RISK MANAGEMENT IN SUPPLY CHAINS

by
Sanjay Kumar
APPROVED BY SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE:
___________________________________________
Kathryn E. Stecke, Chair
___________________________________________
Holly S. Lutze
___________________________________________
Divakar Rajamani
____________________________________________
Thomas G. Schmitt
Copyright 2009
Sanjay Kumar
All Rights Reserved
Memories of Vishnu
RISK MANAGEMENT IN SUPPLY CHAINS
by
SANJAY KUMAR (B.E, M.TECH., M.S.)
DISSERTATION
Presented to the Faculty of
The University of Texas at Dallas
in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements
for the Degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN
MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS
December, 2009




UMI Number: 3391748






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v
PREFACE
This dissertation (or thesis) was produced in accordance with guidelines which permit the
inclusion as part of the dissertation (or thesis) the text of an original paper or papers
submitted for publication. The dissertation (or thesis) must still conform to all other
requirements explained in the Guide for the Preparation of Master's Theses and Doctoral
Dissertations at The University of Texas at Dallas. It must include a comprehensive
abstract, a full introduction and literature review and a final overall conclusion. Additional
material (procedural and design data as well as descriptions of equipment) must be provided
in sufficient detail to allow a clear and precise judgment to be made of the importance and
originality of the research reported.
It is acceptable for this dissertation (or thesis) to include as chapters authentic copies of
papers already published, provided these meet type size, margin and legibility requirements.
In such cases, connecting texts which provide logical bridges between different manuscripts
are mandatory. Where the student is not the sole author of a manuscript, the student is
required to make an explicit statement in the introductory material to that manuscript
describing the student's contribution to the work and acknowledging the contribution of the
other author(s). The signatures of the Supervising Committee which precede all other
material in the dissertation (or thesis) attest to the accuracy of this statement.
vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my deep and sincere gratitude for everyone who helped me in
completing this dissertation. Foremost, it is difficult to overstate my gratitude to my Ph.D.
supervisor Kathryn E. Stecke for her invaluable guidance and encouragement. I am also
thankful for her unswerving support, patience, and temperament, which were keys in
completion of this dissertation.
I am deeply indebted by the guidance and support of Dr. Thomas G. Schmitt of the
University of Washington Seattle. His wide knowledge and logical way of thinking have
been of great value for me. His personal guidance has provided a good basis for the present
thesis. A significant portion of this dissertation is based on my work with Dr. Thomas G.
Schmitt and Dr. Fred G. Glover of the University of Colorado at Boulder. I am grateful to
Dr. Fred Glover for helping me learn adaptive search methods.
Other members of my dissertation committee have served varied and extremely useful roles
in my development as a scholar and the development of this thesis. I thank Dr. Holly Lutze
for helping me with the job searching process. I also appreciate her help in wholeheartedly
sharing all her teaching material and tips. I have also benefited from Dr. Divakar Rajamanis
class on practical and applied aspects of supply chain management.
I would like to acknowledge the financial support from the School of Management, the
University of Texas at Dallas. The support provided by Sophia and Barbara is also
appreciated.
vii
Most importantly, none of this would have been possible without the love and support of my
family and wife Renee. My very special thanks to my parents whom I owe everything. Thank
you for everything.
My studies in Dallas would not have been the same without the diversions provided by all
my student-colleagues in the School of Management. I am particularly thankful to Anna,
Arnold, Di, Emre, Gan, Peter, Sam, Satya, Sirong, Subodha, and Yue.
Finally, the acknowledgements would not be complete without a heart felt thanks to Vishnu
Manikumar, my dearest friend to whom this dissertation is dedicated. He was the most
valuable friend I will ever have. Vishnu, you will always be with us.
August, 2009
viii
RISK MANAGEMENT IN SUPPLY CHAINS
Publication No. ___________________
Sanjay Kumar, Ph.D.
The University of Texas at Dallas, 2009
Supervising Professor: Kathryn E. Stecke
Many supply chain models and studies have been designed for a certain world. In reality,
uncertainty caused by disruptions and their consequences have underlined the need for
models that address planning and operational decisions under disruptions. This dissertation
studies ordering and planning decisions in a multi-stage supply chain under disruptions.
In the first of the three essays, we collect and compile data and show that there has been a
marked increase in both the frequency and economic losses from catastrophes. U.S. business
interests are particularly vulnerable to terrorist attacks. A catastrophe classification
framework that matches different types of catastrophes to a variety of infrastructural
components of supply chains is proposed. We propose strategies that can decrease the
vulnerability of a supply chain. Potential benefits from mitigating strategies during normal
times are also investigated. We also identify 16 research problems and areas that should be
addressed to create resiliency in supply chains. In second essay we address one of these
problems, which is related to relastic modelling and understanding the long term
consequences of disruptions and popular disruption mitigation strategies.
ix
We conduct a study of disruptive effects as part of a large-scale study launched by Sandia
National Laboratories. The essay involves case studies of electronics firms to reveal the
structure and complexity of supply chains, prior disruptions, and mitigation strategies in use.
We identify three vital metrics as drivers of performance. Experiments demonstrate that an
objective function, which applies costs to the performance metrics, can be quite ill-behaved.
We find that order expediting, often used to mitigate disruptions, can induce bullwhip effects
that hurt system performance. While increased information and flexibility to react are
generally desirable, we observe that it is also easy to overreact, with undesirable
consequences. The study motivates the use of metaheuristic methods as an alternative to
analytical modelling. In third essay develop these metaheuristic methods.
Adaptive and evolutionary metaheuristics search methods are explored for their effectiveness
in searching ordering decisions in a multi stage supply chain. Adaptive search was shown to
be superior to evolutionary or line search methods. The performance of these methods under
various scenarios related to disruptions and seasonality is also reported.
x
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface..................................................................................................................................v
Acknowledgements..............................................................................................................vi
Abstract..............................................................................................................................viii
List of Figures....................................................................................................................xiii
List of Tables......................................................................................................................xv
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................1
1.1 Sources of Supply Chain Disruptions, Factors that Breed Vulnerability,
and Mitigating Strategies .............................................................................2
1.2 Modeling and Analyzing Economic Consequences of Supply Chain
Disruptions...................................................................................................3
1.3 Adaptive Search Methods for Ordering Decisions in Multi-stage Supply
Chains.. ........................................................................................................3
CHAPTER 2 SOURCES OF SUPPLY CHAIN DISRUPTIONS, FACTORS THAT
BREED VULNERABILITY, AND MITIGATING STRATEGIES...........5
2.1 Introduction..................................................................................................5
2.2 Catastrophes.................................................................................................8
2.2.1 Intentional Acts ................................................................................9
2.2.2 Accidents........................................................................................13
2.2.3 Natural Calamities..........................................................................14
2.3 Factors that Cause Vulnerability in a Supply Chain..................................18
2.4 Catastrophe Classification .........................................................................20
2.5 Catastrophe Mitigation...............................................................................24
2.5.1 Proactive Strategies........................................................................24
2.5.2 Advance Warning Strategies..........................................................26
2.5.3 Coping Strategies ...........................................................................27
2.5.4 Cost/Benefit Trade-offs of Mitigation Strategies...........................30
xi
2.5.5 Selection of Mitigation Strategies..................................................31
2.6 Research Problems in Disruptions Management .......................................33
2.7 Conclusions................................................................................................41
CHAPTER 3 MODELING AND ANALYZING ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF
SUPPLY CHAIN DISRUPTIONS............................................................43
3.1 Introduction................................................................................................43
3.2 Literature Review.......................................................................................45
3.3 Bridging Macroeconomic and Operational Decision-making...................49
3.4 Key Modeling Issues..................................................................................51
3.4.1 Key Issue 1: A Reasonable Baseline for the Supply Chain
Structure........ .................................................................................51
3.4.2 Key Issue 2: Inventory and Disruption Logic ................................55
3.4.3 Key Issue 3: Performance Metrics .................................................59
3.4.4 Key Issue 4: System Performance with a Disruption.....................60
3.4.5 Key Issue 5: System Performance under Expediting.....................64
3.4.6 Key Issue 6: System Performance and Applicability of
Analytics, Heuristics......................................................................66
3.4.7 Key Issue 7: Genetic Search versus Line Search...........................69
3.5 Conclusions and Future Directions............................................................71
CHAPTER 4 ADAPTIVE SEARCH METHODS FOR ORDERING DECISIONS IN
MULTI-STAGE SUPPLY CHAINS.........................................................77
4.1 Introduction................................................................................................77
4.2 Literature Review.......................................................................................80
4.3 The Supply Chain Model ...........................................................................85
4.3.1 Supply Chain Structure and Activities...........................................85
4.3.2 Supply Chain Parameters and the Inventory Logic........................86
4.3.3 Ordering Policies............................................................................91
4.3.4 Objective Function and Decision Variables...................................92
4.4 Description of Metaheuristic Search Methods...........................................93
4.4.1 Fibonacci Search ............................................................................94
4.4.2 Genetic Search................................................................................94
4.4.3 Tabu Search Strategies for Supply Chain Applications .................96
4.5 Results......................................................................................................102
xii
4.5.1 Implementation of Metaheuristics................................................103
4.5.2 Cost Comparison between Search Methods under Static
Demand........................................................................................106
4.6 Comparison between Static and Dynamic Policies .................................110
4.6.1 Adaptive Search Methods under Seasonal Demand ....................111
4.6.2 Adaptive Search Methods under Disruptions...............................115
4.7 Extensions to a Global Supply Chain ......................................................118
4.8 Conclusions..............................................................................................119
CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSIONS......................................................................................121
APPENDIX A: THE SANDIA AGENT-BASED MODEL............................................125
APPENDIX B: CASE STUDIES OF ELECTRONICS COMPANIES IN THE
PACIFIC NORTHWEST.......................................................................132
APPENDIX C: CASE INTERVIEW PROTOCOL ........................................................148
BIBLIOGRAPHY.............................................................................................................157
VITA
xiii
LIST OF FIGURES
Number Page
Figure 2.1 Total number of attacks worldwide............................................................... 10
Figure 2.2 Percentage attacks on various classes of targets from 1991 to 2003.............10
Figure 2.3 Percentage attacks on U.S. business interests to total attacks on U.S.
Interests......................................................................................................... 11
Figure 2.4 Average yearly accidents and the yearly damage caused..............................14
Figure 2.5 Average natural catastrophes reported and the yearly economic losses
caused............................................................................................................15
Figure 2.6 Total natural disasters in the U.S...................................................................16
Figure 2.7 Total number of disasters in the U.S. with economic losses exceeding one
billion dollars.................................................................................................17
Figure 2.8 Components at various stages of a supply chain............................................21
Figure 3.1 Prototypical supply chain...............................................................................55
Figure 3.2 Performance effects of a disruption...............................................................63
Figure 3.3 Shape of total cost function........................................................................... 68
Figure 4.1 Sample convergence.................................................................................... 109
Figure 4.2 Average convergence in 100 runs............................................................... 109
Figure 4.3 Seasonal demand function........................................................................... 113
Figure 4.4 Order-up-to levels for echelon 1 under seasonal demand........................... 115
Figure 4.5 Demand function with disruptions in final customer demand.....................117
Figure 4.6 Order-up-to levels for echelon 1 under a disruption demand......................118
Figure A.1 The N-ABLE enterprise agent ....................................................................128
xiv
Figure A.2 Example of regional shortages caused by N-ABLE simulation of Hurricane
Katrina.........................................................................................................130
Figure B.1 Case study supply chain structures .............................................................133
xv
LIST OF TABLES
Number Page
Table 2.1 International terrorist attacks by region...........................................................11
Table 2.2 Supply chain practices and their effect on vulnerability causing factors.........18
Table 2.3 Severity and possibility of effects of a catastrophe..........................................23
Table 2.4 Interrelationship of strategies and catastrophe types .......................................34
Table 2.5 Interrelationship of strategies and vulnerability breeding factors ...................36
Table 3.1 Case summaries ...............................................................................................54
Table 3.2 Various costs at two levels each ......................................................................69
Table 3.3 Results of Line and Genetic search under various cost combinations.............71
Table 4.1 Cost comparison of various metaheuristics solution methods........................105
Table 4.2 Percentage cost comparison...........................................................................106
Table 4.3 Consistency of metaheuristics methods.........................................................107
Table 4.4 Sample results................................................................................................108
Table 4.5 Performance of ordering policies under seasonal demand ............................114
Table 4.6 Percentage improvements in using dynamic policies....................................114
Table 4.7 Performance of ordering policies under disruptions.......................................117
Table 4.8 Percentage improvements in using dynamic policies....................................118
1
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Real-world applications of supply chains often experience significant economic
repercussions as a result of disruptions. There have been specualtions that such disruptions
are increasingly affecting supply chain performance. Despite disruptions having a low
probability of occurrence, there is a good chance overall of something big and unexpected to
happen. These events could be costly and can impact the performance for a long time. This
underlines the need to develop supply chain models to manage disruptions.
This thesis includes three essasy on closely related aspects of supply chain
management under disruptions. In this dissertation we start with identification of various
sources that have resulted in increased disruptions in supply chains. We also identify
strategies that can be used to mitigate these disruptions. We collaborte with SANDIA
national laboratories to study disruptions in north-western United States. The study using
literature and case studies develops a rellastic supply chain model and identify performance
metrics critical for modelling. We also reveal properties of objective function that motivate
the use of metaheristic search methods for making ordering decisions in supply chains. In the
last chapter we develop metaheuristic tools for making ordering decisions in a multi-stage
supply chain. These tools are shown to be effective in a dynamic enviroment. In this rest of
this chapter we summarise the three essays covered in this thesis.
2
1.1 Sources of Supply Chain Disruptions, Factors that Breed Vulnerability, and
Mitigating Strategies
The focus of business towards increasing efficiency and reducing costs has resulted in supply
chains that are efficient during normal times, but at the cost of being vulnerable to
disruptions. From time to time frequent as well as rare catastrophes also disrupt supply chain
operations. We collect and compile data from many sources and show that there has been a
marked increase in both the frequency and economic losses from natural and man-made
catastrophes. We find that business losses constitute a major percentage of the total losses
caused by these catastrophes. The statistics suggest that for terrorist attacks, the vulnerability
of U.S. business interests is much higher than others. Examination of the geographical and
chronological distributions of catastrophes provides useful information for managers
concerned about such disruptions.
We develop a catastrophe classification framework that matches different types of
catastrophes to a variety of infrastructural components of supply chains. The framework also
connects a variety of mitigating strategies to appropriate catastrophe types. We identify
factors that can be used to assess the vulnerability of a supply chain. They can also be useful
to compare possible alternative decisions based on the vulnerability they may cause in the
supply chain.
To manage vulnerability in supply chains, we propose strategies that can be
implemented by a company to decrease the possibility of occurrence, provide advance
warning, and cope after a disturbance. We reveal potential benefits from mitigating strategies
during normal times, which indicates that well-developed strategies can also result in better
3
efficiency. We identify many future research areas concerning disruption handling in supply
chains.
1.2 Modeling and Analyzing Economic Consequences of Supply Chain Disruptions
Supply chains often experience significant economic disruptions, as in the case of facility
breakdowns, transportation mishaps, natural calamities, and terrorist attacks. We collaborated
in a study of such disruptive effects as part of a large-scale initiative by Sandia National
Laboratories. For our part, we began by conducting case studies of three electronics firms
and their suppliers to reveal the industrys supply chain structure and complexity, nature of
historical disruptions, and possible mitigation strategies. We identify three vital metrics
(final-echelon service levels, system inventory, and system expediting) as drivers of
performance. Exploratory experiments indicate that a cost function based on these drivers
can be quite ill-behaved, and metaheuristics capable of looking beyond local optima are
warranted. We found that genetic search over inventory system parameters yielded better
solution quality than unimodal search. We also observe that bullwhip effects induced by
disruptions can severely affect service levels and system inventory for long periods. We find
that order expediting, often used to mitigate disruptions, can also induce bullwhip effects,
and hurt rather than help overall performance. While we support the notion that increased
information and flexibility are generally desirable, it is easy to overreact, with undesirable
consequences.
1.3 Adaptive Search Methods for Ordering Decisions in Multi-stage Supply Chains
This chapter focuses on the problem of determining periodic review inventory management
policies in multi-echelon supply chains. A four-echelon, six-stage decentralized supply chain
4
is modeled. We propose a novel objective function that enables us to find a dynamic, time
variant policy. The objective is to minimize discounted costs of holding inventory,
backorders, lost sales, and expediting. The decision variables are order-up-to quantity,
percentage of orders expedited, and expediting triggers. We consider two triggers: the first is
based on on-hand inventory. A second trigger results in expedited orders when the pipeline
inventory falls below a threshold.
We propose evolutionary and adaptive search methods to solve the problem.
Fibonacci and genetic search methods are used to establish a baseline for comparison. We
also use properties of search space to increase the effectiveness of search routines. The study
focuses on establishing adaptive search method as a means to make decisions in a supply
chain. Under the cost parameters considered, the results suggest that adaptive search can
significantly outperform evolutionary and gradient search methods for ordering decisions.
We test the robustness of method by considering a variety of cost combinations. We also test
the method under non stationary demand scenarios. Under a seasonal and disrupted demand
we show that Adaptive search methods can be effectively used to make ordering decisions.
Results for a local objective are presented and an extension to a global objective is suggested.
5
CHAPTER 2
SOURCES OF SUPPLY CHAIN DISRUPTIONS, FACTORS THAT BREED
VULNERABILITY, AND MITIGATING STRATEGIES
2.1 Introduction
In recent years, there has been a surge in articles addressing supply chain disruptions. The
addressed disruptions range from a small plant fire that may affect a small number of local
companies to global catastrophes such as 2002-2003 SARS, which affected global economy.
Regardless of the scale of a catastrophe, the consequences could be severe for a company.
Some recent documented major supply chain disruption causes include the West
Coast port strike in 2002, the 1999 Taiwan earthquake, hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005,
Asian tsunami in 2004, and September 11 attacks. Other smaller catastrophes such as snow
storms, heavy rain, excessive wind, fire, industrial and road accidents, strikes, and changes in
government regulations regularly interrupt normal operations in supply chains. These
disruptions motivated researchers to address various aspects of disruptions management,
including severity (Craighead et al. 2007), causes (Kleindorfer and Saad 2005), resilience
(Sheffi and Rice 2005), risk management (Chopra and Sodhi 2004), consequences
(Hendricks and Singhal 2003), vulnerability (Stauffer 2003 and Svenson 2000), and business
continuity (Zsidisin et al. 2005). The purpose of this research is to develop a framework for
identifying and evaluating the risk sources and the mitigation strategies that are suitable for a
company. We also critically analyze the structural properties of modern supply chains to
reveal vulnerability causing factors.
6
The increased emphasis on disruptions management is sometimes based on
postulation that present supply chains undergo higher risk of disruptions and associated
losses than those in the past. A 2006 McKinsey global survey revealed that one-third of
company executives believe that supply chain risks are the same or have reduced in the past
five years. Have the risks really increased or decreased? We address this by collecting and
analyzing past catastrophe and economic losses data so as to investigate for trends in the
losses and number of disruptions. We also investigate existing supply chains to identify
vulnerability-causing aspects that may have evolved in recent times.
We collected a large amount of data on man-made and natural catastrophes and their
associated economic losses from a wide variety of sources, which include research articles,
Department of State, Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, Federal
Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Department of Commerce, National Climate Data
Center, and National Counterterrorism Center. Using this data we contribute to the literature
by statistically confirming the speculation that the number of supply chain disruptions are
increasing. Our analyses suggest that economic losses are increasing at a fast rate. Data
compilation also revealed geographical and chronological inferences on catastrophe
concentrations and the need of mitigation strategies. The findings can potentially help
managers make robust decisions about location of facilities and suppliers, transportation
modes, contingency measures, inventory policies, and levels of flexibility and redundancy.
Supply chains have evolved to maximize efficiency and speed, motivated by the
desire of businesses to compete cost effectively in todays markets. This focus on efficiency
has resulted in supply chains that are more vulnerable to disruptions. We critically analyze
various common supply chain practices, designed for greater efficiency, to reveal their
7
unfortunate consequence of increasing vulnerability. We argue that resilient supply chains
can be created by managing these vulnerability-causing factors.
Different catastrophes have widely varying consequences for supply chains.
Managers cannot anticipate all. We propose a classification framework that outlines possible
effects and the severity with which different supply chain components are affected by
different catastrophes. This helps provide a greater understanding of causes and effects of
disruptions.
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, research has focused primarily on increased security
measures to reduce both the occurrence of terrorist attacks and decrease supply chain
disruptions (Rosoff and von Winterfeldt 2006; Sheffi 2003; Rice and Caniato 2003; Lee and
Wolfe 2003). However, security cannot eliminate the possibility of a terrorist attack or help
avoid or manage natural catastrophes. Supply chain disruptions are unavoidable (Craighead
et al. 2007). Therefore, in addition to catastrophe avoidance, supply chain managers also
need strategies and tactics for catastrophe mitigation.
We provide what we think is the most complete set of strategies to date to avoid or
mitigate a wide variety of catastrophes. Proactive strategies are identified that can help a
company avoid or decrease the possibility of certain types of disruptions. To gain benefits
from advance information, advance warning strategies that can help forecast a catastrophe
are proposed. Flexibility and redundancy in various supply chain components help define
coping strategies to help mitigate catastrophes.
Recent research has investigated the effectiveness of various mitigation strategies
(Tomlin 2006; Albeniz and Simchi-Levi 2005; Swinney and Netessine 2008). To effectively
manage disruptions, a company may need to employ several mitigation strategies. Moreover,
8
some mitigation strategies can be effective against several different catastrophes. We develop
a qualitative framework to identify the appropriateness and effectiveness of various
disruption mitigation strategies to different catastrophe types. The framework can be an
effective and practical tool for identification of best mitigation strategies. Our framework
focuses on a typical manufacturing-oriented supply chain that has suppliers/manufacturers
located overseas, distributors/retailers/customers located in the U.S., and uses sea and land
ports to import raw materials and finished goods into the U.S. Despite our focus, many of the
findings and insights are applicable to a wide variety of supply chains. Service industries can
also benefit from the findings.
Common belief is that mitigation strategies are expensive and inefficient. By drawing
parallels from the quality research of the 1970s, we emphasize that well-developed
strategies can increase efficiency. In particular, similar to Philip Crosbys notion that quality
is free, we reveal some efficiency-improving effects of mitigation strategies.
The plan of the chapter is as follows. In Section 2.2, catastrophe data is analyzed.
Section 2.3 describes how current practices in supply chains cause vulnerability. A
catastrophe classification scheme is provided in Section 2.4. Various catastrophe mitigation
strategies are discussed in Section 2.5. Finally, Section 2.6 identifies future research areas
that should be addressed by researchers and managers to encourage robust supply chains.
2.2 Catastrophes
Natural and man-made catastrophes disrupt supply chain operations. In this section, we
present and analyze terrorist events, accidents, and natural calamities data.
9
2.2.1 Intentional Acts
Disruptions in supply chains can be caused by conscious acts by a person or a group.
Depending on the intention, these acts can be classified as terrorist or non-terrorist. The
statistics presented in this section are compiled from data published by the National
Counterterrorism Center and 13 annual reports on Patterns of Global Terrorism published by
the Department of State in the years 1991 through 2003. From 2004 onwards, reports on
Patterns of Global Terrorism were replaced with Country Reports on Terrorism reports. In
these new reports we did not find enough relevant information to be useful for this research.
Terrorist Acts
Typical terrorist organizations of the past (before the 1990s) operated in small areas, with
little impact on the economy. In contrast, todays terrorist organizations threaten both the
international community and supply chains. Using statistical data, we analyze terrorist
attacks worldwide and on U.S. interests. We define U.S. interests as U.S. residents,
infrastructure, and businesses that are partially or fully owned by U.S. companies. We also
study the attacks on targets that are partially or fully owned by businesses. We refer to such
targets as business interests.
Figure 2.1 shows the total number of terrorist attacks worldwide between 1993 and
2003. To our surprise, the figure does not show any clear trend, indicating that the risks to
supply chains from terrorist events may not be increasing. However, examination of terrorist
targets revealed that from 1991 to 2003, 62% of total attacks were on business interests
(Figure 2.2). In 2003, of the total terrorist attacks worldwide, 50% were on U.S. interests
(Figure 2.3). From 1996 to 2001, the percent attacks on U.S. interests relative to total
10
worldwide attacks increased steadily. In 1996, for every 100 attacks on U.S. interests, 67
were on business interests. The percentage steadily increased to 94% in 2001.
Figure 2.2. Percentage attacks on various classes of targets from 1991 to 2003.
Figure 2.1. Total number of attacks worldwide.
Business
62%
Diplomat
9%
Government
4%
Military
2%
Others
23%
11
Figure 2.3. Percentage attacks on U.S. business interests to total attacks on U.S. interests.
After 9/11, many businesses around the world and in the U.S. increased security
around their premises and transport carriers. The investments paid off. In 2002 and 2003,
attacks on business interests decreased (Figure 2.3). The total number of attacks also
decreased sharply in 2002 and 2003 (Table 2.1).
Table 2.1. International terrorist attacks by region.
Even with no apparent trend in the number of terrorist attacks, statistics show that
businesses are increasingly preferred terrorist targets. Businesses give disaster preparedness a
International terrorist attacks by region
Year Africa Asia Eurasia
Latin
America
Middle
East
North
America
Western
Europe
1996 11 11 24 84 45 0 121
1997 11 21 42 128 37 13 52
1998 21 49 14 111 31 0 48
1999 53 72 35 122 26 2 85
2000 55 98 31 192 20 0 30
2001 33 68 3 201 29 4 17
2002 6 101 8 46 35 0 9
2003 6 80 2 20 67 0 33
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
P
e
r
c
e
n
t
a
g
e
Attacks on non-US
targets
Attacks on US non-
business interests
Attacks on US
business interests
12
low priority (Helferich and Cook 2002). Until recently the data also shows that the U.S., and
specifically U.S. businesses, are highly vulnerable to terrorist attacks. Since 2001, despite
investing over $500 million on homeland security, the U.S. remains extremely vulnerable to
terrorist attacks (Flynn 2004).
To understand the geographical spread of terrorist targets, we collected data on
terrorist attacks in various regions of the world, summarized in Table 2.1. North America is
relatively safe for supply chains as it suffered less than 1% (19/2463 =0.7%) of the total
terrorist attacks that happened throughout the world. However, outsourcing and globalization
make American companies susceptible to disruptions that happen elsewhere. U.S. supply
chains are increasing outsourcing operations to Asia, which has seen a many-fold increase in
number of attacks from 1996 to 2003. Since the early 1990s, all forms of violence, except
terrorism, have decreased over 40% (HSC 2005). In 1997, the Department of State
designated 30 organizations as terrorist organizations. Since then the number has steadily
increased to 43 in 2007.
With the increasing vulnerability, supply chains need strategies to mitigate risks
originating from terrorist attacks. After 9/11, many businesses around the world increased
security around their premises and their transport carriers. The investments paid off. In 2002,
attacks on business interests decreased considerably, from Figure 2.3. The total number of
attacks also decreased sharply in 2002 and 2003, from Figure 2.1.
Non-Terrorist Intentional Acts
Helferich and Cook (2002) identified union strikes, lifestyle changes, government spending
shifts, economic downturns, competitive service improvements, hostile corporate takeovers,
changes in operations technology, and changing product technology as intentional human
13
acts that disrupt supply chains. Management manipulations by Enron and accounting
scandals in WorldCom showed the extent of disruptions caused by non-terrorist intentional
acts.
Although some of these non-terrorist intentional acts happen over time (lifestyle
changes, operational technology advancements), others such as strikes or management
problems can happen suddenly. In September 2000 in the UK, fuel prices rose sharply
resulting in an impact on almost every industry (Chapman et al. 2002). The event severely
disrupted over 34% of the companies in the UK (Peck and Juttner 2003). After 9/11, only
21% of companies suffered severe disruptions. This suggests that relatively small unintended
disruptions in common markets (fuel price rise) can cause disruptions in supply chains more
severe than dramatic intentional acts such as 9/11.
2.2.2 Accidents
Accidents are unintentional man-made catastrophes. Examples include Three Mile Island,
Chernobyl, Union Carbide, Bhopal, and Exxon Valdez. More recently, a series of blackouts
in the U.S., Italy, and the UK, caused by accidents at power generating stations, revealed the
vulnerability of supply chains to disruption in utilities. For U.S. industries, the blackout of
August 2003 was the most disruptive event after 9/11 (Zwirn 2003). The automobile industry
was paralyzed. More than 50 assembly plants operated by GM, Ford Motor Co., and Daimler
Chrysler were shut down. Wal-Mart shuttered about 200 stores.
The data collected from the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters
shows that during the 20
th
century, the number of technological and transport accidents that
affected a large population and resulted in declarations of emergency has increased from 1
per year in the first 3 decades to 220 in the last decade. See Figure 2.4. Along with the count,
14
the resulting economic damages have also increased many-fold. Over the years, industrial
systems have increased in number. With advancements in technology, the complexity of
industrial systems increases, which in turn increases the potential for breakdowns (Perrow
1984). Supply chains must effectively cope with disruptions whether they are intentional or
accidental.
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Figure 2.4. Average yearly accidents and the yearly damage caused.
2.2.3 Natural Calamities
Natural catastrophes have always been a threat for humans and their property. Similar to
terrorist attacks, early natural catastrophes (before the 1990s) had strong regional but
relatively limited global effects. Recently, hurricane Katrina, Asian tsunami, SARS, and Bird
Flu resulted in severe global economic consequences. SARS disrupted businesses worldwide.
It caused huge economic damages in the Asia-Pacific region. Australia, with no diagnosed
case of SARS, suffered an estimated loss of $1 billion (OMalley 2003).
15
To reveal trends in natural catastrophes, we compiled and analyzed data maintained
by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. Figure 2.5 summarizes the
findings. In the last 100 years, the frequency of natural catastrophes reported has increased
over 40-fold. During the same period, the economic damages have also increased
considerably. The increasing trend in number and damages is much more prominent in the
last quarter of the 20
th
century. The trend can be attributed partly to widespread geographic
human presence and advancements in information technology. Nevertheless, the increasing
trend is alarming because it shows the vulnerability and economic and human losses that can
be caused by natural catastrophes.
Figure 2.5. Average natural catastrophes reported and the yearly economic losses caused.
Major natural catastrophes can cause economic disasters; however, the smaller
weather events cause the most damage to supply chains. In the U.S., heat, tropical storms,
floods, severe weather, blizzards, wild fires, and ice storms cause over 90% of the total
economic losses from natural catastrophes (Ross 2003).
16
Unlike terrorist attacks, natural disasters in the U.S. are increasing. Data collected from
various publications from the U.S. Department of Commerce, National Climate Data Center,
Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Lott and Ross (2006), compiled in Figures 2.6
and 2.7, shows that U.S. supply chains faced a greater threat from disasters in the 1990s than
in the eighties. In the nineties, both the numbers of disasters, as well as those resulting in
losses of over a billion dollars, were considerably higher.
The distribution of population and the infrastructure has further increased the risks.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population of coastal areas in Florida, which are
highly vulnerable to hurricanes and tropical storms, has increased from one million in 1940
to over 10 million in 1990. In 2001 in the U.S., about 48 million people live on the hurricane-
prone coast line. By 2010, the population in these areas is expected to rise to 73 million
(Helferich and Cook 2002). Similarly, in many earthquake-prone areas such as San Francisco
and Tokyo, population has increased steadily.
Figure 2.6. Total natural disasters in the U.S.
17
Figure 2.7. Total number of disasters in the U.S. with economic losses exceeding one billion
dollars.
Occurrence of natural calamities is highly erratic. From 1940 to 1960, the U.S.
suffered 18 major hurricanes. Surprisingly, for the next 30 years, only one major hurricane
struck the U.S. However, natural phenomena are cyclic (Helferich and Cook 2002). A return
of active hurricane seasons, along with increased population along the coast, provides
conditions that may result in severe economic disasters. Pielke and Landsea (1998) state that
it is only a matter of time before the nation experiences a $50 billion or greater storm, with
multi-billion dollar losses becoming increasingly more frequent. Economic losses from
hurricane Katrina were over $125 billion (Finkle 2005). Former UN Secretary General Dr.
Annan says, A wide variation in the number and intensity of natural hazards is normal and
to be expected. What we have witnessed over the past decades, however, is not natures
variation but a clear upward trend (Annan 1999).
18
2.3 Factors that Cause Vulnerability in a Supply Chain
Traditionally, supply chain designs primarily focus on cost efficiency (Nahmias 2009). Also,
supply chains and business practices are designed for a stable world (Monahan et al. 2003).
This has resulted in supply chains that are vulnerable to disruptions. We identify four
vulnerability causing factors, which when altered by a supply chain structural change or
decision may affect vulnerability. These factors and their association with modern supply
chain management practices are summarized in Table 2.2.
Number of exposure points: Raw materials, before reaching a customer in the form of
finished product, may travel through various geographic/political regions, change
ownerships, and are transported by different modes of transportation. All of these are
potential points where a supply chain is exposed to disruptions. For example, a product that is
manufactured in Asia and shipped to customers in the U.S. is susceptible to man-made and
natural catastrophes that may happen in the U.S. or Asia. Similarly, probability of disruptions
from causes such as bankruptcies, worker strikes, and accidents may depend on the number
of hands (ownerships) a product passes through.
Table 2.2. Supply chain practices and their effect on vulnerability causing factors.
Vulnerability Causing Factors
Increase in the
Number of
Exposure Points
Increase in
Distance/Time
Decrease in
Flexibility
Decrease in
Redundancy
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s Globalization X X
Decentralization X X
Outsourcing X X
Sole Sourcing X
JIT X X
Product/Process
Complexity X
Litigation X
19
Modern supply chain trends such as globalization, decentralization, and outsourcing
make supply chains efficient at the cost of increase in the number of exposure points.
Globalization, which includes offshore sourcing, manufacturing, and assembly, increases the
number of geographical regions that a product passes through, thereby increasing the number
of climatic and political catastrophes that may disrupt a supply chain. Similarly, outsourcing
may increase vulnerability by increasing the number of ownerships. Decentralization
increases the number of companies involved in a supply chain. These companies can be
located far apart, increasing geographical and political exposure.
With increasing complexity of products and processes, todays supply chains are not
always a linear chain of companies, but often a complex web of interconnected companies. In
order to achieve efficiency, this complexity is motivating supply chains to transform into
systems that are decentralized (to achieve expertise and efficiency) and use global sourcing,
which in turn increase the vulnerability by increasing the number of exposure points. Recent
Homeland Security measures such as Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism,
Container Security Initiative, and the 24 hour manifest rule have served to introduce
additional stages and transactions, thereby increasing the vulnerability.
Distance/time: Outsourcing, globalization, and decentralization also add to the vulnerability
of a supply chain as they increase the distance (and/or time) the material take to travel
between the supply chain echelons. A shipment made over the ocean from Asia to the U.S.
may take 45 days. The shipment can be disrupted by a catastrophe that happens during any of
these 45 days. In contrast, a shipment within the U.S. may take only a day or a week. The
increase in the distance or time makes the control and coordination of a supply chain
difficult, making it easy for disruptions to occur.
20
Flexibility: Other supply chain practices such as sole sourcing increase the vulnerability by
decreasing flexibility in the supply chain. Using very few (or sole) suppliers can create a
dependence on suppliers. UPF Thompson became insolvent at the end of 2001. The impact
on Land Rover, which had UPF as its only supplier of chassis, was sudden and severe as it
had to lay off 1,400 workers at its Solihull UK plant (Chapman et al. 2002).
Redundancy: JIT and lean policies have intuitive economic rationale. However, the savings
has a cost. The savings are achieved by reducing buffer and redundancy, which increase
vulnerability as supply chains lose the ability to absorb unusual system disturbances. If a
company zealously go[es] after efficiency [to] be lean, having less inventory, and just-
in-time manufacturing, then I think it is definitely more vulnerable to the major disruptions
that can be man-made or natural (Lee 2001).
The four vulnerability causing factors identified can be helpful in assessing a supply
chains vulnerabilities. They can also be used to understand the impact of various supply
chain decisions on their vulnerability.
2.4 Catastrophe Classification
For a supply chain, there are different types of catastrophes that can occur, each with a
different amount of risk and with different consequences. For example, a biological attack
can have the severe consequence of inducing large human losses, while a winter storm may
affect supplies. Also, different catastrophes (for example, a hurricane and an earthquake)
may have similar consequences. It is difficult for companies to plan for every catastrophe. A
classification of catastrophes may help plan mitigation strategies.
21
Figure 2.8. Components at various stages of a supply chain.
SUPPLIER
Equipment


