technology. In

20、 fact, we did observe comparable reductions at Campbell Soup Company when it implemented information technology to improve its supply chain.1 There has also been other documentation on the impact of information technology in the grocery industry: Barilla, the worlds largest pasta producer, reduced i

21、ts lead time from over one week to two days (Harvard Business School case 9-694-046); and H.E.B., a large grocery chain based in Texas, eliminated 6 to 10 days from its lead time (Harvard Business School case9-195-125). We conclude that while information sharing does reduce costs, simply flowing goo

22、ds through the supply chain more quickly and more evenly produces an order of magnitude greater improvement.2. Literature ReviewThe following papers show how sharing demand and inventory data can improve the suppliers order quantity decisions in models with known and stationary retailer demand: Bour

23、land et al. (1996), Chen (1998), Gavirneni et al. (1999), and Aviv and Federgruen (1998). Lee et al. (2000) use shared information to improve the suppliers order quantity decisions in a serial system with a known autoregressive demand process. Liljenberg (1996) studies how to use shared information

24、to improve the suppliers allocation of inventory among the retailers. In our model shared information is exploited for both uses: better supplier replenishments and better allocations to the retailers.We focus on sharing demand and inventory data, but there are other data that can be shared in a sup

25、ply chain. Gavirneni et al. (1999) measure the benefit of sharing the parameters of the retailers ordering policy with the supplier. Aviv (1998) explores the benefits of sharing forecasts for future demand.In our model, as in the other studies mentioned, it is assumed that information is always shar

26、ed truthfully. Cachon and Lariviere (1997) study forecast sharing when the forecast provider has an incentive to provide an overly optimistic forecast of demand.Both Lee et al. (2000) and Gavirneni et al. (1999) assume there exists a perfectly reliable exogenous source of inventory; information shar

27、ing has no impact on the retailer because its orders are always received in full after a fixed number of periods. In the other papers, as in our model, the supplier is the only source of inventory. Therefore, information sharing may impact the retailers by changing the suppliers order quantities or

28、allocations.Gavirneni et al. (1999) and Aviv and Federgruen (1998) allow for limited supplier capacity, whereas capacity is unrestricted in our model and in the other papers.The reported benefits of information sharing vary considerably. Liljenberg (1996) finds that better allocation lowers supply c

29、hain costs by 0% to 3.9%. Chen (1998) finds that supply chain costs are lowered up to 9%, and on average by 1.8%. Aviv and Federgruen (1998) report benefits of 0%5%. In contrast, Lee et al. (2000) find that information sharing lowered supply chain costs by about 23% in their scenario with the highes

30、t demand nonstationarity. However, Graves (1999) studies a similar model, with the exception that there is no outside inventory source, and concludes that information sharing provides no benefit to the supply chain. Gavirneni et al. (1999) report that sharing the retailers demand data reduced the su

31、ppliers cost by 1%35%. The impact on the supply chains cost would be lower because information sharing in their model has no impact on the retailers costs.There is other research related to our work. Lee et al. (1997) find that sharing information reduces the suppliers demand variance, which should

32、benefit the supply chain, but they do not quantitatively measure this benefit. There are many studies that investigate a supply chain model with one supplier, N retailers, stochastic consumer demand, and batch ordering. Some of them assume traditional information (e.g., Axester 1993, Cachon 1995, Ch

33、en and Samroengraja 1996, Lee and Moinzadeh 1986, Svoronos and Zipkin 1988), while others assume full information (e.g., Chen and Zheng 1997, Graves 1996, Mc Gavin et al. 1993). Because of different assumptions and test problems, it is not possible to meaningfully compare supply chain costs across those two sets of studies. Several res