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22
A catastrophe disrupts a supply chain by affecting one or more of its components.
Components internal to an organization, such as equipment and facilities, may remain
unaffected by an external catastrophe (a catastrophe that does not affect the premises of the
organization). External components, i.e., supplies, transportation, labor, utilities,
communication, laws/regulations, and finance/banks, are typically affected by catastrophes
that happen outside of an organization. In contrast, an internal catastrophe, such as fire and
industrial accidents, may affect internal components only. In Figure 2.8, internal components
are represented inside the boxes denoting various stages of a supply chain. External
components are shown by arrows.
In Table 2.3, we identify the severity and possibility of effects on components
resulting from various classes of catastrophes. The severity and possibility correspond to
how much and how likely a catastrophe might affect a component. Table 3 can be used
to help assess the vulnerability of various components in the event of a specific catastrophe.
It is important for a company to focus on mitigating catastrophes that have a high possibility
and severity of affecting critical components. For example, Table 2.3 shows that terrorist
attacks on infrastructure, cyber terrorism, and infrastructure destruction by a natural
catastrophe have a high possibility as well as severity of disrupting communication media.
Thus, a call center may benefit by adopting migration strategies that alleviate the effects of
these three types of catastrophes.
The threat posed by a catastrophe depends on company specific factors such as
industry, geographic location, political situation, culture, location of suppliers and customers,
economy, and the crises preparedness. Depending on these factors, the entries in Table 2.3
23
may vary for different companies. Our table depicts a typical manufacturing oriented supply
chain.
Besides severity and possibility of effects on components, various other useful
classification schemes can be devised. Preparation time, i.e., the time between the forecast
or awareness and the occurrence of a catastrophe could be important in mitigation planning.
A hurricane can be forecast, to a certain degree of accuracy, days in advance. However,
earthquakes do not give preparation time. The length of disruption is another important
factor that is critical for supply chains. Sheffi (2002) classified disruptions from catastrophes
based on supply chain failure modes. He considered disruptions in supply, transportation,
facilities, communications, demand, and freight breaches as possible modes of failure.
Table 2.3. Severity and possibility of effects of a catastrophe.
Classification of
Catastrophes Examples
Transportation Utilities Commu-
nication
Suppliers Custo-
mers
Labor Laws Finance
S
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Attack on Infrastructure Power and communication
services
M M H H H H L M L M L L L L L L
Public services, i.e., hotels,
banks, and distribution
services
L L L L L L L L M M M M L L L L
Violence, Mass Killing,
Ethnic Killing
Bombing public places
M M L L L L L L H L H L M L L L
Biological, Chemical,
and Nuclear Terrorism
Sarin gas, anthrax
H H H M H M H H H H H H H H H H
Hoax or Propaganda
Intended to Terrorize
Bombing
H L H M L L M M H L H L M L M L
Political Assassination H L L L L L L L L L H M H H L L
Sabotage of
Transportation Media
Airplane bombing/hijacking,
pirates, train derailment,
bombing airplane/rail terminals
H H L L L L H L H L M L M L L L
Cyber Terrorism Computer viruses H L H H H H H L H L L L H L L L
War Gulf war H L L L L L H L H L L L H M L L
N
a
t
u
r
a
l
Infrastructure Destruction Earthquakes, hurricanes, floods H H H H H H H L H L H H H L H M
Transportation
Disruption
Dust storms, blizzards, storms,
snow, hail, rain, avalanches,
winds, erosion, landslide
H H M L L L H L H L M L L L L L
Health Hazard Epidemic, famine L L H L L L H M H M H H H L L L
Extreme Weather Cold wave, extreme temperature H L M L L L M L M L H L L M L L
Natural Fires Eruption, volcano, forest fires H L H L M L H L H L M L L L L L
A
c
c
i
-
d
e
n
t
Industrial Accidents Gas leakage
M H M L M L H L H L H H M H L L
Transport Accidents Train derailment, airplane crash
H H M L L L H L H L M L L L L L
N
o
n
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t
e
r
r
o
r
i
s
t
Strikes Workers strikes L L L L L L L L L L H H H L L L
Political strikes H H H L H L H M H M H H H L L L
Environmental Changes in government
spending, lifestyle,
manufacturing technology.
L L H L M L H L H L L L H L M L
24
2.5 Catastrophe Mitigation
Considering potential losses from disruptions, mitigation strategies could be critical for
survival of a company. Despite the risks, at times, 95% of Fortune 500 companies are not
equipped to manage a disruption that the company has not experienced before (Mitroff and
Alpaslan 2003).
Planning for robustness requires identification of critical components that a company
is excessively dependent on, or those that, if disrupted, can have a severe impact on supply
chain performance. Intel performs what if drills to identify the components and activities
that are excessively vulnerable (Lund 2002). Monahan et al. (2003) identifies the following
five characteristics of a vulnerable component: a bottleneck that other processes depend on, a
high degree of concentration of information flow, single or scarcity of suppliers, limited
alternatives, association with high risk geographic areas, and insecure access to important
infrastructure. In this section, we identify mitigation strategies that can help make supply
chains robust. Sections 2.5.1 through 2.5.3 identify mitigating strategies. In Section 2.5.5, we
discuss cost-benefit tradeoffs in implementing mitigating strategies.
2.5.1 Proactive Strategies
Feasibility and cost permitting, an organization should choose strategies that make supply
chains unaffected by any or many catastrophe(s). This section identifies proactive strategies,
which are decisions/plans/actions that are aimed towards reducing the vulnerability and
probability of disruptions. These strategies help reduce the number of exposure points, as
defined in Section 4. They can also reduce the effects of a catastrophe on a supply chain.
Locate facilities at safe locations. The frequency and type of catastrophes vary across
geographical regions. Asia is more prone to earthquakes than Europe (Jones 1981). Most
25
hurricanes occur between the latitudes of 30 degrees North and South (Alexander 1993).
Terrorist attacks occur more in some countries than others. Risks of disruption can be
considerably reduced by choosing locations that are less susceptible to catastrophes. Besides
geographic location and country, other factors such as ownership, symbolic importance, type
of construction, neighbors, government, community, and economic situation affect the
probability of a catastrophe. After the 1993 World Trade Center bombings, Morgan Stanley
realized the risks and moved its offices to several locations outside the towers. The strategic
decision paid returns on September 11, 2001.
Choose robust suppliers and transportation media. A supplier that is well-prepared to
cope with catastrophes can reduce the vulnerability of the entire chain. Often transportation is
the most vulnerable part of a supply chain. Selecting a transport company that has the ability
to handle disruptions can provide stability during catastrophes.
Establish secure communication links. Reliable and robust communication links can help
control and coordinate operations of a dispersed supply chain. With decentralized and global
supply chains, the need and benefits of communication links are significant.
Enforce security. Security can help prevent some intentional man-made catastrophes.
Information security can prevent cyber attacks by hackers, computer viruses, and
unauthorized access to communication media.
Efficient human resource management. Understanding employees can have huge returns.
For example, background information can prevent the hiring of workers that have a criminal
background. Moreover, such information can be used for assigning critical and sensitive
responsibilities. Coutu (2002) emphasized worker resilience as a determining factor in their
26
performance during catastrophes. Finally, a close understanding and relationship with
workers can help avoid strikes and production stoppages.
2.5.2 Advance Warning Strategies
An advance warning or forecast of a catastrophe can provide a company valuable preparation
time to align its capabilities to minimize disruption effects. Besides better catastrophe
mitigation ability, foresight can provide strategic advantages. In 2000, by watching their
supplier processes, Nokia increased its market share by 4%. Philips, a chip manufacturer,
suffered a fire in its Mexico plant. Nokia, anticipating the potential disruption, responded fast
to contact Philips to use its alternate facilities to meet Nokias demand. Ericsson was late. All
available capacity of Philips was taken by Nokia (Chopra and Sodhi 2004).
Enhance visibility and coordination in a supply chain. Organizations in a supply chain are
vulnerable to catastrophes that can affect any stage of a supply chain. Vertical coordination
can help prevent a catastrophe from disrupting multiple stages. Sharing information can help
companies anticipate a brewing problem at a supplier or customer. Horizontal coordination
can also allow companies (even competitors) to forecast disruptions such as a change in law,
shifting customer preferences, and changes in technology. Vendors, such as I2, Manugistics,
ViewVelocity, and Celarix offer specialized software to enable extensive visibility across a
supply chain.
Increase transportation visibility. Prompt information about transportation disruptions can
allow managers to prepare supply chains in a better way, thereby avoiding disruptions at their
facilities. For example, transportation vehicles can be rerouted through alternate routes,
orders at other suppliers for which transportation routes are undisrupted can be increased, and
orders can be expedited.
27
Monitor weather forecasts. Toyota uses WeatherData Inc., a weather forecasting company,
to monitor weather conditions for all of its 330 suppliers and transportation routes. Because
of lack of forecasting and planning, in 1999 a snow storm disrupted production at Ford Motor
Company. Toyotas plants were uninterrupted (Murphy 1999).
Act according to terrorist threat level. The homeland security advisory system announces
the terrorist threat level using five colors. For supply chains, an increase in threat level
increases delays at entry ports because of higher custom or border checks. It may also require
companies to follow strict rules, which can disrupt normal operations.
Monitor trends. Trends such as changes in customer preference, laws and regulations, and
technology can create disruptions. These disruptions can result in loss of market, increased
taxes, and increased competition. In most cases trends occur slowly, and provide time for
organizations to adjust. Other changes such as laws and regulation can happen suddenly.
2.5.3 Coping Strategies
Coping strategies provide a supply chain with the ability to mitigate the effects of a
disruption. These strategies are built on flexibility and redundancy in components, which
provide options that can allow a company to offset the losses in a part of a supply chain by
gains from available alternatives (options).
Maintain multiple manufacturing facilities with flexible and/or redundant resources.
Having multiple facilities in different geographical and political regions can reduce the
probability of simultaneous disruptions at multiple locations. Redundant or flexible resources
at these facilities can provide disruption mitigation ability. Volkswagen manufactures cars in
multiple countries, such as the U.S., Brazil, Mexico, and Germany. These are also its major
markets. These facilities have both the flexibility to produce different models as well as
28
excess capacity to meet demand fluctuations. Disruptions at a specific plant can be
compensated for by increasing production at other locations using resources that are
otherwise redundant (Simchi-Levi et al. 2001).
Jordan and Graves (1995) show the benefits of having multiple flexible plants.
Considering uncertain (normally distributed) product demand, they show that limited
flexibility (i.e., each plant builds only a few products), configured in the right way, yields
most of the benefits of total flexibility (i.e., each plant builds all products). Although the
paper limited the analysis and results to uncertain demand, it is intuitive that limited
flexibility should also be beneficial under various disruptions scenarios.
Carry extra inventory. Excess inventory can mitigate disruptions without affecting normal
supply chain operations. Lack of inventory at a supplier can result in a shortage of supplies at
organizations down the line in a supply chain. In addition to mitigating disruptions, extra
inventory provides the advantage of helping to meet day to day demand fluctuations.
Alternate sourcing arrangement. Nonavailability of an alternate supplier can considerably
increase the risk of disruption. During a disruption at a supplier, other un-disrupted suppliers
should have the capability and capacity to increase their output to meet production share
from the disrupted suppliers. Li and Fung, a Hong Kong-based garment manufacturer,
reserves manufacturing capacities at multiple suppliers. This strategy ensures the availability
of flexible capacity when their customers such as Gap, Disney, and Gymboree order various
different designs and quantities (Lee and Wolfe 2003).
Flexible transportation. Supply chains should have flexibility in using alternatives such as
air, ground, and sea transportation. Alternate transportation is more important for global
companies. Options such as alternative routes and expedited service are also important. After
29
September 11, Continental Teves, an auto industry supplier, avoided disruptions because of
air restrictions by using a contingency relationship with transport firms to supplement air
transport by land (Martha and Vratimos 2002).
Maintain redundant critical components. It is advantageous to have backup for critical
components that can be maintained with limited investment. Auto companies maintain power
generators that can run the plants. Intel maintains a redundant communication system.
Standardize various processes. A product with a standardized and well-documented
process can be easily processed at different facilities and by different workers. If production
at a certain plant (producing non-standard products) is disrupted, other non-disrupted plants
may not be able to substitute its production.
Redesign products for component and process commonality to pool risks. Inventory
pooling by designing products with common components across multiple products allows a
limited or the same set of facilities to satisfy demands for multiple products. Postponement,
mass customization, and centralized inventory management are other techniques that take
advantage of risk pooling by component commonality.
Influence customer choice. The ability of a company to motivate customers to buy what
they want to sell is important, both during normal operations and catastrophes. During the
Taiwan earthquake in 1999, Dell was able to steer customers to buy computer configurations
that Dell could make from the available components, by giving them either a free or cheap
upgrade.
Insure against various risks. Buying insurance for various components and types of
catastrophes is one option open to companies. Various supply chain components can be
30
insured against natural calamities, accidents, and theft. Some coverage includes loss of
assets, profits, extra costs, and expenses because of physical loss or damage to property.
2.5.4 Cost/Benefit Trade-offs of Mitigation Strategies
Investment in mitigation planning and implementation consumes resources. The challenge is
to find economically viable ways to reduce vulnerability. It is not clear as to which strategies
can reduce risks without hurting efficiency. During the quality movement of the 80s, it was
recognized that increased quality pays benefits (Lee and Wolfe 2003). Similarly, we argue
that improving robustness can also increase efficiency. In this section we identify the
potential benefits of mitigation strategies.
Reduction in lead time and lead time variability. Secure transport mediums can help
reduce the time needed at customs and checkpoints, while reliable suppliers can reduce the
need for inspection, accounting, and bookkeeping. Traceability of transport mediums can
also increase the predictability of delivery time, thus reducing the associated uncertainty and
variability.
Better inventory management. Increased visibility of supplier operations and transport
mediums can reduce the uncertainty in supplies. This along with reduction in lead time can
reduce the amount of safety stock needed. This can also help match demand and supply.
Efficient production planning and forecasting. Better inventory decisions and reliable
information about exact customer demand can increase the efficiency of production planning
and forecasting. Flexibility and redundancy can provide options for smoothing variations in
production because of demand fluctuations.
Reduction in the bullwhip effect. Increased information sharing and coordination can
reduce bullwhip effects (Lee et al. 1997). Reduction in lead times also reduces bullwhip
31
(Chen et al. 2000). A robust supplier can be expected to have higher reliability in fulfilling
orders at the right time and quantity. This implies a lesser probability of rationing demand
among customers, which in turn reduces bullwhip.
Increase in customer service. Companies can win customers by making products available
during catastrophes, when competitors may not be able to reach customers. A better
coordination between supplier, manufacturer, and retailer can also help in understanding and
meeting the expectations and choices of customers.
Better demand management. Coordination and visibility between supply chain
organizations can provide critical information for demand management. For example, price
and promotion decisions can be made based on availability of supplies and customer demand.
Companies such as Dell and Amazon dynamically change price depending on the supplies
and customer demand.
Modular products also help in demand management as such products use common
modules that assemble to form final products. Using modularity and postponement,
companies can reduce the number of components required to make a variety of final
products. Fewer components can reduce the effect of compounded service levels. Thus the
firm can achieve a high service level with limited inventory of components.
2.5.5 Selection of Mitigation Strategies
Mitigation planning requires identification of vulnerability causing practices and the
catastrophes that can affect a company and then choosing strategies to mitigate them. The
choice of appropriate mitigation strategies depends on various factors such as location,
market, culture, operations, suppliers, product and process characteristics, ownership, and
manufacturing type, to name a few. Such a complex dependence may make it difficult to find
32
the strategies that best suit a company. In this section we develop two tables that can be a
useful aid for managers in achieving this aim.
A specific mitigating strategy can help to address many catastrophes, while a
catastrophe can be mitigated by choosing from different strategies. Different companies
usually require a different set of strategies. In Table 2.4, we present the effectiveness
tendencies of various strategies against different catastrophes as high, medium, low, and very
low. Depending on the types of catastrophes a company faces, managers can use Table 2.4 to
help choose strategies that best fit their needs. For example, environmental catastrophes such
as changes in government regulations, customer preferences, and technological changes can
be addressed by using the strategies of building an ability to influence customer demand and
proactively monitoring trends and changes in the environment.
For the vulnerability-causing practices used by a company, managers can use Table
2.5 to choose suitable mitigating strategies. For example, a vulnerability resulting from
outsourcing can be managed by selecting suppliers located at safe locations, monitoring for
natural calamities, and using flexible transportation. There can be correlations between
vulnerability causes and the catastrophe types that affect companies. For example, many U.S.
companies are vulnerable because of outsourcing manufacturing to Asia (Section 2.3). We
also found that Asia has the fastest increasing rate of terrorist attacks (Section 2.2). Thus
companies outsourcing operations to Asia should choose mitigation strategies (from Tables
2.4 and 2.5), which are most effective for outsourcing and terrorist catastrophes.
Investment in mitigation planning needs justification by appropriate cost/benefit
analysis, which requires an estimation of losses and benefits in numerical quantities. In many
cases this is not easy to calculate.
33
Another difficulty is a lack of understanding of potential long-term effects. For
example, to mitigate the risk of disruptions, companies can increase inventory. This can be a
short-sighted strategy. Increased inventory may not be an economical alternative as it may
result in quality problems from waste of resources, higher rejection rates, and poor
management. Such a strategy may make a company worse off than a catastrophe. Therefore,
more research is needed in identifying the potential long term deleterious effects of various
strategies. Section 2.6 identifies such research issues.
2.6 Research Problems in Disruptions Management
This section describes important research areas on managing disruptions in supply chains.
We also provide references to existing research efforts in some of these areas.
Develop disruptions databases. A catastrophe database can aid in identifying the possibility
and severity of disruptions for a company located in a specific region. Complex operations
and dependencies between various businesses make it difficult to identify the catastrophes
that might affect a company most severely. The Inter-university Consortium for Political and
Social Research and the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters maintain
databases for natural catastrophes and accidents. The National Counterterrorism Center
maintains a database of all terrorist events worldwide. These databases do not explicitly
identify affected regions and industries. Information from such databases could be modeled
or used to provide useful results for industry risk mitigation.
34
Table 2.4. Interrelationship of strategies and catastrophe types.
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Locate facilities at safe locations H H H L M H M L H L H M H L L L L H
Choose suppliers located at safe locations H H H L L M M L M VL H M H L L L L H
Choose robust suppliers H H H - H H H H L L H M L L L H L M
Choose robust transportation M M H - L M H H L - M M H L M H L L
Establish secure communication links H H - - - M L L - - M L H L L VL H -
Enforce security - - - - - - H M H - H H M H L H L -
Efficient human resource management - - - - - - H H H - H H M H - H H -
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Enhance visibility and coordination M M H M M H H H M L L L H L M H L
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Monitor and react to weather forecasts - H H H H H - - - - - - - - - - - -
Act according to terrorist threat level - - - - - - - - - - - - - H - - - -
Monitor trends: customer preferences,
regulations, and technology
- - - - - - - - - H - - - - - - - -
3
4
35
Table 2.4 continued. Interrelationship of strategies and catastrophe types.
C
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Maintain multiple manufacturing facilities
with flexible and/or redundant resources
M M H L H M H H M - H L M L M H M M
Carry extra inventory M M H - H H H H H - H H L H M H L L
Secure alternate suppliers H H H - M H H H H - H H H M H H L H
Choose flexible transportation options M M H - VL M H H L - M M H L M H - L
Maintain redundant critical components M M - - L L L L VL - H L L L L - M L
Standardize/simplify processes M M M H M M M H M M H H L M M L M
Product design for product commonality,
controlled architecture, and postponement
H H H M H H H H M H H M L H H L H
Influence customer choice H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H
Insurance against various risks H H H VL H H H H H - H L H - VL M M L
High (H), Medium (M), Low (L), or Very Low (VL).
3
5
36
Strategies
Vulnerability Breeding Practices
Globali
-zation
Decentral
-ization
Outsou
-rcing
Reduction in
Number of
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Chain
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Choose robust suppliers
H M M H M - -
Choose robust transportation
M M M M H H H
Establish secure communication links
L L L - VL - M
Enforce security
- - - - - - L
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- - - - - - M
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Enhance visibility and coordination
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M L M M H L H
Monitor and react to weather forecasts
L M H H H H -
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L L L - M - H
Monitor trends: customer preferences,
regulations, and technology - - - - - - H
C
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Maintain multiple manufacturing facilities
with flexible and/or redundant resources M M M M L - -
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M M M H H M L
Secure alternate suppliers
M M M H H M H
Choose flexible transportation options
H H H H H VL L
Maintain redundant critical components
- - - - H - -
Standardize/simplify processes
H H M L L H -
Product Design for product commonality,
controlled architecture, and postponement M L L L L - L
Influence customer choice
- - - - - - -
Insurance against various risks
M M M M M L -
Table 2.5. Interrelationship of strategies and vulnerability breeding factors.
3
6
37
Develop models to understand and estimate the impact of various catastrophes. A
catastrophe affects businesses differently, causing disruptions to varying extents. This makes
it difficult to predict the consequences of some catastrophes. For example, before the
outbreak of SARS in 2003, it was very difficult to predict its effects on the airline and
electronics industries worldwide. Empirical studies, using statistics of past disruptions, can
help identify the catastrophes that can affect a business.
It is also difficult to identify the possibility and impact of less-familiar disasters such
as a dirty bomb. One way to understand the effect of such an event is by identifying similar
catastrophes that have occurred in the past. For example, learning from the effects of the
Sarin gas attack in a Tokyo subway could help in assessing the disruptions caused by a
biological attack. What if analysis can be used to predict the effects of a catastrophe. The
economic impact of disasters such as avian flu (Allen 2006), dirty bomb (Rosoff and von
Winterfeldt 2007), hurricanes (von Winterfeldt 2006), and earthquakes can be studied by
simulating such events (Allen 2006).
Establish supply chain risk measures. Catastrophe mitigation strategies aim to reduce the
effects from disruptions but can require significant capital investments. The justification for
investment in mitigation planning would benefit from a measurement of risks. For decades,
finance researchers have investigated various risk measures for capital investments. Risk
measurement from the perspective of supply chain disruptions is relatively new.
Supply chains could benefit by developing metrics that can estimate the risks in
aspects such as supply, operations, inventory, transportation, and location. Applequist (2000)
developed risk metrics for supply chain projects. Zsidisin et al. (2004) identify factors used
by purchasing organizations to assess risk. Cavinato (2004) defined risk from the perspective
38
of a logistics firm. Sodhi (2005) suggests operational measures to estimate demand and
supply risks.
Identify disruptions indicators. Such indicators could be an abnormal variation in supplies
or demand, change in fuel prices, disruptions in related industries, political changes, and
technological developments. An indicator of potential supply shortage is an increase in
Homeland Securitys threat level from yellow to orange, which often results in extended
delays for components and supplies entering the U.S. Once identified, a company can align
its strategies and resources, in advance, to mitigate disruptions.
Supply chain vulnerability causes. In Section 3, we identified various causes of supply
chain vulnerability. Peck (2005) identifies drivers of vulnerability in a supply chain.
Vulnerabilities for a specific company may depend on various factors such as the industry,
location, operating strategies, suppliers, customers, political situation, and government
policies. Identification of industry specific vulnerabilities could be helpful for managers in
making robust decisions.
Evaluate the effectiveness of prevalent supply chain practices under disruptions. As
argued in Section 2.4, present supply chain practices are sometimes motivated by cost
efficiency alone. For example, to save production costs, a U.S. based pharmaceutical
manufacturer moved its manufacturing operations to India. During an Indian port strike in
2003, this company had to fly their product to the U.S. for over a month. The strike cost them
more in increased transportation costs in one month than three years of production cost
savings (Mentzor 2008).
Strategies such as lean production, outsourcing, decentralization, expediting, and sole
supplier need to be analyzed considering the possibilities of catastrophes. Also the role of
39
supply chain coordination while considering disruptions should be investigated. Current
supply chain literature addresses coordination while considering variations in demand and
price. Prevalent coordination mechanisms do not hedge a supply chain stage against
disruptions. The effects of a catastrophe are not symmetrical in a supply chain. For example,
a relatively small disruption at a manufacturer may not affect a customers operations as the
lead time between these stages may provide a cushion to absorb the disruptions. However, a
disruption at a customers facility is more likely to affect the manufacturer because of
increased bullwhip (Schmitt et al. 2007).
Identify learning from past disruptions. Experience from past disruptions can teach
important lessons, which can be used to make strategic decisions. A compilation of such
strategies for many industries and catastrophes can help managers in choosing mitigation
strategies appropriate for their companies. Kleindorfer and Saad (2005) studied the chemical
industry, Sinha et al. (2004) examined the aerospace industry, and Johnson (2001) identified
mitigation strategies in the toy industry.
Develop operating policies that are effective under disruptions. Much research identifies
optimal inventory, location, transportation, production, and procurement policies while
assuming stationarity. Unexpected events are sometimes not considered. In general,
uncertainty increases the complexity of these analyses, making it difficult to identify
effective policies. Considering todays environment where both the number and the severity
of disruptions are increasing, it is important to revisit supply chain operating policies and
make changes to improve efficiency under disruptions. Snyder (2006) modeled a traditional
facility location model with disruptions. Some researchers have investigated inventory
policies under disruptions (Chao 1987; Arreola-Risa and DeCroix 1998)
40
Develop mitigation strategies. Resilient supply chains can be created by careful selection
and implementation of mitigation strategies. Some research has identified advantages of
using multiple suppliers rather than a sole supplier. These papers compare two suppliers that
have different risk levels and production costs (Chopra et al. 2007 and Tomlin 2006).
Hallikas et al. (2004) provided a risk management framework for supplier networks. Zsidisin
and Ellram (2003) used survey results to suggest strategies to manage supply risks.
Redundant and flexible resources can be used to mitigate disruptions. The amount
and kinds of resources, however, can vary depending on many factors including industry,
location of facilities and markets, customer preferences, and laws, to name a few. Identifying
the amount and kinds of these resources is difficult. Sheffi and Rice (2005) provide
recommendations to increase flexibility to mitigate disruptions. Zsidisin et al. (2005) discuss
the effective use of business continuity planning to manage supply risk.
Impact of government policy decisions. Since 911, the Homeland Security Department has
implemented measures such as Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT),
Container Security Initiative, and the 24 hour manifest. These measures impact supply
chains, since material or supplies can be delayed at borders. There is a need to study the
effect of such measures on supply chains. Bakshi and Gans (2007) performed an economic
analysis of C-TPAT to understand the motivations of firms to be part of it. Tomlin and
Snyder (2007) studied the value and impact of the threat advisory system to suggest that
supply chain operating policies should be based on the level of threat.
Identify supply chain structures resilient to disruptions. Supply chain designs vary across
industry and sometimes across companies. Supply chains have been characterized along
several dimensions including industry type, competitive landscape, bargaining power of
41
suppliers, bargaining power of customers, degree of modularization, degree of product
postponement, number of new product launches, number of competitors supplying similar
products, ease of switching, and demand predictability. Are there certain factors that make a
supply chain more robust? There is a need for models to find combinations of the above
factors that lead to a resilient supply chain. Santoso et al. (2005) provides an algorithmic
approach to design supply chains considering uncertainty. They provide methodology to
compare alternate supply chain designs to identify designs that have the least uncertainty.
Such methods could be helpful in choosing robust mitigation strategies.
2.7 Conclusions
This research stresses the need for higher awareness of catastrophes and their effects on
supply chain operations. We compile catastrophe and economic data from many sources to
reveal information of managerial and academic importance. This thesis contributes to the
literature by statistically verifying the increase in both the number and $ value of
catastrophes that impact U.S. businesses. We also reveal the regional locations and spread of
various types of catastrophes. The information can be used by companies to make better
planning decisions. We contribute to the understanding of supply chain risk management by
identifying vulnerability-causing factors, which when affected by a business decision can
impact the vulnerability of a supply chain. These factors can be used to compare possible
decisions based on the vulnerability that they may cause, and thus help make better and
robust decisions.
We overview a comprehensive set of mitigating strategies that can help reduce the
risks of disruptions. The strategies presented can be used for proactively managing,
developing advance warnings, and coping from catastrophes. We reveal potential benefits of
42
following these strategies during normal times. These can help justify investment in
catastrophe mitigation. Businesses should focus on identifying strategies best suited for their
companies. We develop several tables that can be practical tools to help managers to identify
the vulnerabilities of their supply chains. The tables can also be used to identify mitigation
strategies that best suit their companies for a given set of possible disruptions.
We hope that this study and the research areas identified can provide impetus for future work
on understanding, developing, and quantitatively analyzing risk mitigating strategies. While
we focus here on qualitative strategies, future research should extend the scope to quantify
the costs and benefits for businesses.
43
CHAPTER 3
MODELING AND ANALYZING ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF SUPPLY
CHAIN DISRUPTIONS
3.1 Introduction
Resilience to disruptions is a critical issue in supply chain management. Disruptions can have
many sources and affect many supply chain activities. The causes range from natural (e.g.,
Hurricane Katrina, SARS pandemic) to accidental (Minneapolis I-35W bridge collapse,
credit collapse of 2009) to intentional (World Trade Center attacks). While individual
disruptions have a low probability of occurrence, there is a good chance overall of something
big and unexpected to happen. The consequences of disruptions in manufacturing,
transportation, electric power, and telecommunications can be substantial and long lasting,
with rippling effects felt throughout multiple business sectors. An Accenture study (Beverly
and Rodysill, 2007), which polled 151 supply chain executives in large U.S. companies,
indicates that 73% of the firms experienced disruptions in the past five years. Of those, it
took 36% more than one month to recover; and another 32% between a week and a month.
Disruptions are costly as well. Hendricks and Singhal (2003) found that following a
disruption, firms on average experience a 107% decrease in operating income, 7% lower
sales growth, and 11% higher costs. The firms also suffered 33-40% lower stock returns over
a three-year period, and share-price volatility rose by 13.5% in the year after the disruption.
In later work, Hendricks and Singhal followed with additional evidence on financial
44
performance (2005b), and market performance (2005a, 2009). Many others have reported
costly consequences of disruptions (e.g., Shaw, 1994; Murphy, 1999; Latour, 2001;
Chapman, Christopher, Juttner, and Peck, 2002; Helferich and Cook, 2002; Martha and
Subbakrishna, 2002; Rice and Caniato, 2003; Monahan, Laudicina, and Attis, 2003; Peck and
Juttner, 2003; Zwirn, 2003; Ross, 2003; OMalley, 2003; Chopra and Sodhi, 2004; Cavinato,
2004; Sullivan, 2006).
Many firms lack clear contingency plans and well-defined roles concerning
disruptions. Mitroff and Alpaslan (2003) analyzed crisis readiness of Fortune 500 companies
over the past two decades. They found 95% of them not prepared for an unfamiliar disruptive
event. Hillman and Sirkisoon (2006) and Hillman and Keltz (2007) provide further evidence
of poor preparation for disruptions.
Sandia National Laboratory has responded to such contemporary concerns by
developing a macro-economic simulation model of industrial activity, and our role in the
model development was to assist in characterizing supply chain behavior. The chapter is
organized as follows. We review prior art in operations management and economics. Then,
we formulate a set of key research questions, whose answers we glean from case studies and
simulation experiments. We propose a four echelon assembly structure as a baseline in
further research by Sandia and others. The results we report as well as subsequent ones by
Sandia (Appendix A) focus on issues of response and recovery rather than prevention. Our
simulation results confirm that disruptions may have long-lasting, rippling, costly
consequences within a supply chain, and that expediting efforts may hinder not help system
recovery. We also find that a system cost function can be quite ill-behaved, even in the
45
absence of disruptions and expediting, and that conventional solution approaches, which
assume convex or unimodal behavior, may be inappropriate for real-world supply chains.
3.2 Literature Review
Sandia approached us with an intriguing question: How to model the macroeconomic impact
of a major disruptive event to supply chains. Empirical findings by others and case studies
we conducted indicate that specific high impact disruptions are improbable with distributions
hard to quantify. We also found evidence that commonly used mitigations by firms included
inventory buffering and expediting.
There is a rich and growing body of empirical and analytical work on disruption
management. Craighead, Blackhurst, Rungtusanatham, and Handfield (2007) and Snyder and
Shen (2009) provide thoughtful literature reviews. Craighead et al. (2007) cite as examples,
recent work on supply chain risks (Chopra and Sodhi, 2004), vulnerability (Svensson, 2000),
resilience (Sheffi and Rice, 2005), and business continuity (Zsidisin, Ragatz, and Melnyk,
2005). They also address a related issue, supply chain severity. Kleindorfer and Saad (2005)
and Stecke and Kumar (2009) provide qualitative frameworks for types of vulnerabilities and
mitigation methods. Sheffi (2007) covers managerial implications of disruptions, and
approaches such as buffering, redundancy and agility as important means to achieve
resilience.
Most analytical work on disruptions relies on single-echelon models, with
exponential or geometrical failure rates and durations, and inventory buffering as mitigation.
For example, Berk and Arreola-Risa (1994) considered an inventory system governed by an
EOQ policy, Parlor and Perry (1995), a (q, r) policy, and Arreola-Risa and DeCroix (1998),
an (s,S) policy.
46
More recent literature assumes stochastically recurrent disruptions, order-up-to
policies in a single echelon maintaining inventory, and in most cases, shortages backordered,
not lost. These papers address lead time disruptions due to border closures (Lewis et al.
2008), threat level information and evolving risk (Tomlin and Snyder, 2009), supplier
selection and reliability (Tomlin, 2006), product mix and supply diversification (Tomlin and
Wang, 2005), facility location (Berman et al. 2007, Church and Scaparra 2007, Scaparra and
Church 2008, Snyder and Daskin 2005, Snyder et al. 2006, Qi and Shen 2007).
Snyder and Shen (2009) observed in a review of the earlier work that Disruption
models are generally much less tractable than their deterministic-supply counterparts and
require numerical optimization since closed-form solutions are rarely available. They also
offered simulation as an alternative to analytical study to gain insights using realistic models
rather than to find optimal solutions to exact but vastly simplified models. They explore a
series of experiments entailing various supply chain configurations, all employing a single
inventory echelon and a periodic review (s, S) policy, to study questions of order size, order
frequency and inventory placement in the presence of disruptions. They find that total
inventory, order and backorder cost is fairly well behaved, and they employ line search to
find reasonably cost effective inventory parameters in which to make comparisons.
Wu and Chen (2009) apply a two-echelon optimal control system to model oil
industry behavior. One echelon represents an individual firm, and the other, an aggregation
of the industry. Their model has echelon decision variables of price and quantity. They
assume no lead times, unimodal total cost of inventory and operation, and unlimited
production capacity. Shortages are not permitted since equilibrium prices clear the markets.
They consider two types of disruptions to supply and demand a single shock, and random
47
Brownian shocks. Among other conclusions, they find that price and inventory peak after a
single shock and dissipate slowly, with delayed propagation to the other echelon.
Disruptions represent exogenous shocks to a system, while expediting offers
endogenous means to cover shortages that may arise either from disruptions or normal
operating conditions. In an HP supply chain, Beyer and Ward (2002) reported over 65% of
orders expedited. Other examples from diverse industries include Amazon (Kelleher, 2003),
Caterpiller (Rao, Scheller-Wolf and Tayur, 2001), and Nintendo (Souder, 2004). Case studies
we will summarize shortly also indicate that shortages of relatively inexpensive electronic
parts motivate the frequent use of expediting to avoid cancelation or delay of substantial
revenue for value added assemblies.
While expediting appears rational, the effects of expediting across a supply chain are
not well understood. Research on expediting has focused on finding optimal ordering policies
at a single inventory echelon (ex. Fakuda, 1964; Whittmore and Saunders, 1977; Groenevelt
and Rudi, 2003; Huggins and Olsen, 2005; and references therein), although progress has
been hampered, in part, because of difficulties in analyzing crossover orders not arriving in
the sequence they were placed (Robinson et al. 2001; Hadley and Whitin, 1963; Nahmias,
1979; Zipkin, 1986). For analytical tractability some researchers avoid crossover by
restricting regular and expedited lead times to differ by one time unit or with instantaneous
expedited delivery (Fakuda, 1964; Lawson and Porteus, 2000; Huggins and Olsen, 2005).
Others apply heuristic policies that approximate optimality under generalized lead times
(Veeraraghavan and Wolf, 2008).
A worthy contribution to the disruption and expediting literature is the consideration
of well known bullwhip effects (Chen and Lee, 2009). With dependencies in material,
48
finance and information, variation in demand and supply at one echelon offers potential to
induce and amplify at others within and among firms, and disrupt the whole chain (Lee et al.
1997). Bullwhip effects have been attributed to both erratic human behavior (Sterman, 1989;
Croson and Donohue, 2006) and rational decision making (Lee et. al., 1997). Chen et al.
(2001b) and Chen and Lee (2009) provide analytical treatment of rational bullwhip effects.
Much of the focus has been on a single or serial two echelon supply chain with a single mode
of ordering, i.e., no expediting (Towill, 1991; Wickner et al. 1991).
Some recent research on bullwhip effects has been experimental in nature. Wikner et
al. (1991) studies the impact of various parameters related to structure, information and lead
time on a three-echelon supply chain. Sterman (1989) presents experimental findings on the
traditional beer game (four echelon system). The game is replicated 48 times, with averages
compared using t-tests. Croson and Donohue (2006) replicate a four echelon system eleven
times, with averages presented. Regression with p-tests shows that participants undervalue
supply as compared with on hand inventory and demand. Chatfield et al. (2004) analyze
results of a four echelon system over 30 replications. The system is simulated for 700
periods, with first 200 for warm up. Analysis of variance is used to test the impact of
information sharing on demand amplification. They offer the following rationale for their
methodology, Simulation modeling of supply chains can provide both realism and utility
by accounting for the natural variations that occur in the various processes within the supply
chain, and that could not be captured analytically. Simulation has been used as a powerful
alternative to analytics in analyzing complicated supply chains effects in other real word
settings (e.g., Bowersox and Closs, 1996; Closs et al. 1998).
49
3.3 Bridging Macroeconomic and Operational Decision-making
We considered more complex supply chain structures, order interactions and mitigation
methodology than we found in prior literature, in part, because of a different research
mission. In addition to contributing to theory and practice in operations management, another
objective was to guide the development by Sandia National Laboratories of a macroeconomic
model of regional industrial behavior. We were more interested in exploring elements of
reality than tractability. Rather than present explanatory findings on a tightly defined
problem, we explore inter-related research questions in a series of controlled experiments.
With a sense of urgency, a group of economists within Sandia embarked on a project
to develop a large scale simulation to assess the economic impact of disruptions in critical
infrastructure on U.S. manufacturing firms and their supply chains. They wished to study
vulnerabilities in complex, realistic operating environments, and gain insights about
mitigation strategies. The need for managerial relevance implied fresh methodology capable
of relaxing traditional economic assumptions of aggregation, substitutability and well
behaved performance of supply and demand. Aggregation may be inappropriate because it
tends to cancel effects of variability and associated amplification at other echelons. While
fitting as mitigation for disruptions caused by natural disasters and accidents, substitutability
may not be an option in the event of intentional terrorist acts. For example, Sheffi (2006)
suggested that the U.S. Government may respond to an event such as uncovering a dirty
bomb at one seaport of entry by closing all seaports for a lengthy period.
Using enormous computing power, Sandia began to develop an agent-based model
capable of simulating the discrete events of millions of entwined enterprises within regional
supply chains, and trace the corresponding economic behavior (Appendix A). They chose the
50
Pacific Northwest as an initial test site, and we were one of three groups to assist them. The
others were: Argone National Laboratories to understand power generation and distribution,
and Lucent Technologies to model the telecommunications.
Our role was to help Sandia span boundaries in this interdisciplinary effort by
conducting exploratory research into multi-echelon inventory systems. We focused on the
ordering systems across firms in supply chains, which link the procurement, production,
distribution, and transportation activities.
Our field and simulation research summarized here assisted Sandias development by
characterizing basic agent firm structures and inter-relationships, defining model parameters,
identifying key performance drivers, hypothesizing critical aspects of supply chain behavior,
and validating non-linear search methodology. We posited seven research questions:
1) What is a reasonable baseline for the supply chain structure?
2) What inventory and disruption logic reflect realistic conditions in a supply chain?
3) Which performance metrics drive the economics in the supply chain?
4) What happens to supply chain system performance in the presence of a disruption?
5) How does expediting affect system performance?
6) How well-behaved is system performance -- should analytics or heuristics be applied
in system ordering?
7) How do genetic and line search compare in terms of solution effectiveness and
efficiency?
By addressing these key modeling issues, we provide insights to Sandia in construction of
their macro-economic model, and offer guidance for future operations management research
on supply chain management.
51
3.4 Key Modeling Issues
We are interested in a supply chain structure that offers enough complexity to reflect a
realistic supply chain composition, yet small enough to control the environment in our
experiments as well as Sandias model. To address the key modeling issues, we considered
the supply chain literature, conducted case studies of three firms in the Pacific Northwest,
Sandias initial region of application, and conducted a series of simulation experiments.
3.4.1 Key Issue 1: A Reasonable Baseline for the Supply Chain Structure
Most surveys on disruptions involved large firms. In support of Sandias effort, however, we
targeted small and medium sized electronics manufacturing firms in the Northwest, related
supply and demand activities elsewhere in the U.S. and overseas, and corresponding
transportation connections. The case firms we selected employ between 250 and 500 workers
in a predominantly small-firm regional economy. Of manufacturing companies in the
Northwest, over 98% employ less than 500 employees (U.S. Census Bureau, 2008). While
small in size individually, these firms drive much of the regions economic growth in
employment, profit, and demand for non-durables and services. For example, the
manufacturing sector in the Washington State economy represents 20 percent of overall state
output, and is forecast as the fastest growing sector over the next 10 years (REMI, 2007).
Small firms also tend to be more vulnerable economically to disruptions than their
larger counterparts. Because of limited cash reserves and working capital, small firms are
more likely to fail in the event of disruptions. Many do not have the resources to prepare for
prevention, response, and recovery from major disruptions. For example, the Institute for
Business and Home Safety (2005) found that after Hurricane Floyd, 30% of impacted small
firms never re-opened, and another 20% closed after two years.
52
Economic behavior in the Northwest covers many industries and activities, but for
our part, we focused on electronics companies for three reasons. First, electronics are
important to the functioning of our society. Logic chips can be found in products ranging
from automobiles to electric toothbrushes.
Second, electronics assembly is susceptible to disruption because of the complexity of
assembly and component supply. We found in three case studies that electronics assembly
requires from 70 to 700 components to make one product type, and a shortage of any
component delays the completion and sale of the product. Even under stable conditions,
extremely high buffer levels are needed to prevent such delays. For example, if a company
maintains a 99% service level (amount supplied/amount demanded) for each component, the
probability of having, say, 700 components available at any point of time is
700
.99 , roughly
equal to 0.009%.
Third, electronics supply chains involve global, multinational interests that broaden
the exposure to disruption. We found in the case studies that most electronic components are
internationally sourced. Additionally, some of the electronic assemblies are embedded into
larger systems made by such customers as Boeing and Honeywell, who in turn, export their
products.
Electronics companies in the Northwest make products ranging from consumer
appliances to devices used by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). To gain insights
into supply chain behavior in that industry, we interviewed personnel from three
representative electronics firms and some of their suppliers (Appendix C). We disguise
identities of the three because their management considers certain information proprietary
53
and security-sensitive. We label the three as firms INT, ABC, and XYZ, and summarize the
cases in Table 3.1 with details in Appendix A.
All three supply chains support a minimum of four echelons, and at least one that
requires component assembly. Figure 3.1 shows our rudimentary supply chain. Echelon 1
represents assembly of components A and B, and storage of the corresponding finished goods
awaiting demand from local and out-of-town customers, which might include OEM
manufacturers, distributors, retailers and ultimate consumers. At Echelon 2, Stages 2A and
2B represent transportation and storage of the respective components. In Stages 3A and 3B,
suppliers (often local) transport the parts, and either stores them as finished components, or
first adds value prior to storage. Stages 4A and 4B represent activities of two out-of town
distributors that order, purchase and store the parts for delivery to Echelon 3. The figure also
displays lead time parameters -- lead times (LT) under normal operating conditions and
expedited lead times (ELT). These times are based on observations in the case firms and
precedent in the literature. We discuss the model logic in the next section and details of the
parameters in Appendix B.
We cannot generalize beyond electronics, but this four echelon structure seems
reasonable as a baseline for a manufacturing supply chain. Among supporters of a minimum
of four echelons, Juneja and Rajamani (2003) cite an electronics supply chain with assembly
that includes Selectron (supplier), Matsushita (manufacturer), Panasonic (distributor), and
Best Buy (retail customer). Across industries, most aforementioned simulation research on
bullwhip effects covers four echelons. Additionally, Closs et al. (1998) applied a four
echelon assembly structure in simulation experiments to demonstrate that information
sharing contributes to better customer service. To motivate the use of agent based modeling,
54
Swaminathan et al. (1997) propose multiple echelons and assembly. We felt comfortable as
well including assembly of at least two components, e.g., when observing objects within
sight anywhere, whether at home, in an office, in a vehicle or in a factory, one would likely
see products that involve assembly of at least two components.
INT ABC XYZ
Model
Supply chain span
Electronic Co.
Finished Product
60 models with over 2500
configurations
200 different finished
product types
Three product groups, each
that includes a lot of
customization
Electronic Co.
Primary
customers
Manufacturers, distributors,
and retailers
Automotive, utility, military,
and aerospace industries
Aerospace OEMs
Electronic Co.
Sole Sourced
Components
Approx. 10% Approx. 20% Approx. 20%
Operation Type Assemble-to-order Make-to-order Primarily make-to-order
Electronic Co.
Operations Model
Lean JIT system using visual
controls and Kanban for
internal processes. MRP
ordering for externally
sourced components.
Toyota style JIT for internal
processes. MRP ordering for
externally sourced
components.
MRP ordering internally
and externally.
Management
issues
High product variety, high
inventory and overhead
costs, and delivery problems
Expectations for high
customer service
Product cost and delivery
performance
Risk causes
Recent
disruptions
Power failure,
transportation accident,
sole source disruption
West coast port lockout
Texas port closure, Land-
line service failure
Notable
consequences of
disruptions
Electric power vulnerability.
Loss of sole-source supplier
may introduce delays of up-
to two years.
Better equipped than the
other two because of lesser
number of components and
SKUs. No telecom backups
or contingency plans.
Vulnerable to power and
telecommunications
failure. No backup
generator or contingency
plans
Mitigation
planning
Buffering. Expediting. Basic
preventive measures such
as fencing, guards, and
lighting.
Buffering. Expediting.
Alternate sources and
routing. Backup generators.
Buffering. Expediting.
Alternate sources for most
components.
Geographically dispersed
locations.
Telecommunication/power failure, transportation accidents, and sole sourcing
R
i
s
k

m
a
n
a
g
e
m
e
n
t
Table 1 -- Case Summaries
O
p
e
r
a
t
i
n
g

P
o
l
i
c
i
e
s
Global spread with overseas transport, and distribution centers located elsewhere in
the US, suppliers primarily local, local electronics manufacturer, customers ranging
from local to overseas.
A 4-echelon supply chain with assembly is sufficiently representative.
S
u
p
p
l
y

C
h
a
i
n
Table 3.1. Case summaries.
55
3.4.2 Key Issue 2: Inventory and Disruption Logic
We addressed one aspect of Sandias simulation model, the multi-echelon supply-chain
ordering system, which regulates the goods flows and inventories. While there are many
aspects of the Sandia model not covered, the ordering system serves as a fundamental means
of linking activities between companies in a supply chain.
Personal interviews revealed that operating managers of the case firms and their
suppliers do not share point-of-sale data within the respective supply chains. With buffering,
frequent rescheduling and repeated expediting, the managers believed their processes
Figure 3.1. Prototypical supply chain.
56
encountered the full effects of demand amplification. Most were familiar with features of the
Beer Game. There was a strong consensus among these managers that the most realistic way
to reflect the effects of disruptions is through local planning, i.e., deriving echelon-by-
echelon forecasts and buffer parameters without the benefit of shared point-of-sale data. We
recognize however, the existence of progressive supply chains that plan more holistically
(e.g., Brown, Schmitt, Schonberger, and Dennis, 2004; Ferdows, Lewis, and Machuca, 2004;
Li, Shaw, Sikora, Tan, and Yang, 2006).
We assume stationary, autocorrelated demand at Echelon 1 (see Figure 3.1). Each
echelon/stage, including Echelon 1, observes only the demand it receives from its immediate
stage customer without knowledge of the underlying demand distribution of final customers.
Using historical demand observed from the immediate customer, we forecast at every stage
the mean and variance of demand using single exponential smoothing (Snyder, Koehler,
Hyndman, and Ord, 2004). Exponential smoothing is a popular method used by many
companies (Gardner, 1985; Makridakis and Hibon, 2000).
The demand and variance estimates are applied, along with a service-level parameter,
in a single-stage order-up-to formula to calculate the replenishment order quantity.
Replenishment orders at one echelon/stage shown in Figure 3.1 become the demand at the
preceding stage. Inventory balance equations link each stage in a periodic (daily) review
system. Each stage follows the FIFO logic each day:
i. Launch a replenishment order if necessary using an order-up-to system
ii. Withdraw this days demand from available inventory to initiate shipment to the
customer
iii. Receive goods from the previous stage into inventory
iv. Update the inventory or backorder quantity (where backorders are permitted).
57
If demand at the succeeding stage is more than the available inventory, we assume a partial
shipment. The rest is lost at Echelon 1, and backordered at Echelons 2, 3, and 4. Other
approaches to shortages are applied as well in practice (Sodhi, 2005.) At Echelon 2, the
assembly stage, inventory of the two component types is maintained and orders for each are
placed if warranted. The quantity of an assembly order cannot exceed the minimum available
inventory of the two components.
The parameters we use in demand generation, forecasting and inventory control are
presented and justified in Appendix B. The order logic assumes periodic review with no
setup or order cost, infinite production rates, fixed lead times, and i.i.d. demands (Zipkin,
2004 and Nahmias, 1993). While optimally is by no means guaranteed with echelon by
echelon order-up-to policies in our system of stationary demand and lost sales at Echelon 1,
this logic is the most robust and suitable of those available. Such a policy is common in
practice and has been studied extensively in the literature. Nahmias (1993) and Axsater
(2000) provide details about order-up-to systems, which afford optimality for base-stock
policies under certain assumptions about the supply chain structure, shortages, order cost,
and demand distributions. Recent papers have found base-stock policies optimal over a
variety of unimodal risk-neutral and risk-averse objectives in single-item, single stage
systems with multi-period finite horizons and no order cost (e.g., Marinez-de-Albeniz and
Simchi-Levi, 2006; Chen et al., 2007; Huh et al., 2009).
Sandia wished to isolate the effects of a supply chain disruption on regional
economics. Consequently, we chose to induce a generic shock (time delay) to represent many
types of disruptions that occur in practice. After an initialization period of 1000 days, we
induce a 20-day disruption, and compare performance thereafter with the base case (without
58
expediting and disruptions). We consider disruptions at each end of our supply chain:
Echelon 1 (the electronics firms storage prior to shipment to customers), and Echelon
4/Stage A (supply by a parts distributor or component fabricator). During each disruption, the
facility at the affected echelon receives shipments or orders in-route before the start of the
disruption, but stops all other operations. It cannot place orders, produce orders, or make
shipments, and it turns away all demand during the disruption.
Management within all three case supply chains indicated that time of a disruption
becomes the critical factor, and expressed concerns about response and recovery. Prior
disruptions included: fire, weather disasters, worker strikes, raw material availability, power
failures, telecommunication failures, supply shortages, transportation breakdowns, and
machine breakdowns. Loss of a sole-source supplier introduced delays of up to two years to
find and procure alternate materials (as in the case of INT Table 3.1). A disruption in
transportation of commodity components, with replenishment by sea, might involve as much
as a 90-day delay (as for Supplier 5 in case companies Appendix D). Loss of electric power
or telecommunications would quickly stop activities in every firm in the area during the
length of the disruption, although essential telecommunication transactions might be handled
by cellular telephone, if the networks are not overloaded. These expressed concerns reflect
perceptions of the new reality as well as prior experience with disruptions such as port
lockouts, power outages, and loss of telecommunications. Management of the case firms
agreed that basic preventative measures such as fencing, guards, lighting and planning
against prior disruptions are insufficient, and that contingency planning deserves to be
elevated in importance within their organizations.
59
Firms within all three case supply chains frequently use expediting to avoid
shortages. Depending on the echelon, the percentage of orders expedited ranges from 5-20%,
with a premium cost per unit ranging from 10-50%. Bradley (1997) provides additional
motivation for expediting within the electronics industry. Expediting is typically
accomplished with faster transportation or production adjustments such as overtime,
additional shifts, part-time help, alternate routing, and responsive outsourcing. Following
prior practice and research, we apply two triggers to expedite lead times as orders are
launched, and experimented with a range of parameters for each type of trigger to achieve an
expediting frequency we observed in the case studies. The first is activated when the quantity
throughout the stage pipeline (on-order plus on-hand inventory) falls below the expected lead
time demand (Fakuda, 1960; Whitmore and Saunders, 1977; Groenevelt and Rudi, 2003;
Veeraraghavan and Wolf, 2008). The second trigger is activated when the on-hand inventory
falls below a demand-based target (Appendix B). As an example, Beyer and Ward (2002)
observed that Hewlett Packards supply network applies this second type of trigger to
expedite via air transport.
3.4.3 Key Issue 3: Performance Metrics
Three operational metrics drive important marginal economic effects in the case supply
chains. The first is the service level experienced by customers of electronics firms at the final
supply chain echelon. Firms at intermediate echelons typically have long-term relationships
with customers that call for backordering any items shorted (Sodhi, 2005). At the final
echelon, customers such as retail consumers and some manufacturers may have choices, and
shortages may be lost to the firm (INT and ABC). Others, e.g., some OEM manufacturers,
60
may have contractual arrangements that might instead permit backorders with the electronics
firm (INT and XYZ).
Shortages are undesirable anywhere in the supply chain, but countermeasures such
inventory positioning and expediting enable some orders to catch up. If shortages reach the
final supply chain echelon, however, the financial stakes may be exceedingly high. For
example, late delivery of avionics to Boeing Commercial, an OEM customer, may in turn
cause late delivery of an aircraft. This would result in loss of interest on delayed revenue
receipts of hundreds of millions of dollars, diminished revenue arising from contractual
penalties, and loss of goodwill with the airlines. In any event, the opportunity costs of
shortages at the final echelon can be severe in cases of either lost sales or backorders, with
loss of future business at stake.
System expediting, the second metric, offers obvious advantages in preventing
shortages. Nevertheless, expediting introduces significant premiums for transportation and
production that drains profit margins throughout the supply chain.
The third metric, system inventory, also drains profit margins in the supply chain.
Well-positioned inventory, however, provides a safety net against disruptions, and can
decrease expediting and shortages. All three case firms used ERP, but none had visibility of
total supply chain inventory. We chose total supply chain inventory as a metric because
without such visibility, important system inventory costs might be overlooked.
3.4.4 Key Issue 4: System Performance with a Disruption
To further guide experimentation by Sandia and other researchers under more rigorous
operating circumstances, we conducted simulation experiments using the aforementioned
model structure, and adapted the experimental design accordingly to address Key Issues 4-7.
61
We observe the performance on a day-by-day basis over 100-day time blocks,
replicate the experiments 100 times, and compare performance between the disrupted and
base cases. A period of 100 days covers five months in a 240-working day year.
It is important to ensure that our initiation period is long enough to remove transient
effects, and the run length effectively captures steady-state performance. Each simulation
was run for 2000 days. The first 1000 establish steady state conditions, and we observe
performance over the remaining time. Pilot experiments suggested that our choice of
initiation period satisfies Welchs conditions outlined in Law and Kelton (2000).
We distinguish issues of independence of a performance measure within and across
replications by drawing on Chapter 9 of Law and Kelton (2000). We do not claim or expect
independence within replications, either in demand or supply. Demand is by definition
autocorrelated over time, and inventory levels and replenishment orders are clearly linked
from one period to the next. Indeed, we wish to induce bullwhip effects over time within
each replication to reflect the effects observed in practice. Across replications, we applied
terminating sampling and chose independent random number seeds to initiate each sample
replication.
Cost structures varied substantially by firm and item in our case studies. We
addressed this complication by analyzing one set of weights in Key Issue 6 to demonstrate an
example that counters conventional research assumptions. For more generality in 7, we
consider a design with a range of costs. With 4 and 5, we apply MANOVA across
performance metrics, and focus on statistical inferences consistent among them as reported
over replications.
62
For Key Issue 4), our MANOVA design has two fixed factors: time block and
location of disruption. We do not enable the expediting option as mitigation, and observe the
service-level and system-inventory metrics as dependent variables. We found that values
from each metric are drawn from different distributions, according to Pillai's Trace, Wilks'
Lambda, Hotelling's Trace, and Roy's Largest Root statistics at the .01 level (Arbuckle,
2005). Results for the two metrics are summarized in Figure 3.2. Each point in the graphs
depicts the mean value over an indicated five-month time block.
Waller-Duncan multiple-range post-hoc tests disclose that for both disrupted
locations, service level is significantly different between disrupted and base-case states over
the first three time blocks (15 months). In the final eight time blocks, there is no significant
difference among the means and zero. All of these results hold at the .01 and .05 levels.
System inventory is significantly different over the first six time blocks (30 months).
In the final five time blocks, there is no significant difference among the means and zero.
Clearly, the effects of disruptions on the two performance metrics last for a long time. There
are severe decreases in service level for more than a year. Additional system inventory over
the base case exceeds ten weeks of demand for more than two years after a disruption at
Echelon 1.
In analyses comparing disruptions at Echelons 1 and 4, the MANOVA statistics at the
.01 level indicate significant deterioration in service level over the first five months after a
disruption at Echelon 1, as well as increased system inventory (more than twice the amount)
in months six through 30.
63
a. Each point represents a mean value over a time block. Waller-Duncan multiple range tests indicate that
points not circled are significantly different from one another; those circled indicate no significant difference
between one another and zero. These results hold at the .01 and .05 levels.
Figure 3.2. Performance effects of a disruption.
a
6
3
6
3
64
We observe a strong bullwhip influence, especially for a disruption at Echelon 1,
where order variability is amplified backwards in the supply chain. With the disruption at
Echelon 4 rather than 1, final assembly orders have a chance to recover over the longer
cumulative lead times; the derived order-up-to levels were more consistent; and the
associated system inventory levels were lower on average. This is in contrast to findings by
Wu and Chen (2009) who found that regardless of source in a two stage system, larger
fluctuations occur closer to the disruption and dampen when propagating away. This can be
attributed to the differences in our model of more stages, the presence of lead times, the lack
of perfect information flows, and the corresponding presence of bullwhip effects.
Our experimentation sheds light on the relevance of Key Question 4), and highlights
the importance of studying the effects of disruptions at different stages in the supply chain.
This led us to recommend that Sandia consider a variety of disruptions at various stages and
between stages.
3.4.5 Key Issue 5: System Performance under Expediting
We compare performance results of the base case (without expediting and disruptions) with
an expediting case (no disruptions). If the expediting option is enabled, we permit expediting
at all echelons, with order crossover a possibility. Figure 3.1 shows values of the LTs and
ELTs we chose in the experiments with details in Appendix B.
To compare performance between the base case and expediting, we use all three
performance metrics (final-echelon service level, system inventory, and system expediting)
as dependent variables using MANOVA. Values from the three metrics are drawn from
different distributions, according to the aforementioned statistics at the .01 level.
65
We also observe significant performance differences at the .01 level between the base
and expediting cases for each metric. While significant, however, the relative performance
differences raise issues about the value of expediting. Shortages improve with expediting by
only 0.18 units per day on average demand of 111 units, while total system inventory
increases by an average of 787 units per day (almost eight days of average demand). System
inventory increases so much because expediting increases the variability in order quantity
and frequency, and this variability is amplified downstream in the supply chain.
Expediting, while considered necessary (Bradley, 1997; Cohen et al., 2003), is
usually expensive (Arslan, Ayhan, and Olsen, 2001; Groenevelt and Rudi, 2003). Beyer and
Ward (2002) observed that expediting by air in HPs supply chain costs as much as five times
more than standard shipment by sea. In the case firms, we found that expediting was quite
expensive as well.
According to the personnel we interviewed, expediting offers a first line of defense
against variability deemed irregular as well as that considered part of normal business
conditions. Our experimental findings raise questions about the value of this practice as a
mitigation approach of choice. We are not the first to raise the issue. Even before bullwhip
effects were understood, the practice of expediting was challenged because of nervousness it
may induce in MRP systems (e.g., citations in Schmitt, 1984). Regardless of the evidence, we
do not expect firms to discontinue the practice of expediting. It would be difficult to convince
managers of an electronics firm not to expedite one component when the remaining 700
needed for assembly and sale of a finished product are available. However, practitioner
behavior might be influenced by future research that finds merit in the application of certain
types of expediting at specific supply chain stages, or between stages.
66
3.4.6 Key Issue 6: System Performance and Applicability of Analytics, Heuristics
Traditionally, researchers offering analytics or heuristics have been careful in claiming utility
only within their system assumptions. Base-stock policies have been shown optimal for
stationary stochastic demand in simple supply chains (Axsater, 2000; Porteus, 2002).
Without showing optimality, some have used order-up-to and other well known policies in
simple supply chains in the presence of supply or demand disruptions (Chao, 1987; Gupta,
1996; Arreola-Risa and DeCroix, 1998; Snyder, 2006, Lewis et al., 2008). Yet even in single-
stage stationary systems, researchers have not found tractability when shortages are lost (e.g.,
Karlin and Scarf, 1958; Janakiraman and Roundy, 2004; Janakiraman, Seshadri, and
Shantihikumar, 2006), and others have proposed heuristic solutions (Nahmias, 1979;
Donselaar et al. 1996; Metters 1997; Ketzenberg et al. 2000).
In this section, we observe non-unimodal total cost behavior within a range of stage
order-up-to levels under conditions of no expediting or disruption. To make a case, we
choose a holding cost of $1/unit/day, a backorder cost of $2/unit/day (at Echelons 2, 3, and
4), a lost-sales cost of $3/unit (at Echelon 1), and a stage production/transportation cost of
$1/unit. We present results for this case, and in the next section, report summary statistics
over a variety of costs.
Figure 3.3 shows plots of the simulation results of total cost over various stage order-
up-to levels only for the first of the replications. The two graphs to the left focus solely on
behavior at Echelon 1, while the ones to the right show interactions between Echelon 1 and
Echelon 2.
The graphs on the left show total cost values for discrete order-up-to levels at Echelon
1, while allowing the other three echelons to derive order-up-to levels from stage demand
67
forecasts. The top left graph displays total cost performance versus Echelon 1 order-up-to
levels over the range [1, 2000]. Clearly, the local optima vary considerably in value, e.g., one
yields a total cost 6.95 times larger than the lowest observed total cost value, given the
starting point.
The bottom left graph depicts a finer grain relationship over the range [1000, 1530]. It
highlights the striking volatility of the cost function.
The graphs on the right of Figure 3.3 show the interactive behavior between the first
two echelons, depicting total supply chain cost while varying Echelon 1 order-up-to levels
for prescribed Echelon 2 levels. In this set of experiments, Echelons 3 and 4 derive order-up-
to levels from stage demand forecasts. The course and fine grain representations at the top
and bottom right, respectively, generalize the previous observations solely about Echelon 1.
Clearly, computationally-efficient iterative line searches or analytic searches (based on
assumptions of well-behaved first and second order functions) would derive very poor
solutions in this operating scenario, depending on the starting point and method efficiency.
There are multiple ways to demonstrate our concerns about ill-structured performance
behavior and inappropriateness of exact approaches, which include deriving violations of
Kuhn-Tucker conditions and finding derivatives with the wrong sign. We chose another way,
the presentation of this counter example, one where exact approaches would yield a total cost
almost seven times larger than optimum. Existence of such a counter example, of any
magnitude, is sufficient to obviate generality of exact analytical approaches. In the next Key
Question, we consider the efficacy of a unimodal search method over a wide variety of cost
structures.
Figure 3.3. Shape of total cost function.
b,c
Total Supply Chain Cost vs Echelon 1 Order-up-to level
over the Quantity Range [1, 2000]
0
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Total Supply Chain Cost vs Echelon 1 Order-up-to level over the Quantity
Range [940, 1357], at various Echleon 2 Order-up-to Levels
7800
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Ech. 2 Level = 2500
Ech. 2 Level = 3000
Ech. 2 Level = 3500
Ech. 2 Level = 4000
Ech. 2 Level = 2500
Ech. 2 Level = 3000
Ech. 2 Level = 3500
Ech. 2 Level = 4000
b. Total Supply Chain Cost while Varying Echelon 1
Order-up-to Level; Three Other Echelons Derive
Order-up-to Levels using Demand Forecasts
c. Total Supply Chain Cost while Varying Echelon 1
Order-up-to Level at prescribed Order-up-to Levels
at Echelon 2; Other Two Echelons Derive Order-up-
to Levels using Demand Forecasts
6
8
69
3.4.7 Key Issue 7: Genetic Search versus Line Search
We next examine the modality of the objective function surface under a variety of cost
settings. Sandia programmed a general genetic search (GA) function to jump over local
optima within a wide range of parameter values. We conducted experiments to examine
Sandias GA approach to search for cost-effective order-up-to quantities at Echelon 1, while
allowing demand forecasts to guide decision making at other Echelons. The GA utility
represents candidate solutions as binary numbers. Crossover and mutation operators are used
to overcome local minima. For details, see Goldberg (1989).
We consider line search (LS) as a basis for procedural contrast and to examine
performance modality. LS ensures optimality only when the objective function is unimodal.
In our problem setting, a LS approach that increments upwards from an order quantity of 0 to
find a local optima may result in a significantly higher than optimal cost. To facilitate a
reasonably fair comparison with GA, our adaptation of LS begins with an order-up-to
quantity equal to the mean lead time demand at Echelon 1 and searches each way in the
neighborhood (upward first) until we encounter local optima. In pilot experiments this
adaptation resulted in solutions much better than starting at 0.
Table 3.2. Various costs at two levels each.
Back
Ordering
Cost
Cost of
Lost
Sales
Carryin
g Cost
Expeditin
g Cost
Low 4 6 2 3
High 8 12 4 5
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To represent a wide variety of operating conditions, we selected a range of cost
parameters as presented in Table 3.2. The parameters are based on findings in literature and
case studies. Realistic costs depend on the type of product, industry, and supply chain, among
other factors. Cohen et al. (2003) observed that with short life cycles and obsolescence in the
semiconductor industry, the cost of losing a sale is about twice the cost of backlogging, while
the holding cost is three times the cost of backlogging. We follow these ratios for setting the
cost parameters. By contrast, Faaland et al. (2004) experimented with lost-sales costs in a
single-echelon ranging from 62 to 500 times the periodic inventory holding cost, yielding
shortage values much higher than the ones we chose. Their parameters were based on a
cross-industry survey by Boer and Jeter (1993). Our choice of relatively low shortage costs
reported here is intended to explore benefits of GA over LS under modest conditions. We
observed in pilot experiments that larger shortage costs relative to inventory carrying costs
further exaggerated differences between GA and LS.
Table 3.3 shows the cost savings under various cost scenarios. The percentage
improvements represent averages over 100 replications (observed over periods 1000-2000)
for each of the 16 cost combinations. The superiority of GA over LS at Echelon 1 holds at
the 0.005 level using student-T tests. GA as compared with LS yields overall cost savings
greater than 16%, and in one of the cost setting by more than 30%.
Genetic Search yielded significantly better costs at the expense of computation time.
On a laptop, the time per run for GA was about 14 hours, and our adaptation of LS averaged
about 10 minutes. While the computation time for GA may be acceptable for Sandia with its
fast complex of computers, we recognize an opportunity in future work to adapt standard GA
utilities to special properties of this problem setting.
71
Table 3.3. Results for Line and Genetic Search under various cost combinations.
Back
Ordering
Cost
Cost of
Lost
Sales
Carrying
Cost
Expediting
Cost
Line
Search
LS
Genetic
Search
GA
Mean
Percentage
Cost
Savings
Low Low Low Low 551.01 472.38 14.27
Low Low Low High 606.78 493.61 18.65
Low Low High Low 808.55 685.79 15.18
Low High Low Low 621.22 496.91 20.01
High Low Low Low 690.61 516.98 25.14
High High Low Low 764.22 544.26 28.78
High Low High Low 996.62 922.66 7.42
High Low Low High 742.80 524.13 29.44
High High High Low 1028.71 927.69 9.82
High High Low High 797.62 551.08 30.91
High Low High High 994.61 922.56 7.24
Low High High High 974.21 896.36 7.99
Low High High Low 873.29 812.41 6.97
Low High Low High 668.32 510.28 23.65
Low Low High High 852.02 833.00 2.23
High High High High 1071.11 941.23 12.13
3.5 Conclusions and Future Directions
Disruptions can have many sources covering the gamut from natural to accidental to
intentional. Regardless of cause, disruptions can have long-lasting, widespread, and costly
effects on supply chains. We describe aspects of a stream of research to assess the economic
impact of supply chain disruptions. The overarching research mission of our sponsor, Sandia
National Laboratories, is to develop a large-scale simulation model that depicts regional and
national economic behavior to a disruptive event. Simulation is intended to augment existing
analytical and statistical models whose utility may depend on the validity of inherent
simplifying assumptions. Such optimization models routinely assume aggregation of demand
and supply data, substitutability of supply options, independent and steady-state behavior of
72
underlying stochastic distributions, optimization over well-behaved objective functions, and
simple supply chain structures (Chen, Sim, Simchi-Levi, and Sun, 2007 and citations).
Sandias concern was that with such high stakes, entities within the U.S. government and
private sectors cannot afford to wait for researchers to overcome the substantial challenges of
overcoming simplifying assumptions in the optimization models.
Sandias agent-based simulation has the capability to incorporate supply chain
networks with a million or more firms and supporting infrastructure. The first project for the
system has been to address the Pacific Northwest region. We concentrated on one stage of
this effort on how to model business activity of small and medium sized firms within supply
chains. It is anticipated that these insights will be useful in other research as well.
We conducted case studies of three electronics firms in the region, and drew from the
cases to offer a fundamental set of design requirements, performance drivers, and important
research questions. Sandia may not need to represent entire supply chains, but if electronics
assembly is representative, their model should include at least:
(i) Four echelons per industry,
(ii) An echelon with assembly,
(iii) Bullwhip effects facilitated by a multi-echelon, multi-stage inventory
system with local planning,
(iv) Shortages along the supply chain in the form of backorders and lost sales,
(v) Capability to expedite at all stages,
(vi) Service level at the final stage, system expediting and system inventory as
performance metrics, and
(vii) Disruptions in the form of time delays at various stages in the supply
chain.
To guide Sandias experimentation, we followed with research questions, whose answers
were driven by simulation results. One important finding was that the system cost function
73
can be quite ill-behaved in a four-echelon supply chain, even in the absence of disruptions
and expediting. We reveal a weakness of analytical optimization approaches in the present
setting by providing one example where these methods failed to obtain satisfactory solutions,
along with supportive statistical evidence over a wide range of operating conditions.
Analytical methods that assume unimodal behavior may be inappropriate for real-world
supply chains.
Another finding confirms that disruptions may have long-lasting, rippling, and costly
consequences within the supply chain structure presently considered. Another is that standard
industry practices of setting order parameters locally and using expediting as mitigation seem
to exacerbate these undesirable effects. In addition, our cases, experiments and subsequent
observations by Sandia (Appendix A) support Craighead et al. (2007), who suggest
simulation analysis and field study as means to verify propositions that the severity of a
disruption is related to time, its location, the structure of the supply chain, and types of
mitigation. We believe that additional field study across industries is warranted.
We address disruptions at each end of a four echelon supply chain, but we suggest
that an expanded study may find value in investigating disruptions elsewhere. In support of
this, Sandias model has capabilities to explore more fully the hypothesis that mitigation
efforts should focus on specific areas of network criticality, i.e., to explore disruptions at any
supply chain stage as well as in infrastructure shared by many firms within a region, such as
transportation hubs, electric power, and telecommunications. Their model also offers more
structural flexibility, e.g., parts distributors may have multiple customers, which may enable
demand aggregation and dampening of the demand amplification elsewhere in the supply
chain.
74
Our experimental results suggest caution, however, regarding mitigation efforts and
resiliency. Information sharing offers clear advantages in a supply chain, and authors have
addressed this issue (e.g., Milgrom and Roberts, 1988; Lee et al., 2000; Chatfield, Kim,
Harrison, and Hayya, 2004; Sodhi, 2005). As a caveat, our experiments disclose that
information must be discounted considerably to control bullwhip effects in moving from the
source of uncertainty in a supply chain. For instance, we derived a very low forecasting
weight of 0.01 on the most recent local information for the firms in the last echelon, Echelon
4. While we support the notion that increased information and flexibility to react are
generally desirable, we caution that it is possible to overreact. A disruptive event creates a
critical watershed. The issue is how much weight to place on the news of such an event and
what to do about it.
Furthermore, with the irregular cost objective surface documented by our results, we
believe future efforts should be directed towards developing efficient and effective search
methods to find order parameters yielding local optima close to global cost values. Further
research is needed to explore the efficacy of hybrid GA approaches as well as other
metaheuristics (Corne et al., 1999; Kimbrough et al., 2002; Glover and Kochenberger, 2003;
Rego, 2005). A brute force approach would be to increase the generation count of GA to
further improve solution quality, but this would likely exacerbate the formidable computation
problem. We think a better alternative would be to take advantage of problem structure and
domain knowledge (Holland, 1992; Gen and Cheng, 2000). One approach would be to assign
the lead time demand as one of the starting solutions for GA, since the operators of crossover
and mutation in standard utilities do not allow a directed intelligent search. This might help
solution effectiveness and efficiency as it did with LS in our experiments.
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Our findings suggest that consideration of lost sales, multiple echelons, and assembly
perturb stationary behavior that might otherwise be found in less complex systems, and that
disruptions and expediting exacerbate the problem. Further research is warranted on dynamic
order-up-to policies with parameters updated periodically, whether the adjustments are made
using adaptive search over demand history, or cost-based search directly on order-up-to
parameters. This premise is further supported by simulation experiments conducted by Ross
et al. (2008) who found a time-varying order-up-to policy more effective than a static policy
in terms of the total costs of holding, ordering and lost sales. They considered a single
product at a single stage in the presence of cyclical demand and recurrent disruptions. From a
practical perspective, case firms such as those we studied, which employ periodic review
time-phased order point systems, may be able to incorporate such dynamic ordering policies.
Additional insights may also result from future simulation research that relaxes some
of our simplifying assumptions. Sandia has already extended our model to include
price/demand elasticity functions and a diverse customer base for agent firms. A broader
spectrum of costs and revenues can be advantageously investigated within an experimental
design to identify the conditions under which mitigation approaches are effective against
certain disruptions. Our experiments embraced both normal and expedited activity lead
times, but did not consider capacity interactions that might result from finite replenishment,
setups and specific capacity adjustments such as overtime, additional shifts, part-time help,
alternate routing, and sub-contracting. Non-stationary demand, stochastic lead times,
stochastic failure times, and lead time/demand elasticity represent other realistic extensions.
However, prior work as well as ours suggests that variability in quantities and lead times,
whether from normal operations, disruptions, or expediting, is amplified in supply chains. It
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is possible, although unlikely, that future extensions such as those we suggest would
contribute to improved problem tractability. The practical value of our contribution is
affirmed in the following feedback from Sandia [2007]: [This work] demonstrated the
importance of careful design in modeling the realities of supply chain behavior, and provided
strong motivation for further simulation development and experimentation.
77
CHAPTER 4
ADAPTIVE SEARCH METHODS FOR ORDERING DECISIONS IN MULTI-
STAGE SUPPLY CHAINS
4.1 Introduction
To remain competitive, todays marketplace requires that supply chain managers make
efficient decisions. These decisions can be made using sophisticated mathematical modeling
and solution techniques. Advancements have been made in mathematical modeling; however,
some have not had the desired impact on decision-making in supply chains (Lourenco, 2005).
Moreover, many analytically tractable models suffer from restrictive assumptions (Kochel
and Nielander, 2005). The difficulty is partly due to the complexity of real-world supply
chain decisions. Other factors such as supply chain disruptions also add to the difficulties in
decision-making.
Supply chain management decisions include strategic, operational, and tactical.
Ganeshan et al. (1999) further classify operational decisions into inventory management and
control; production, planning, and scheduling; information sharing, coordination and
monitoring; and operations. Our work deals with inventory management, which is a critical
part of supply chain management as it impacts all business functions and can account for 20-
40% of the total item cost (Schroeder, 2008; Ballou, 1992). We further focus on periodic
review order-up-to ordering policies. These policies are popular in practice and are shown to
be optimal for single-echelon, independent items, and stationary stochastic demand (Axsater,
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2004). Despite their popularity, the optimality of these policies under relatively simple but
practical situations such as lost sales and expediting is not known (Karlin and Scarf, 1958;
Janakiraman, Seshadri, and Shanthikumar, 2006; Veeraraghavan and Wolf, 2008).
Lack of optimal policies has motivated use of simulation and heuristics in research
and practice. Simulation has been useful because of its ability to handle complex problems
involving stochastic variables and non-linear functions (Amodeo et al. 2009). Simulation is
primarily used for evaluation of inventory policies and is not an optimization tool (Daniel
and Rajendran, 2005). We embed metaheuristic optimization toots in our simulations to
search for efficient solutions.
We propose and test practically implementable adaptive search methods in a multi-
stage supply chain that includes assembly, lost sales, and expediting. The metaheuristic
methods proposed can accommodate a wide range of real-life supply chain constraints. To
our knowledge, this is the first study that uses adaptive search methods for supply chain
ordering decisions. We also consider the possibility of lost sales, which increases the
practical relevance of our model. Besides order-up-to levels, our decision variables include
percentage of orders expedited and two expediting triggers. We believe ours is the first such
effort in using metaheuristics for expediting decision variables.
We propose a novel objective function, for both local and global supply chain
planning. Our objective function involves holding costs, backorder costs, lost sales costs, and
expediting costs, and resembles the exponential smoothing method. Depending on the
volatility of demand and possible disruptions, the smoothing parameters can be adjusted,
making the objective function well-suited for steady as well as disrupted supply chains.
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Many inventory models, including the pioneering work of Clark and Scarf (1960),
assume stationary demand and find a static order-up-to policy; however, the stationary
assumptions may not be valid in practice. Market trends; seasonal demand and production;
variable material, labor, and equipment availability; and disruptions are some of many causes
that can violate the stationary assumption. Therefore, a dynamic inventory policy may be
more appropriate. Our design of search methods and the objective function allow us to
optimize under a dynamic situation; i.e., decision variables are time variant and are
determined each period.
Metaheuristic methods have been shown to perform better when designed with
problem-specific properties (Holland, 1992; Chen et al., 2004; Gen and Cheng, 2000). We
reveal useful properties of objective function and feasible solution space. These properties
are then used to make several problem-specific adaptations to increase search efficiency.
Specifically, candidate list strategy, intensification, reference set, and a flexible aspiration
criterion are introduced to increase the solution quality and efficiency of adaptive search.
Some aspects of scatter search are also incorporated. We also compare the performance of
adaptive search with genetic search and Fibonacci search. Using cost parameters from
Schmitt et al. (2009) we show the superiority of adaptive search over other methods.
Both stationary and non stationary demand scenarios are considered. We effectively
use Adaptive search to find dynamic ordering policies under a seasonal and disrupted
demand. The results are shown to be superior to best static policies obtained assuming
complete future demand information.
The remainder of the chapter is organized as follows: We review related literature in
Section 4.3; we describe the supply chain model and parameters in Section 4.4; Section 4.5
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includes a description of metaheuristic methods; in Section 4.6, we present the results;
Section 4.7 lists extensions, and Section 4.8 concludes the chapter.
4.2 Literature Review
Since the pioneering work of Clark and Scarf (1960), inventory management in supply chains
has received much attention. See Axsater (1993) or Federgruen (1993) for a thorough
literature review. Clark and Scarf modeled a periodic review serial supply chain with fixed
lead time between echelons and a cost function that includes inventory holding, backorder,
and per item ordering cost. Assuming complete backorder, they showed that an order-up-to
policy is optimal. Federgruen and Zipkin (1984) extend the results to infinite horizon and
show that calculating order-up-to values is simpler in infinite horizon. Chen and Zheng
(1994) provide optimality results for continuous review policies. Chen and Song (2001)
consider a state-dependent demand function and show that a state-dependent order-up-to
policy is optimal for long run average cost function. Muharremoglu and Tsitsiklis (2001)
simplify the optimality proofs of order-up-to policies and establish the optimality in
stochastic lead time and state-dependent demand. Parker and Kapuschiski (2004) add
capacity constraints. They show that a modified order-up-to policy is optimal when a lower
echelon has a smaller capacity.
Clark and Scarf (1962) generalize the problem by including a fixed ordering cost.
They show that the optimal policy is complex, and even if the optimal policy is identified it
would be difficult to implement, making it unattractive in practice. Moreover, under general
conditions, a simple base stock policy may not be optimal or computation of parameters may
become challenging (Swaminathan and Tayur, 2003). Optimal policy under lost sales, even
with deterministic demands, is an open problem (Swaminathan and Tayur, 2003). Optimal
81
policies under generalized expediting are also not known (Veeraraghavan and Wolf, 2008).
Most analytical research uses dynamic programming with recursive algorithms to find
optimal policies. However, developing such algorithms is mathematically and
computationally difficult (Clark, 1960; Shang and Song, 2003). Many supply chain inventory
decisions are based not on algorithms but rule of thumb (Lourenco, 2005).
Difficulties with analytics have motivated a part of research to focus on heuristics or
approximate solution procedures for finding order-up-to values (Chen, 1999). To overcome
difficulties with order-up-to policies, Chen (1999) and Cachon (1995) implemented (R, NQ)
policies, where R is the reorder point and Q is the base order quantity. N is the minimum
integer required to increase inventory beyond R. This policy is proposed as an approximation
to (s, S) policy. By converting an N-stage serial system to a 2N-stage problem, Shang and
Song (2003) provide an easily implementable myopic heuristic for determining order-up-to
quantities. Under restricted assumptions on demand, horizon, and cost function, they show
their heuristic to be close to optimal. Under capacity constraints, de Kok (1989) proposed a
modified base stock policy by using the inventory position at the start of a period which
equals S X, where X is the waiting time in a D/G/1 queue. He also provided a heuristic for
computing order-up-to quantity. Bollapragada and Morton (1999) consider an ordering
policy problem with setup cost and provide an effective myopic heuristic by approximating
the non-stationary problem with a stationary problem and solving for the stationary problem.
Using an application of the Hewlett-Packard supply chain, Lee and Billington (1993) propose
a simple search heuristic that looks for service level targets. Other heuristic methods can be
found in Hausman and Peterson (1972), Heath and Jackson (1994), Donselaar et al. (1996),
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Graves et al. (1998), Eynan and Kropp (1998), Rajagopalan and Swaminathan (2001),
Roundy and Muckstadt (2000), Lu et al. (2006), Hurley et al. (2006), and Levi et al. (2008).
Simulation, because of its ability to manage real-world complexity, has been used as
a powerful alternative to analytics. In the domain of supply chain inventory management,
simulation has been used to study the performance under various inventory policies (Towill
et al. 1992), supply chain configurations (Souza et al. 2000), Web-based operations (Beamon
and Chen, 2001), operating policies (Holweg and Bicheno, 2002), demand uncertainty (Closs
et al, 1998), information sharing (Strader et al. 1998; Li et al. 2005), and market conditions
(Ye and Farley, 2005). Chatfield et al (2004) study the effect of lead time and information on
bullwhip effect.
Simulation is not an optimization tool and is primarily used for performance
evaluation and not problem solving. To address this shortcoming, simulation has been
hybridized with search methods creating simulation-based optimization tools. These tools
take advantage of the flexibility and versatility of simulation and the optimization power of
search heuristics (Gosavi, 2003). Glasserman and Tayur (1994, 1995) find the base stock
using a simulation-based optimization procedure, where infinitesimal perturbation analysis
was used to develop an efficient solution methodology. Rao et al. (2000) analyzed various
supply chain configurations. Besides dynamic programming, they used simulation-based
optimization to find inventory levels for various configurations in Caterpillars construction
equipment supply chain. Ettl et al. (2000) used a conjugate gradient method as a search
routine to find base-stock levels for each echelon with the objective of minimizing the supply
chain inventory while maintaining required service levels.
83
Metaheuristics has been used in many supply chain applications; however, their use
for ordering decisions is relatively new. Daniel and Rajendran (2005) provide a Genetic
Algorithm (GA) based simulation method to find periodic review order-up-to values in a
four-echelon serial supply chain. The cost objective consists of holding and shortage costs
across all echelons. The performance of GA is compared with solutions from random search
and complete enumeration. The solutions from GA are shown to be near optimal. Both
stochastic and static lead times are modeled. Final customer demand at echelon 1 is drawn
from a uniform distribution. While assuming all shortages to be backlogged, they test six
different cost combinations of shortages and holding. GA is used to search through a time
horizon of 1200 periods, repeated 30 times. Daniel and Rajendran (2006) extend the model to
include advanced Genetic Algorithm techniques of gen-wise crossover and random keys
presentation of chromosomes. Furthermore, they consider separate objectives for holding
costs and shortage costs and develop a GA to find non-dominated Pareto solutions.
Kochel and Nielander (2005) modeled a continuous review, base stock, five-echelon
serial supply chain with the option of transshipment between the echelons. The modeled
parameters include cost of holding, backorder, and shipment. Various combinations of
transshipment costs were studied. They also discuss the possibility of using the method for
non-serial supply chains. The tests include a comparison of centralized and decentralized
supply chains. GA was used as the metaheuristic method. Amodeco et al. (2009) model a
periodic review, two-stage supply chain that includes three suppliers and one manufacturer.
The manufacturer assembles three components from the suppliers to produce one final
product. A dual objective of customer service level and inventory cost is considered. The
lead times and costs are fixed, while demand at the manufacturer is exponentially distributed.
84
All unmet demand is backlogged. They report the usefulness and success of GA in finding
the base stock levels.
We contribute to research in simulation-based optimization for ordering decisions and
in general in inventory management. Our work differs from earlier research in, i) model; ii)
supply chain operational parameters; iii) dynamic policies; iv) objective function; and v)
metaheuristic method used. We borrow the supply chain model and parameters from our
earlier work in Schmitt et al. (2009). The model is based on literature findings and case
studies of electronics companies. It includes four echelons, including an assembly stage. To
explore a more realistic supply chain, we consider expediting at all stages, which is common
in practice to avoid shortages (Schmitt et al. 2009). We also consider the possibility of
shortages at the lowest echelon.
We also propose a time variant dynamic ordering policy. Much of inventory literature
is focused on static policies, partly because of modeling and analytical difficulties in
treatment of dynamic policies. However, prior research has shown the superiority of dynamic
policies. Donselaar et al. (1996) compare the performance of a static optimal base stock
policy with a dynamic myopic heuristic base stock policy and show empirically that the latter
significantly outperforms the stationary base stock policy. Ross et al. (2008) while modeling
supply chain disruptions, found instances where a time-varying dynamic order-up-to policy is
more effective than a static policy in terms of the total costs of holding, ordering, and lost
sales. From a practical perspective, when considering real-world scenarios where stationary
assumption may not hold, dynamic ordering policies should outperform static policies. (Note
that static policies are a subset of dynamic policies.)
85
Our design of objective function captures variations in environmental and supply
chain parameters over time. The objective function is, in essence, similar to an exponential
smoothing function, which is an effective forecasting method and is popular in practice
(Snyder et al., 2004; Gardner, 1985; Makridakis and Hibon, 2000). Our objective function
has the required properties to react and adapt to supply chain variations, making it suitable
for use under supply chain disruptions, seasonality, and trends.
Adaptive search has dramatically changed our ability to solve a host of problems in
applied science, business, and engineering (Glover and Laguna, 2008). Its adaptive memory
is well-suited to facilitate solutions to complex problems. We implement some improvements
in a Tabu search and compare the results with GA and Fibonacci searches. We also
successfully use Adaptive search method under seasonal and disrupted demand.
4.3 The Supply Chain Model
Our model is designed to reflect the importance and benefits of using Adaptive search
methods in a supply chain that represents realistic operations. Using electronics industry data
and findings from literature, Schmitt et al. (2007) developed a similar supply chain structure
to model operations in multi-echelon supply chains.
4.3.1 Supply Chain Structure and Activities
Figure 3.1 (See previous chapter) shows the model supply chain with four echelons. Echelon
1 has only one stage, corresponding to delivery of the finished goods to customers. Echelons
2, 3, and 4 each include two stages, A and B, which refer to activities associated with two
components (A and B) that go into the finished product. The stages of echelons 2, 3, and 4
are referred to as stages 2A, 2B; 3A, 3B; 4A and 4B, respectively.
86
Raw materials are processed and transported through the four echelons to be sold to
customers. Echelon 1 includes the processes of a retailer who sells the finished product to
customers. Echelon 2 assembles two component parts (A and B) from stages 3A and 3B to
form the final product, which is then ready to be shipped to echelon 1. If either component A
or B is short, the assembly order cannot be launched. Echelon 3 consists of two distribution
centers, stages 3A and 3B. Echelon 4 consists of two manufacturers at stages 4A and 4B,
who acquire raw materials from respective suppliers to manufacture components A and B.
These two components are then supplied to stages 3A and 3B, respectively.
4.3.2 Supply Chain Parameters and the Inventory Logic
Subscript 1 = i represents the lowest supply chain echelon, i.e., the retailer. Goods flow from
a higher echelon to a lower echelon. Note that echelons 2, 3, and 4 have two stages each. To
avoid ambiguity between stages and echelons, we describe the model for stages 1, 2, 3, and
4, by dropping the component notation of A and B. Echelons 2, 3, and 4 can represent either
of the two components, A and B. The equations and logic elaborated for i=1, 2, 3 and 4 can
be used for the echelons i=1, 2A, 3A, 4A or i=1, 2B, 3B, 4B. Unless specified otherwise, all
descriptions and equations below are for echelon i.
Notation.
Indices
i
Supply chain echelon, } 4 , 3 , 2 , 1 { } 4 , 3 , 2 , 1 { B B B or A A A i e
t Time period in days
87
Decision variables
t
i
Y Order-up-to quantity at time t at echelon i
t
i
e Fraction of an order expedited at time t from echelon i
t
i
OTh On-hand inventory threshold at time t for echelon i
t
i
PTh Pipeline inventory threshold at time t for echelon i
Parameters
1
Mean demand per period at echelon 1
AR(1) coefficient of demand at echelon 1
c Independent and identically distributed normal random variable,
) , 0 ( o c N e
e
i
L Expedited lead time in days at echelon i
i
L Regular lead time in days at echelon i
i
| Fraction of shortages backordered at echelon i
o Discount factor
h Holding cost per unit per period
c Backordering cost per unit per period
g Cost of lost sales per unit
r Cost of regular order per unit
f Cost of expediting per unit
Other variables
t
D
1
Final customer demand in period t at echelon 1
t
i
Th Binary variable,
;
,
0
1
otherwise
OTh I or OTh I If
Th
t
i
t
i
t
i
t
i t
i
s s

=
88
t
i
s Shortage at time t at echelon i
t
i
b Number of units backordered at time t at echelon i
t
i
l Lost demand at time t at echelon i
t
i
S Number of units shipped at time t from echelon i
t
i
RS Number of units in a regular order at time t from echelon i
t
i
ES Number of expedited units at time t from echelon i
t
i
I On hand inventory at time t at echelon i
t
i
Q Quantity-on-order (pipeline inventory + backorders) at time t at echelon i
t
i
q Quantity ordered at time t at echelon i
t L
i
q
,
Estimated mean lead time demand at time t at echelon i
t L
i
,
o Estimated variance of lead time demand at time t at echelon i
t
i
C Total discounted objective function at time t for echelon i
t
Z A set of decision variables at time t
Final customer demand at echelon 1: Realistic supply chain models account for uncertainty
in demand (Hadley and Whitin, 1967 and Porteus, 2004). Demand uncertainty is faced by the
retailer and is amplified at the upper echelons of the supply chain (Kahn, 1987; Chen et al.,
2000; and Lee et al., 1997b). Variability in order quantities at each echelon, which becomes
the demand at preceding echelons, drives demand amplification. See Lee et al. (1997a) for
various causes and industry examples of demand amplification.
89
To model customer demand at echelon 1, an autoregressive process with a lag of one
period, AR(1), is used. Autoregressive models have been successfully applied to model
demand of many products such as electricity, water, groceries, and electronics (Weigend and
Gershenfeld, 1993). The customer demand observed in period t at echelon 1 is of the
form c + + =
1
1 1 1
t t
D D , where 0
1
> is the mean demand, is the correlation coefficient,
and c is an independent and identically distributed normal random variable, ) , 0 ( o c N e . To
avoid negative orders, demand is truncated at 0. For analytical convenience, researchers
sometimes assume negative demand as returns (Kahn, 1987; Lee et al., 1997; Chen et al.,
2000).
Backorders, lost sales, and partial demand: If the on-hand inventory is insufficient to meet
the demand, partial demand is satisfied. Of the unsatisfied demand, a fraction | is
backordered. The other | 1 fraction is lost sales.
Expedited orders in response to shortages: To overcome and avoid shortages, echelons can
expedite orders. An expedited order can be produced and transported in
e
i
L periods. Regular
orders take
i
L periods, where
i
e
i
L L < .
Following prior practice and research, we apply two triggers (thresholds) to expedite
lead times as orders are launched. Orders are expedited when the on-hand inventory falls
below an on-hand inventory threshold,
t
i
OTh . Since this threshold triggers expediting when
on-hand inventory is low, it can help overcome shortages (Beyer and Ward, 2002). To avoid
shortages, pipeline inventory should be considered when making expediting decisions
(Fakuda, 1960; Groenevelt and Rudi, 2003; Whitmore and Saunders, 1977). When pipeline
90
inventory falls below a second threshold of
t
i
PTh , orders are expedited. Pipeline inventory is
the sum of in-transit and on-hand inventory.
An expedited order is costlier than a regular order. Therefore, firms may expedite
partial orders (Arslan, Ayhan, and Olsen, 2001). If either of the expediting thresholds is met
at time t, only a fraction
t
i
e of the order placed in period t is expedited, while the remaining
1-
t
i
e is produced and shipped by the regular method.
Sequence of events: For each period, echelon i receives into inventory goods from the
previous echelon (i+1), launches a new order, withdraws from inventory this periods order
by its immediate customer (i-1), initiated delivery, and updates the backorder quantity. To
elaborate, the sequence of events for echelon i are as follows. At the start of time period t,
echelon i receives into inventory regular shipped order
i
L t
i
RS

, that was shipped L
i
periods
ago and expedited order
e
i
L t
i
ES

, shipped
e
i
L periods ago from echelon i+1. This results in
updating the inventory level
t
i
I and the quantity-on-order
t
i
Q .
,
1
e
i i
L t
i
L t
i
t
i
t
i
ES RS I I

+ + =
=
1 t
i
t
i
Q Q .
e
i i
L t
i
L t
i
ES RS

The echelon then receives an order (demand) of

t
i
q
1
from its immediate lower echelon.
Depending on the inventory and backorders at echelon i, shipments to echelon i-1 are
determined.
)}, , min( , 0 max{
1 1
t
i
t
i
t
i
t
i
q b I S

+ =
where
t
i
b represents the backorders. Echelon i also places an order of
t
i
q to its immediate
upper echelon, which ships
t
i
S units to echelon i. The regular shipment is =
t
i
RS
t
i
t
i
t
i
S Th e ) 1 ( ,
91
while =
t
i
ES
t
i
t
i
t
i
S Th e units are expedited.
t
i
Th is a binary variable, which is 1 when either of
the two expediting thresholds are met.
The shortage is calculated as }. , 0 max{
1
1 t
i
t
i
t
i
t
i
I q b s + =

Of this shortage, a fraction | is

backordered ) (
t
i
t
i
s b | = and the rest is lost ) ) 1 ( (
t
i i
t
i
s l | = . The inventory and quantity-on-
order are then updated to compensate for shipments.
t
i
t
i
t
i
S I I
1
1

+
= and
t
i
t
i
t
i
S Q Q + =
+1
.
4.3.3 Ordering Policies
Each echelon/stage uses a periodic review order-up-to policy to determine the replenishment
order quantity. Zipkin (2004), Nahmias (1993), and Axsater (2000) discuss order-up-to
systems, which afford optimality for base-stock policies under certain assumptions on
backorders, order cost, and demand distributions. However, the optimality of such policies
under lost sales in not known (Jankiraman et al. 2006).
At the start of each period, the inventory position is inspected and ordering decisions
are made. The order quantity is calculated by
1
1
1

+ =
t
i
t
i
t
i
t
i
q Y Y q , where
t
i
Y is the order-up-
to quantity in period t. Traditionally,
t
i
Y is determined using a demand forecast.
t L
i
t L
i
t
i
z q Y
, ,
o + = , where
t L
i
q
,
and
t L
i
,
o are an estimate of mean and standard deviation of the
lead time demand. z is a constant chosen to meet a desired service level. Our supply chain
model includes assembly of only two components. Lowering the service level, z, may help
imitate the effects from assembly of many components. Therefore, the findings from our
study are not limited to 2-component assembly systems.
.
,
, 0
, 1
otherwise
PTh I or OTh I If
Th
t
i
t
i
t
i
t
i t
i
s s

=
92
Final customer demand information is not shared across the supply chain in our
model. Each echelon/stage, including echelon 1, observes only the demand it receives from
its immediate echelon customer without knowledge of the underlying demand distribution of
the final customers.
4.3.4 Objective Function and Decision Variables
In order to determine the order quantity in time period t, echelon i determines the following
four decision variable values:
i) Order-up-to quantity,
t
i
Y , which can then be used to determine the order
quantity,
t
i
q .
ii) The fraction of
t
i
q that should be expedited,
t
i
e .
iii) The pipeline inventory threshold,
t
i
PTh .
iv) The on-hand inventory threshold,
t
i
OTh .
Traditional inventory literature typically considers objective functions that include the
cost of holding and backorder. See Axsater (2000) and Zipkin (2004) for a review. In
practice, however, lost sales and expediting costs are incurred. To make our model realistic
we include these two costs along with holding and backorder costs. The objective is an
arithmetic sum of the above costs discounted across periods. At echelon i, during time period
t, the following objective is minimized,
| |
. ) 1 ( ) (
1
, , ,
t
i i i i
t
Z
t
i
t
i
t
i
t
i
t
i
t
i
PTh OTh e Y Z
t
i
C fES rRS gl cb hI C Min

=
+ + + + + = o o
The cost parameters associated with inventory, backordering, lost sales, regular
orders, and expediting, are h, c, g, r, f , respectively. At time period t, we determine
t
Z
,
a set
93
of four decision variable values, which when used to determine order quantities from period
1 through t, minimize
t
i
C . Every period, the cost function is minimized to determine decision
variable values, which are used to determine the expedited and regular order quantities. We
model a decentralized supply chain which involves independent decision making at every
echelon. Echelon i makes an ordering decision by minimizing the objective function
t
i
C
using the historical demand information from the immediate lower echelon.
The construction of objective function allows us to find dynamic, time variant
decision variables. Since the objective function places a higher weight on current period, as
compared to past periods, it is suitable for non-stationary supply chains. The objective
function and solution space react to random and non-random (i.e., trend or seasonal) changes
in demand, which then allows the search routine find decision variable that are cost effective
in a dynamic environment.
4.4 Description of Metaheuristic Search Methods
Modern products are a complex assembly of many components (often hundreds), which
require companies to be coupled. The complex interactions of material and information
between companies can make it difficult to derive optimal ordering policies. Analytical
studies approach such problems by approximating parameters such as demand, lead time,
ordering quantity, and ordering time (Axsater, 2000). However, the functions that can
realistically represent the objectives of managing a supply chain may not have properties that
make them tractable for analytical methods. As we show in section 4.5, the objective
functions considered in this chapter are not well-behaved. Therefore, we employ
metaheuristic search to find decision variable values. To provide a test of the efficacy of our
94
resulting method, we conduct a computational study comparing it to a procedure based on
Fibonacci search and also to a Genetic Search.
4.4.1 Fibonacci Search
In Fibonacci search, the local minimum of a function is found by evaluating the function
many times over possible values of a variable. The number of iterations is based on the range
of the variable and the tolerance (accuracy) of the solution required. If F
n
represents the n
th
term in a Fibonacci sequence and the required tolerance is , then the required number of
steps (evaluations) are n-2 if (b
0
a
0
) / F
n
< , where b
0
and a
0
are the upper and lower limits
of the variable.
Fibonacci search has some major limitations as it guarantees reaching optimality only
if the objective function is unimodal on [b
0
, a
0
], i.e., there exists a unique ue[b
0
, a
0
] such
that the objective is decreasing on [b
0
, u] and increasing on [u , a
0
]. In the problem under
consideration, as seen in section 5, the objective function is not unimodal. Moreover,
Fibonacci search is applicable only to a single variable optimization. Our objective function
requires finding multiple variables simultaneously. Although primitive, the simplicity and
speed (run time) of Fibonacci provide motivation for its use in various applications. We use
Fibonacci search to compare with other Adaptive search methods for supply chain
applications.
4.4.2 Genetic Search
Genetic search is a widely used metaheuristic method based on a metaphor that
represents a solution as a chromosome. These chromosomes are altered using genetic
95
methods of crossover and mutation to form new chromosomes and subsequent generations.
Details of Genetic search (GS) can be found in Goldberg (1989).
We applied a basic GS procedure to our problem. A chromosome is represented by a
vector of binary digits B = [B
1,
B
2
, B
3,
B
4
], whose components B
i
, i = 1, , 4 refer to the
decision variables 1) order-up-to values, (2) expediting ratio, (3) on-hand inventory
threshold, and (4) pipeline inventory threshold, respectively. More precisely, the vector B is
given a binary representation by expressing each component B
i
as a binary vector itself,
where the number n
i
of binary digits in each B
i
depends on the desired precision of the
decision variable. The mapping between a binary chromosome and an integer/decimal
decision variable is performed by the customary mathematical representation by reference to
binary components y
ik
, i e K
i
= {0, , n
i
} (hence the number of these variables is actually n
i
+ 1), to give B
i
= (2
k
y
ik
: k e K
i
).
Each generation contains P chromosomes. With a probability p
c,
a chromosome is
selected for crossover. The location of crossover is randomly selected. A single point
crossover is performed that results in two offspring from two parents. With probability p
m,
a
binary digit of a chromosome is flipped (from 0 to 1 or from 1 to 0). The offspring are added
to the population pool, increasing the size of the population beyond P. The binary
chromosomes are mapped to decimal/integer decision variable values. These values are used
to calculate the order quantity (regular and expedited). The resulting costs are recorded.
The costs define the fitness of a chromosome. Using an elitist strategy, chromosomes
are sorted in increasing order of cost. The best P chromosomes are selected to become the
next generation population. The procedure is repeated until a pre-set limit on the number of
generations is reached.
96
4.4.3 Tabu Search Strategies for Supply Chain Applications
Tabu search (TS) is a metaheuristic based on the use of adaptive memory. The simplest form
of this memory stores the attributes of recently selected moves and exploits this information
by forbidding new moves that would cause the resulting solution to contain attributes of
solutions recently visited. Forbidden attributes (and hence moves) are called tabu, and the
number of iterations that an attribute remains tabu is called its tabu tenure. The simplest
versions of TS apply the same tabu tenure to each attribute. In the present context, we may
conveniently allow the decision variables and the values assigned to them to constitute the
attributes of interest.
The memory embodied in tabu search has several functions. The simplest, but highly
useful, function is to prevent the method from becoming trapped in local optima by allowing
non-improving moves to be made provided they are not tabu. Additional flexibility is
provided by means of aspiration criteria which, if satisfied, permit the tabu status of a move
to be overridden, and hence allow certain sufficiently attractive moves to be selected in
spite of being tabu. Tabu search has been successfully used in a wide variety of applications
ranging from scheduling, TSP, network design, architectural design, image recognition,
among others. See Glover and Laguna (1997) for a general coverage of TS strategies and
applications, and see Stecke (2005) for some recent supplementary application examples.
Although a supply chain application using tabu search is reported in Glover and Laguna
(1997) to find optimal distribution strategies, to date TS has not been used to optimize
ordering decisions in a complex supply chain.
A description of our application of tabu search to minimize total cost in a multi-stage
supply chain is now given. For illustration and notational convenience, when appropriate,
97
superscripts t and i are dropped. We also slightly change the notation used to describe the
Genetic Search approach since we no longer refer to binary representations. Let x = (x
1
, x
2
,
, x
n
) denote a solution vector, where in the present supply chain context n = 4. Our TS
method proceeds from a current solution x = x
o
to a next solution x' e N(x
o
), where N(x
o
)
denotes the neighborhood of x
o
. More specifically, TS requires x' to be an element of an
associated neighborhood N'(x
o
) = (N(x
o
) T) A. equivalently, N'(x
o
) = N(x
o
) (T A)),
where T denotes the current set of tabu solutions and A identifies those solutions in N(x
o
) that
satisfy the aspiration criteria. Such criteria typically include default conditions to assure that
N'(x
o
) is not empty, in cases where the tabu set T would otherwise contain all of N(x
o
).
Details of the aspiration criteria we employ with our method are provided in Section 5.
We select the particular solution x e N(x
o
) that yields the best objective function
evaluation; that is, x = arg min(C(x'): x' e N'(x
o
). When x is thus selected, attributes of x
o
that are changed by the move that produces x are labeled tabu, thus preventing a move that
revisits x
o
until the tabu tenure attached to these attributes expires. Thus, implicitly, this
causes the tabu set T to be enlarged by adding a set T(x
o
) consisting of x
o
and all solutions
that share the attributes of x
o
that are labeled tabu, In practice, it is not necessary to identify
T(x
o
) explicitly, since it is sufficient merely to forbid moves that would reinstate tabu
attributes. (The operation determining tabu status in the present context will likewise be
clarified in Section 5.)
For simplicity of description, however, we may summarize a simple form of TS by
the following pseudo code.
98
Tabu Implementation Pseudo Code
Step 1. Choose an initial solution x
o
, and identify the best solution found so far as
x*= x
o
. Let Iteration=0, and T = C and A =C.
Step 2. Set Iteration=Iteration+1 and generate the set of solutions
N'(x
o
) = (N(x
o
) T) A.
Step 3. Choose the best solution x e N'(x
o
) identified by
x = arg min(C(x'): x' e N'(x
o
)).
Step 4: Identify the tabu attributes associated with the move from x
o
to x, thus
implicitly identifying the set T(x
o
) and updating the tabu set T := T(x
o
)(T
E), where E is the subset of T consisting of solutions whose tabu tenure has
expired. (T E likewise is known implicitly simply by reference to attributes
that remain tabu after eliminating those whose tenure expires.).
Step 4. If C(x) < C(x*) then set x* = x. Update the aspiration set A by reference to
the quality of x*.
Step 5. If Iteration has reached a selected cut-off value, then stop. Else go to Step 2.
We remark that the choice of x as the best solution in the current neighborhood N'(x
o
)
is often modified, particularly in the case of large neighborhoods, by employing a candidate
list strategy that identifies x as the best solution from a strategically generated subset of
N'(x
o
). Our method for the current supply chain model employs a simple instance of such a
strategy, as noted below.
Definition of neighborhood: We select an elementary neighborhood N(x
o
) that constitutes the
set of solutions obtained by changing (increasing or decreasing) exactly one of the
components x
j
o
of the vector x
o
. Thus a vector x' e N(x
o
) is generated by setting x
r
' = x
r
o

r
for a chosen index r, and x
j
' = x
j
o
for j r, where
r
is a positive multiple of a chosen fixed
increment
r
. We have chosen
1
= 1 (for order-up-to values),
2
= 0.01 (for the expediting
99
ratio), and
3
=
4
= 1 (for the two expediting thresholds). This construction is based on the
intuition that for appropriate (sufficiently small)
j
values, the objective function will often be
monotonic over some region of positive multiples of these values.
Candidate list strategy and intensification: The search is carried out in two steps. The first
step is a coarse search, which searches the neighborhood of a solution using a coarse
increment/decrement. In a coarse search, a neighborhood is obtained by replacing the values

j
by larger values
j
+
, where
1
+
= 10,
2
+
= 0.05, and
3
+
=
4
+
= 10. Such a strategy allows
an accelerated search through a wide range of decision variable values. The best solutions
obtained from a coarse search become candidates for starting solutions for a finer search that
employs the fundamental
j
values. This rudimentary candidate list strategy not only saves
time in its coarse-grid phase, but also ensures that the search during the finer-grid phase is
intensified in regions around candidate solutions obtained by coarse search.
Diversification by reference sets: At each time period, multiple starting solutions are used to
ensure diversification of a search space. A diverse set of preferred candidates for initial
solutions are generated using a Tabu reference set, RefSet.
RefSet begins empty and during the first few periods the starting solutions used to launch the
search is chosen randomly. Each starting solution is added to RefSet as it is selected. After a
specified number of periods, the starting solutions are instead selected from among the
current candidate solutions by choosing the one that maximizes the minimum distance from
all elements of RefSet. The distance D(x
o
, x) between a candidate starting solution x
o
and a
solution x e RefSet is defined to be
D(x
o
, x) = ((x
j
o
x
j
): j e J)
100
where J = {1, 2, , n} is the index set for the components of x (and where in the present
case, n = 4).
A pseudo code to for generating candidate solutions and starting solutions can be
outlined as follows, where F denotes a current set of feasible decision vectors obtained by
sampling, and E
o
denotes an exclusion set consisting of all of the best decision vectors x*
identified in previous periods.
Algorithm to Find Candidate Solutions (adapted from Glover, 2006)
Step 1. Begin with RefSet to consist of the randomly generated starting solutions for
the first s periods (for s small, e.g., s = 10)
Step 2. Select x
o
e F E
o
by the rule:
x
o
= arg max min (D(x
o
, x): x e RefSetE
o
)
Let RefSet.= (RefSet x
#
) x
o
, where x
#
denotes the oldest solution in RefSet.
Step 3. Repeat Step 2 until a specified number of starting solutions are obtained.
The definition of D(x
o
,x) is motivated by the goal of inducing the new initial solution x
o
to lie
in a region that is unexplored by previous iterations. The number of data points considered is
limited by dynamically updating the members of RefSet, by adding the most recent, solution
x
o
and deleting the oldest x
#
. The exclusion set E
o
is used to diversify the search and to focus
on regions away from known local optima.
In addition to generating starting solutions in the manner described, we also use the
most recent best solutions x* as starting points in subsequent time periods. Note that in most
periods, especially in the absence of disruptions, the best solutions will tend to have the
property whereby the values of goods flowing from one period to the next will not vary
greatly across the periods.
101
Handling Tabu status: To keep track of the Tabu status of an order-up-to value, a two
dimensional matrix, the Tabu status matrix, TSM(j, z), j e J, z e Z, is used, where Z
represents the set of values that can be assigned to the variables x
j
of x, TSM thus consists of
4 rows (one for each index in J) and a number of columns equal to |Z|.
The matrix stores the iteration count up to which a decision variable and value
combination is Tabu, i.e., forbidden. For example, if from iteration Iter to 1 + Iter , the order-
up-to value moves from 1 Y to 2 Y , t + = Iter Y TSM ) 1 , 1 ( . This implies a Tabu tenure of t
periods, i.e., order-up-to values may not move back to 1 Y until iteration t + Iter . In general,
solutions closer to 1 Y are expected to have a performance similar to 1 Y . Therefore, Tabu
tenure is assigned, although shorter than t + Iter , to cells in the neighborhood.
' ) 1 1 , 1 ( t + = Iter Y TSM , ' ) 1 1 , 1 ( t + = + Iter Y TSM , " ) 2 1 , 1 ( t + = Iter Y TSM , and
" ) 2 1 , 1 ( t + = + Iter Y TSM , with
" ' t t t > >
.
Also, for the order-up-to value to become 2 Y , we must have first examined its
neighborhood to find 2 Y to be the most preferred. So likewise, we wouldnt want to move
very soon to 2 Y or one of its nearby values. Therefore, point 2 Y and its neighbors are also
added to the Tabu set, i.e., t + = Iter Y TSM ) 2 , 1 ( , ' ) 1 2 , 1 ( t + = Iter Y TSM ,
' ) 1 2 , 1 ( t + = + Iter Y TSM , " ) 2 2 , 1 ( t + = Iter Y TSM , and " ) 2 2 , 1 ( t + = + Iter Y TSM .
The search algorithm starts with all entries of TSM as zero, which implies that all
decision variable values are acceptable. After each iteration the to and from cells of TSM are
updated. When of encountering a cell that already contains a Tabu tenure entry from previous
iterations, tenure with a larger value takes precedence.
Flexible aspiration criterion. Dimensioned similar to TSM, an aspiration matrix
) , 1 ( ), 6 , 1 ( ); , ( Z Z k Z k AM e e stores in each cell the best (smallest) objective function value
102
achieved when this cell was reached in a previous move. Thus, upon making the move from
1 Y to 2 Y , the objective function value changes from ) 1 (Y C to ) 2 (Y C and
)} 2 , 1 ( ), 2 ( min{ ) 2 , 1 ( Y AM Y C Y AM = . This (minimum) value should also be entered in the
adjacent cells that have also been affected by the move, hence setting
)} 1 2 , 1 ( ), 2 ( min{ ) 1 2 , 1 ( = Y AM Y C Y AM and )} 1 2 , 1 ( ), 2 ( min{ ) 1 2 , 1 ( + = + Y AM Y C Y AM .
If a move creates an objective value smaller than the value in the AM cell that is being
moved to, the aspiration criterion will allow the move even if it is Tabu. This evidently
permits more flexibility than an approach that overrules Tabu status only if a new best
objective function value is achieved. Yet it also assures that no solution will be revisited.
4.5 Results
To represent a variety of operating conditions, we selected a range of cost parameters as
presented in Table 3.2 (See previous chapter). Although literature reports a wide variation in
the choice of cost parameters, we chose the parameters based on our case studies. For
example, Daniel and Rajendran (2005) used a holding cost between 1-8 and backordering
cost between 2-32. Our selection falls approximately in the range of the cost parameters
found in literature. See Schmitt et al. (2009) for a review of cost parameters. Relative costs
depend on the type of product, industry, and supply chain, among other factors. Cohen et al.
(2003) observed that with short life cycles and obsolescence in the semiconductor industry,
the cost of losing a sale is about twice the cost of backlogging, while the holding cost is one
third the cost of backlogging. By contrast, Faaland et al. (2004) experimented with lost-sales
costs in a single-echelon ranging from 62 to 500 times the periodic inventory holding cost,
yielding shortage values much higher than the ones we chose. Their parameters were based
on a cross-industry survey by Boer and Jeter (1993). Our motivation in the choice of
103
relatively low costs is to compare the metaheuristic methods under modest conditions found
in our case studies. We observed in pilot experiments that larger shortage costs relative to
inventory carrying costs further exaggerated differences between Tabu, Genetic, and line
search.
4.5.1 Implementation of Metaheuristics
We model a decentralized supply chain where echelons do not share demand or inventory
information. In every period, a echelon observes the demand information from its immediate
customer. Using the historical demand information, echelon i determines a set of four
decision variables,
t
i
Z , that minimize the total cost function,
t
i
C . Demand originates with the
customer. Echelon 1 observes this demand and finds
t
Z
1
, which is then communicated to
echelon 2. Echelon 2 then uses this new demand informationalong with historical
demandand finds
t
Z
2
. The process is repeated for echelons 3 and 4. As a representative
echelon, we record and present the costs incurred at echelon 1. Echelon 1s proximity to the
final customer may make it an important decision maker. We do not suspect the results and
conclusions in this chapter to be different if any other echelon was chosen for cost
comparison.
Fibonacci Search: As Fibonacci search is a type of gradient search, it can be used for
searching only one variable at a time. Therefore, we performed a sequential search on the
four decision variables. The search started with finding local minima for order-up-to at
echelon 1. Subsequently, expediting level, pipeline threshold, and on-hand threshold
inventory were searched. The same procedure was repeated for all other echelons.
104
Genetic Search: A Genetic search construction very similar to that described in Chapter 3 is
used. The binary chromosome length was increased to accommodate four decision variables.
A chromosome of 45 binary digits was selected. The four decision variables, order-up-to
level, fraction expedited, pipeline inventory threshold, and on-hand inventory threshold are
each represented by 15, 7, 9, and 11 binary digits, respectively. Such a representation limits
the lower and upper limits of the values on which these decision variables are searched. For
example, order-up-to level is searched between the values of 0 (
0
2 -1) and 32767 (
15
2 -1),
which are obtained by converting a binary chromosome to a decimal representation. The
number of binary digits chosen to represent each decision variable is large enough to cover
the global minima.
Specific experimental parameters were as follows: A population size of 100 was used.
After experimentation, crossover and mutation probabilities of 0.5 and 0.005, respectively,
were selected. These probabilities resulted in fastest convergence. An elitist selection
criterion was used. Each run involved 100 generations. The results presented in this chapter
are the average of 100 independent runs.
Adaptive Tabu Search: Tabu search is performed over four decision variables using the
neighborhood structure presented in Section 4.3. Each run starts with 20 randomly generated
solutions. After every run, 10 solutions are saved and used as a starting point for the next run.
Another 10 solutions are generated so as to cover the unsearched regions of feasible solution
space. (Note that in the absence of disruptions, the solutions may vary very little across
periods.) The second set of diversified solutions helps cover the regions that were previously
unsearched. (See Section 4.3 for the mechanism to generate these diversified solutions.) Each
105
Table 4.1. Cost comparison of various metaheuristic solution methods.
Backordering
Cost
Cost of
Lost Sales
Carrying
Cost
Expediting
Cost
Line
Search
Genetic
Search Fibonacci
Genetic
Search Tabu Search
Decision Variable:
Order-up-to
quantity
Decision Variables: Order-up-to quantity,
Expediting level, Pipeline inventory
threshold, On-hand inventory threshold
Low Low Low Low 551.01 472.38 528.23 469.32 462.35
Low Low Low High 606.78 493.61 584.3 443.26 433.86
Low Low High Low 808.55 685.79 789.78 692.34 670.74
Low High Low Low 621.22 496.91 621.01 446.89 439.16
High Low Low Low 690.61 516.98 681.09 477.85 468.29
High High Low Low 764.22 544.26 761.28 512.39 479.59
High Low High Low 996.62 922.66 903.26 938.05 927.19
High Low Low High 742.80 524.13 741.21 508.16 493.12
High High High Low 1028.71 927.69 993.86 833.56 783.66
High High Low High 797.62 551.08 774.93 489.56 461.28
High Low High High 994.61 922.56 971.22 942.21 908.99
Low High High High 974.21 896.36 972.56 846.46 846.11
Low High High Low 873.29 812.41 871.85 779.68 765.29
Low High Low High 668.32 510.28 669.52 461.26 453.84
Low Low High High 852.02 833.00 832.12 736.27 729.54
High High High High 1071.11 941.23 1062.42 933.59 861.52
1
0
5
106
Table 4.2. Percentage cost comparison.
% Improvement
Fibonacci (Multiple Variables)
vs. 2.17
Line Search (Single Variable)
Genetic Search (Multiple Variables)
vs. 4.89
Genetic Search(Single Variable)
Tabu Search (Multiple Variables)
vs. 7.84
Genetic Search (Single Variable)
Tabu Search (Multiple Variables)
vs. 3.10
Genetic Search (Multiple Variables)
Note: A single variable search involves searching order up-to values. Multiple
variable searches are performed over four decision variables as discussed in this
chapter.
initial solutions neighborhood is searched for 100 iterations. The results shown in this
chapter are the average of 100 independent runs.
4.5.2 Cost Comparison between Search Methods under Static Demand
Table 4.1 shows the average costs for 100 independent runs under the three metaheuristics
methods used in this chapter. Each run covers 2000 periods. The first 1000 periods are used
to reach a steady state. Data is collected from period 1001 through period 2000. Variance
reduction is achieved through the use of 50 pairs of antithetic variables (Law and Kelton,
2000). The method of antithetic sampling helps in reducing sampling errors. The percentage
of cost savings by using various methods is presented in Table 4.2. For comparison purposes,
the tables also include the costs obtained in Chapter 3, where only order-up-to quantity was a
decision variable.
The costs in Table 4.1 clearly illustrate the importance of searching over multiple
variables. Table 4.2 summarizes the cost information in Table 4.1. The results show the
107
importance of optimizing expediting variables. When searched over four decision variables,
Genetic search resulted in an average savings of 4.89% when compared to search over only
order-up-to quantity. Even simple local search method of Fibonacci resulted in a cost savings
of over 2%. In the multi-variable optimization, Tabu search provides an added improvement
of 3.10% over Genetic search.
To test the consistency of methods we compared the variability of solutions. Table
4.3 presents the average cost variability for 100 runs.
We computed cost variability in 100 independent runs in each cost combinations.
Table 4.3 presents the average for 8 cost combinations. Besides lower cost, Tabu search also
reaches the best solutions consistently. A low variability from Tabu search shows
consistency of the method over Genetic search, which implies that Tabu search should be
expected to reach the best solutions in less number or runs. Also, if constrained by
computation power and time, Tabu search should be preferred.
Table 4.3. Consistency of metaheuristics methods.
Average Cost
Variability
Fibonacci 24.27
Genetic Search 12.18
Tabu Search 9.21
108
Table 4.4. Sample results.
Run
Quantity
Shipped
per Period
Lost
Sales
Non-
expedited
Orders
Expedited
Orders Backorders Inventory Cost
Fibonacci
1 99.01 11.49 76.27 24.00 30.66 129.46 522.51
2 98.69 11.82 76.39 24.62 33.20 129.33 536.22
3 99.04 11.96 75.94 22.65 34.28 128.47 533.74
4 98.77 12.49 73.92 27.21 29.29 130.88 535.52
5 99.07 12.19 83.59 26.39 41.52 127.32 573.04
Genetic Search
1 106.45 4.02 106.93 10.74 9.33 181.70 458.32
2 106.15 4.37 105.94 11.77 10.50 190.34 496.21
3 107.47 3.51 107.03 7.43 9.43 181.39 466.27
4 107.38 3.94 107.73 8.56 10.00 183.80 473.11
5 106.50 4.79 109.79 10.85 12.75 203.81 498.88
Tabu Search
1 107.02 3.41 108.62 8.29 7.79 187.76 451.33
2 107.24 3.29 111.40 9.28 9.04 184.17 488.31
3 107.55 3.44 112.98 8.64 9.39 185.39 449.87
4 107.32 4.01 116.19 10.63 10.49 189.96 466.35
5 107.17 4.09 117.14 11.51 10.19 199.38 442.32
1
0
8
109
400
500
600
700
800
900
1000
1100
1200
1300
1400
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
Run
C
o
s
t
Tabu Search
Genetic Search
Figure 4.1. Sample convergence.
Figure 4.2. Average convergence in 100 runs.
110
Table 4.4 shows sample results from the runs. The table includes only the first five
runs (of 100 runs). It is clear that the service level achieved by Genetic search and Tabu
search exceeds that of Fibonacci search. Table 4.4 also provides average quantity shipped to
the final customer, average lost sales per period, expedited and non expedited orders placed
by echelon 1, and backorders and inventory at echelon 1.
Figures 4.1 and 4.2 shows a sample convergence and average convergence for Tabu
and Genetic search. We observed that Tabu search took significantly lesser time (about 30
minutes) as compared to Genetic search, which took over 12 hours on a laptop computer.
Genetic search converge faster in the first 0-10 iterations, which could be attributed to the
power of mutation operator in exploring new solution regions. Also noticeable from the
figures is the number of iterations needed to converge. In most instances Tabu search took
about 40 iterations to converge. In contrast besides taking significantly higher computer run
time, Genetic search exhibited convergence after 80 iterations. In 7 out of 1600 instances,
Genetic search resulted in superior solutions. This may show that provided enough
generations, Genetic search may narrow the cost gap. However, the computational burden
would also increase substantially.
4.6 Comparison between Static and Dynamic Policy
To outline the benefits of dynamic policy and the power of Adaptive search in searching
optimal dynamic policies we test the heuristics under a set of non-stationary demands. We
consider a seasonal and disrupted demand.
111
4.6.1 Adaptive Search Methods under Seasonal Demand
We model the effects of a seasonal demand with a sinusoidal demand function.
where SD(t) represent the seasonal demand at time period t and A the amplitude of seasonal
demand. The average demand function for 100 runs of a cost combination is shown in Figure
4.3. Since the modeled demand function has symmetric seasonality, the mean long term
demand does not change as a result of seasonality. In such a demand scenario one may
expect static policies to have a fair long term performance.
To understand the effects of seasonality we limit ourselves to a minimum set of
conditions. We allow only one season. The season starts in period 1601 and ends at period
1850, which could represent 250 working days in a year and one season. The modeled
amplitude is 50. Three different ordering strategies were considered.
Static Policy with Past Information (SPPI): SPPI is a static ordering strategy which uses past
demand information to estimate a static ordering policy. This policy is then applied to make
ordering decisions in the future. In our case, first 1000 periods are used to establish a steady
state. Using demands for periods 1001 though 1500, Tabu search determines static policy
parameters. This policy is then applied for periods 1501 though 2000 and costs are recorded.
SPPI is a Level Strategy where ordering policies are kept fixed despite seasonality.
Static Policy with Demand Information (SPDI): To estimate the best static strategy we
assume that the demand information is known in advance and determine the policy that
minimizes the total cost. In our case we assume that demands (including seasonality) for
112
periods 1501 through 2000 are known in advance. SPDI minimizes the costs for periods 1501
thought 2000. If the search routines reaches is able to reach the optimal solution, SPDI
should be the global minimum for all static policies.
Dynamic Policy (DP): Under a dynamic policy, each period ordering policies are determined
using the past information. No assumptions are made about future demand. Since the demand
is seasonal from period 1601, we expect the dynamic policy to chase the changes in demand
function, albeit at a slower rate because of discounting.
In all three cases we use Tabu search to optimize the ordering variables of order-up-to
quantity, proportion of orders expedited, and expediting triggers. In the case of SPPI and
SPDI a one-time search is used to find the policies. Under DP, the search is performed every
period as the demand information unfolds. Table 4.5 lists the results in terms of total costs for
the three methods. The results are summarized in Table 4.6. As expected SPDI, which
assumes prior demand information, result in a cost improvement of 1.4% over SPPI. The
improvement is not as large as we had expected. This could be attributed to the symmetric
seasonality which maintains average long term demand to a fixed level. To counter the
increase in demand in upcycle, the order-up-to quantity were marginally (1053 to 1061)
higher in SPDI as compared to SPPI. Any increase in ordering quantity in SPDI may reduce
the shortages in the upcycle but at the expense of carrying more inventories for the rest of the
periods.
DP results in improvements of 3.2 % over static policy of SPPI. The improvement
underlines the benefit of using dynamic policies. We also observed a mean cost improvement
of 1.8% in using DP over SDPI, which assumes complete demand information. Note that
SDPI is expected to the best static policy. We expect these percentage improvements to
113
increase with amplitude of seasonality. These results illustrate that Tabu search method
developed in this chapter can be successfully used for ordering decisions in nonstationary
conditions and are superior to static policies. Figure 4.4 shows a smoothed response in order-
up-to quantities at echelon 1. The order-up-to quantities change along with demand
seasonality. The discounting of information helps in smoothing the response. Vertical lines in
Figure 4.3 represent the periods of start, end, crest, and trough of the seasonal demand. The
order-up-to values do not exactly follow the seasonal demand. There is a delay in the
seasonality induced in order-up-to quantity because of discounting. Also the ordering patter
return to pre-season level within 25 periods of the end of seasonality, ensuring that the
inventories in the supply chain do not overreact to seasonal demand.
Figure 4.3. Seasonal demand function.
114
Table 4.5. Performance of ordering policies under seasonal demand.
Backordering
Cost
Cost of
Lost
Sales
Carrying
Cost
Expediting
Cost
Static
Demand Seasonal Demand
SPPI SPDI DP
Low Low Low Low 462.35
499.51 492.35 482.21
Low Low Low High 433.86
457.23 453.20 452.34
Low Low High Low 670.74
699.13 682.13 677.93
Low High Low Low 439.16
453.28 449.65 442.40
High Low Low Low 468.29
503.16 499.72 480.29
High High Low Low 479.59
520.94 512.49 502.33
High Low High Low 927.19
992.46 977.18 965.36
High Low Low High 493.12
545.57 533.11 515.20
High High High Low 783.66
833.35 826.64 819.54
High High Low High 461.28
509.89 499.48 477.58
High Low High High 908.99
989.52 974.65 953.31
Low High High High 846.11
870.72 869.95 856.58
Low High High Low 765.29
779.65 775.46 772.39
Low High Low High 453.84
515.28 496.26 471.18
Low Low High High 729.54
777.83 768.24 748.23
High High High High 861.52
898.82 883.72 882.83
Table 4.6. Percentage improvements in using dynamic policies.
Percentage
improvements
SPDI vs. SPPI
1.40
DP vs. SPPI
3.2
DP vs. SPDI
1.8
115
Figure 4.4. Order-up-to levels for echelon 1 under a seasonal demand.
4.6.2 Adaptive Search Methods under Disruptions
Disruptions violate the stationary conditions needed for optimality of static order-up-
to policies. Our design of objective function and adaptive search methods allows us to find
dynamic ordering policies that are intuitively superior to static policies under disruptions. As
discussed earlier, our objective function has similarities with exponential smoothing, where
the smoothing constant is set depending on variability. Similarly, the discount factor, o , in
the objective function can be set depending on variability in the environment. For example,
under stationary and stable conditions, o should be set at a low value, possibly in the range
of 0 - 0.3, which is also considered the preferred range for the smoothing constant in
exponential forecasting (Schroeder, 2008). During or just after a disruption, a high value of
o may be warranted. A higher value would make the search methods more responsive to
information in current periods and give less weight to periods long past.
Our algorithm and objective function make our method reactive to disruptions. The
methodology is designed to look at the past information, and adapt so as to make ordering
116
decisions that minimize the costs. The method should also be helpful in recovering from
disruptions. In general, proactive strategies are preferred over reactive strategies (Stecke and
Kumar, 2009). However, many disruptions may not be foreseen (ex., earthquakes, terrorist
attacks, accidents) and, for others, the ending time may not be certain (ex. loss of supplier,
political unrest, workers strike), making it difficult to forecast the future. In such instances, a
reactive strategy may be the best option, and our methodology could be helpful.
To test the performance of adaptive search under disruptions we device an
experimental setup similar to Section 4.6.3.1 with the demand function shown in Figure 4.5.
The figure represents a disruption in customer demand between the periods of 1601 and
1650. During disruptions, no customer demands are placed at echelon 1. A transportation
strike or a natural catastrophe could be responsible for such disruptions. We also assume that
demand during disruptions is not backlogged but is entirely lost. The costs from SPPI, SDPI,
and DP are presented in Table 4.7 and summarized in Table 4.8. The results show that
dynamic policies obtained by using Adaptive search methods outperform the best static
policy. The average cost advantage of DP over SPPI and SDPI are 4.77% and 0.83%,
respectively. We expect the ratios to be higher as the length or severity of disruption
increases. A response in order-up-to values at echelon 1 because of disruptions is shown in
Figure 4.6. As with the seasonal demand, under disrupted demand, order-up-to quantities
change as the disruption progresses and then return to normal after disruption ends.
117
Figure 4.5. Demand function with disruptions in final customer demand
Table 4.7. Performance of ordering policies under disruptions
Backordering
Cost
Cost of
Lost
Sales
Carrying
Cost
Expediting
Cost Disrupted Demand
SPP SDI Dynamic
Low Low Low Low
499.51 473.16 471.25
Low Low Low High
457.23 453.98 447.97
Low Low High Low
699.13 649.20 650.18
Low High Low Low
453.28 427.29 424.87
High Low Low Low
503.16 475.56 468.06
High High Low Low
520.94 510.68 507.02
High Low High Low
992.46 942.31 941.40
High Low Low High
545.57 508.41 491.52
High High High Low
833.35 806.54 800.55
High High Low High
509.89 487.23 479.96
High Low High High
989.52 958.01 954.43
Low High High High
870.72 858.30 852.56
Low High High Low
779.65 760.62 751.93
Low High Low High
515.28 468.82 466.38
Low Low High High
777.83 751.27 742.44
High High High High
898.82 884.12 878.46
118
Table 4.8. Percentage improvements in using dynamic policies.
Percentage
improvements
SPDI vs. SPPI
3.97
DP vs. SPPI
4.77
DP vs. SPDI
0.83
Figure 4.6. Order-up-to levels for echelon 1 under a disruption.
4.7 Extensions to a Global Supply Chain
Our model and proposed methodology is flexible enough to accommodate a variety of
problems, instances, and constraints. In this chapter we used local planning and decision
making; however the methodology and search methods developed can be applied to a
centralized supply chain where ordering decisions are made with a global objective.
Under global or centralized planning, a single decision-maker determines the ordering
policies for all six stages with the objective of minimizing the total supply chain cost.
Centralization of information and decision-making has been shown to create value in supply
chains (Cachon and Fisher, 2000). For the supply chain model in this chapter, a global
119
optimization problem will have 24 decision variables (four variables for each stage times six
stages) to be searched simultaneously. The objective function includes the sum of costs at all
six stages. At time period t, the following objective is minimized.
| |
. ) 1 ( ) (
1
} 6 ,..., 1 { , ..., , ,
6 2 1
t t t t t
GZ
t
i i
t
i
t
i
t
i
t
i
t
i
Z Z Z GZ
t
GC fES rRS gl cb hI GC Min

= =
+ + + + + =

o o
(GC represents the global cost and GZ represents the set of decision variables)
The objective is similar to the local objective presented in Section 4. It is easy to see
that the new objective does not require any significant changes in the Tabu search
methodology developed in Section 5. However, the dimensions of Tabu Status Matrix, TSM,
and Aspiration Matrix, AM, must be increased to accommodate the increase in number of
decision variables. The global problem also requires a significantly higher computation
power. For the local objective problem, Tabu search run time was significantly lower than
Genetic search run time. We expect this difference in run time to be many folds greater for
global problems, indicating the superiority of Tabu search over Genetic search.
4.8 Conclusions
Inventory management decisions are critical for efficient and effective operations in a supply
chain. We consider the problem of making ordering decisions in a periodic review multi-
stage supply chain. The problem under general but practical conditions is difficult to handle
analytically and computationally tedious (Clark and Scarf, 1960; Lee and Billington, 1993).
We propose an alternate methodology that involves using adaptive search methods to search
for optimal solutions. Besides order-up-to quantity, our decision variables were percentage of
orders expedited and two thresholds for expediting. We compared the solutions from
adaptive search with Genetic search and Fibonacci search. In over 99.5% of the problem
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instances, Adaptive search resulted in solutions superior to Genetic search. Although we
cannot claim universal superiority of adaptive search over Genetic search, under the supply
chain structure modeled and the cost combinations which were derived from case studies, we
observed adaptive search outperforms Genetic search in both solution quality and run time.
To increase the efficiency and run time of adaptive search, we explored properties of
feasible solution space and implemented problem-specific adaptations; namely, candidate list
strategy, intensification, reference set, and a flexible aspiration criterion. Our objective
function has the ability to capture the environmental variations that may impact supply chain
operations. Using such an objective function, we found a time variant dynamic policy.
We also used the Adaptive search methods developed under seasonal and disrupted
demand scenarios. The results show that adaptive search methods can be an effective tool in
practical situations where customer demand could be nonstationary. Our model can be easily
adapted to help decision-making under a variety of constraints and supply chain
configurations. The flexibility of adaptive search methods and their problem-specific
designalong with the power of adaptive memorycould be a useful tool for making
supply chain ordering decisions in practice.
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CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSIONS
In this dissertation, we addressed the problem of managing supply chains under disruptions.
We focussed on the need for higher awareness of catastrophes and their effects on supply
chain operations. To achieve this we compile catastrophe and economic data from many
sources to reveal information of managerial and academic importance and showed that there
is an increase in both the number and dollar value of catastrophes that impact U.S.
businesses. Our work can help managers make better plans to manage disruptions make
better planning decisions. Our work also contributes to supply chain literature by identifying
vulnerability-causing factors, which when affected by a business decision can impact the
vulnerability of a supply chain. To manage dsiruptions we propose and overview a
comprehensive set of mitigating strategies that can help reduce the risks of disruptions. We
reveal potential benefits of following these strategies during normal times. These can help
justify investment in catastrophe mitigation. We also identify 16 research problems in the
area of supply chain disruptions management. In this dissertation we address some of these
problems.
We describe aspects of a stream of research to assess the economic impact of supply
chain disruptions. The overarching research mission of our sponsor, Sandia National
Laboratories, is to develop a large-scale simulation model that depicts regional and national
economic behavior. Simulation is intended to augment existing analytical and statistical
models whose utility may depend on the validity of inherent simplifying assumptions. Such
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optimization models routinely assume aggregation of demand and supply data,
substitutability of supply options, independent and steady-state behavior of underlying
stochastic distributions, optimization over well-behaved objective functions, and simple
supply chain structures. Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories formed NISAC to
address the prevention, response, and recovery from disruptive events. The concern was that
with such high stakes, entities within the U.S. government and private sectors cannot afford
to wait for researchers to overcome the substantial challenges of relaxing simplifying
assumptions in the optimization models. We anticipate that our guidelines will be useful in
other research as well. Our case studies of three electronics firms as surrogates for general
industrial behavior in the region, and drew from the cases to offer a fundamental set of
design requirements, performance drivers, and important research questions. Our findings led
to recommending a minimum set oc conditions that Sandia may need to model.
We formulated three Key Questions, to provide insight into the cost function and
consequences of common supply chain mitigation strategies. A primary finding was that the
system cost function can be quite ill-behaved in a four-echelon supply chain, even in the
absence of disruptions and expediting. We reveal a weakness of analytical optimization
approaches in the present setting by providing an example where these methods would fail to
obtain satisfactory solutions. Analytical methods that assume convex or unimodal behavior
may be inappropriate for real-world supply chains. Another finding confirms a conjecture
that disruptions may have long-lasting, rippling, and costly consequences within the supply
chain structure presently considered. A third finding is that standard industry practices of
setting order parameters locally and using expediting as mitigation seem to exacerbate these
undesirable effects.
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Our experimental results suggest caution, however, regarding mitigation efforts and
resiliency. Information sharing offers clear advantages in a supply chain, and many authors
have addressed this issue (e.g., Milgrom and Roberts, 1988; Lee, 2000; Chatfield, Kim,
Harrison, and Hayya, 2004; Sodhi, 2005). As a caveat, our experiments disclose that
information must be discounted considerably to control bullwhip effects in moving
downstream in the supply chain, away from the source of uncertainty. We derived a very low
forecasting weight of 0.01 on the most recent local information for the firms in the last
echelon, Echelon 4. While we support the notion that increased information and flexibility to
react are generally desirable, we caution that it is possible to overreact. A disruptive event
creates a critical watershed. The issue is how much weight to place on the news of such an
event and what to do about it. Furthermore, with the irregular system objective surface
documented by our results, we believe future efforts should be directed towards developing
efficient and effective search methods to find parameters yielding local optima close to
global values.
In Chapter 4 we develop metaheuristic models for ordering decisions in supply
chains. We consider the problem of making ordering decisions in a periodic review multi-
stage supply chain. We propose an alternate methodology that involves using adaptive search
methods to search for optimal solutions. Besides order-up-to quantity, our decision variables
were percentage of orders expedited and two thresholds for expediting. We compared the
solutions from adaptive search with Genetic search and Fibonacci search. In over 99.5% of
the problem instances, Adaptive search resulted in solutions superior to Genetic search.
Although we cannot claim universal superiority of adaptive search over Genetic search,
under the supply chain structure modeled and the cost combinations which were derived
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from case studies, we observed adaptive search outperforms Genetic search in both solution
quality and run time.
We also used the Adaptive search methods developed under seasonal and disrupted
demand scenarios. The results show that adaptive search methods can be an effective tool in
practical situations where customer demand could be nonstationary. Our model can be easily
adapted to help decision-making under a variety of constraints and supply chain
configurations. The flexibility of adaptive search methods and their problem-specific
designalong with the power of adaptive memorycould be a useful tool for making
supply chain ordering decisions in practice.
In summary, this dissertation contributes to supply chain management literature in
planning and operational inventory decisions under disruptions. We reveal the environmental
and inherent vulnerability-causing factors in supply chain that are contributing towards a
higher rate and dollar damage of disruptions. The strategies identified can be useful for
supply chain decisions. Our model and insights from Chapter 3 should also help develop
models that are close to real situations. Our alternative metaheutistic methods could be of
practical relevence as it can be used under various complex real life constraints.
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APPENDIX A
THE SANDIA AGENT-BASED MODEL
Why the Northwest?
NISAC targeted the Northwestern U.S. as the first study site because it represents a
significant, but relatively isolated microcosm within the U.S. economy, and it has
international borders that are attractive for illegal crossings, important cultural traits, and
desirable targets for terrorists. Rough terrains in the Cascade Mountains, where Washington
and Idaho border Canada, make it attractive for individuals to cross illegally. The long
seacoast in the Puget Sound is vulnerable as well. The San Juan Islands provide good cover
in a sparsely patrolled environment with multiple entry routes into the United States. One
pre-9/11 attack was thwarted by an alert U.S. Customs Agent -- Ahmed Ressam was
apprehended on December 14, 1999 after taking a ferry from Victoria British Columbia to
Port Angeles, Washington. He was attempting to smuggle several hundred pounds of
explosives and detonators into the U.S.
Northwest culture and tradition also play a role in security issues. Residents in the
region have been traditionally sympathetic to various causes. The large metropolitan areas of
Seattle and Tacoma, with their large, diverse population, provide an environment that enables
illegals to blend.
Finally, the manufacturing, logistics, technology, and financial bases in the region are
representative of many other metro areas in the United States. Targets abound in the
Northwest, ranging from structures offering symbolic targets (the Seattle Space Needle) to
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facilities and infrastructure critical to the operation of the economy. Kalid Mohamed,
admitted mastermind of 9/11, planned to follow by attacking a Plaza Bank in Seattle
(likely the Columbia Tower), along with three other targets in LA, Chicago, and NY (Baldor,
2007).
The ports of Seattle and Tacoma comprise the third largest load center in the U.S.
Approximately 3.5 million TEUs move through these ports annually, as well as oil and other
bulk commodities. In addition to supplying Washington, these ports provide a gateway for
cargo destined for Oregon, Northern California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and other western
states. Seattle and Tacoma ports also serve as the primary transshipment points for the
majority of cargo supplying Alaska. Furthermore, 75% of all imports pass via rail to Chicago
and the East Coast. Some have even referred to these Northwest ports as the Port of
Chicago because of the volume of shipments destined for Chicago (Seattle DOT, 2005).
The region also hosts major U.S. companies participating in and supporting
worldwide commerce. Boeings main base of commercial operations is in the Puget Sound,
with many suppliers nearby. Microsoft, Amazon, and other IT companies are headquartered
in the region. This is also the home of Weyerhaeuser and many of its lumber and
construction companies. Additionally, there are thousands of small and mid-sized
manufacturing firms in the Northwest. There is also a significant military presence with
Army, Air Force, and Navy bases.
The NISAC Agent-Based Laboratory for Economics (N-ABLE) has been
developed by Sandia National Laboratories, through funding from DHS. Drawing from
theory in microeconomic, enterprise, and inventory literature, it has been designed to
simulate the impacts of facility disruptions, transportation disruptions, pandemics, and
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hurricanes on the U.S. high-tech manufacturing, food manufacturing and distribution, and
chemicals sectors. Analysis of these simulations have brought new insight to DHS regarding
the ability of manufacturing sectors to respond in the short run to national-level disasters, and
the efficacy of private industry and homeland security policies.
Figure A.1 shows an economic agent, the fundamental modeling unit in N-ABLE.
(Swaminathan et al. (1997) describe another agent-based simulation that models a supply
chain.) Each N-ABLE agent is an enterprise of: buyers who input materials, producers of
finished products that use components, labor, capital equipment and infrastructure, on-site
inventories, and sellers of the finished products into segmented markets. Output 1 involves
the assembly of two materials, and Output 2 (e.g., a spare part) follows a serial process. An
agent firm can also depict distribution or transportation hub activity, e.g., where distributor
assembly represents assembling, packing, and shipping an order of SKUs to a customer. The
agent accounting logic captures revenues as well as variable costs of materials, storage, labor,
and overhead. Physical infrastructure includes electric power, telecommunications, and
transportation (Downes, Ehlen, Loose, Scholand, and Belasich, 2006).
N-ABLEs architecture is agent-based and object-oriented for efficiency, portability,
scalability, and repeatability across types of computers and operating systems (Eidson and
Ehlen, 2005). This has enabled development on individual laptops, and large-scale testing on
Sandias Thunderbird supercomputer. Because of this computing power and model
architecture, the system can handle hour-by-hour discrete events for upwards of one million
U.S. manufacturing firms.
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Figure A.1. The N-ABLE Enterprise Agent.
The first large-scale application of N-ABLE was to model approximately 14,500
small and medium sized firms (with SIC codes) in the Pacific Northwest and their
corresponding supply chains. The network of agent nodes and arcs followed the baselines of
at least four agents per industry, at least one assembly stage per industry, and order-up-to
inventory systems connecting agent inputs and outputs. The network representation was
substantially enhanced through macroeconomic analysis of regional product flows between
SIC codes. Insights from this analysis included:
- By observing regionally the shortages that buyers experience in markets, as
supplier production and shipments are disrupted in a region, the initial disturbance
can flash over nationally along complex paths and over relatively short time
periods. This phenomenon seems to be driven by supply chain network
characteristics, markets, and transportation modes in the supply chain.
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- By tracing which buyers at which agent firms expedite their orders and for how
long, individual expediting can amplify or dampen bullwhip effects across the
region. This impacts the harmonic frequency (influencing duration) and amplitude
of order behavior, and the rate of recovery.
- By tracing in-transit inventory, a disruption in a transportation hub caused firms to
substitute costly transport alternatives, longer transport routes, and amplified
ordering that drained available supply for prolonged periods.
Since undertaking the Pacific Northwest project, Sandia has expanded the
fundamental enterprise structure of the N-ABLE firm to embed more detailed transportation
networks, pricing functions, and cost parameters that capture the economic effects of, among
other metrics, the three performance drivers proposed here (service levels, system expediting,
and system inventory). Currently, Sandia is expanding N-ABLEs infrastructure to more
realistically characterize behavior and to test policies within and across U.S. manufacturing
sectors. Examples include: integrating Oak Ridge National Laboratorys inter-modal
transportation system into N-ABLE to observe transportation vulnerabilities in the U.S.
manufactured foods sector (Downes et al., 2005b), and integrating pipeline infrastructure to
uncover vulnerabilities in the U.S. chemicals sector (Downes et al., 2005a).
To illustrate the size, scope, and capability of analysis, Figure A.2 shows output from
one of the N-ABLE simulations currently being applied to the U.S. manufactured-food
supply chain. This application covers 200,000 domestic manufacturing firms, domestic
distributors, domestic retail establishments, foreign suppliers, and consumers of 50 food
commodities. Shipping occurs via highway, rail, and water-based transportation networks.
The figure shows Hurricane Katrinas regional effects on the U.S. food distribution system.
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Firms shown as colored dots produce or purchase food commodities over the rail and
highway networks shown in the figure as the thin gray lines. In an in-control state, producers
are shown in gray, and buyers in red. Producers and buyers in green depict a shortage state.
The simulation results verified that the hurricane caused shortages in complex ways. The
firms located directly in the hurricanes path are green, but with the loss of transportation to
and from the region, there is also a varied array of firms in the East, Northeast, and Midwest
that also experience shortages.
Figure A.2. Example of Regional Shortages (in green) caused by N-ABLE Simulation of
Hurricane Katrina.
With such a large number of buyers, sellers, intermediaries, and interconnections,
Sandia modelers believe that N-ABLE will offer an important tool in characterizing how
supply systems can adapt to a myriad of potential man-made and natural disruptions. For N-
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ABLE to be effective in advocating change in policy and practice in the prevention, response,
and recovery from disruptions, the modelers will need to establish protocols to replicate and
statistically analyze the effects of disruptions and coutermeasures.
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APPENDIX B
CASE STUDIES OF ELECTRONICS COMPANIES IN THE PACIFIC
NORTHWEST
We conducted personal interviews with personnel from three electronics firms and some of
their suppliers to gain insights into supply chain behavior. Each firm has a different SIC
code. We disguise their identities because their management considers certain information
proprietary and security-sensitive. We label the three as firms INT, ABC, and XYZ. The
supply chains for the three firms are represented in Figure B.1.
INT Corporation
INT designs and makes products that track inventory in-motion and at-rest. They sell to
manufacturers, warehouses, and retail firms. With a well-defined new product development
(NPD) process, INT commits cross-teams within all disciplines to the NPD process. INT also
runs textbook lean manufacturing with visual controls, Andon lights, Kanban system, and
reader boards that clearly state daily goals and hourly status. However, INT incurs relatively
high inventory and overhead costs, as well as delivery problems associated with maintaining
over 2,500 possible configurations within a diverse product line of 60 product models. This
complexity also exposes them to disruptions in power, transportation, and
telecommunications. Depending on the customer and product, INT may incur shortages
either in the form of backorders or stockouts.
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Figure B.1. Case Study Supply Chain Structures.
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Echelon 1 Delivery to INTs Customers
Three value added resellers comprise 55% of INTs sales, while hundreds of other customers
represent the remaining share. After sitting in finished goods inventory an average of four
days, INT transports 40% of its products through distribution centers in Canada, Singapore,
Holland, Mexico, and Brazil. INT ships 2,000 orders (7,000 items) per week with five to 30
products per shipment. Domestic outbound transportation from the U.S. manufacturing plant
is via FedEx (75% ground, 25% air). Except for Canada and Mexico, 100% of the
international shipments are FedEx Air.
Echelon 2 INTs Assembly of the Electronic Products
INT has a genuine interest in providing high quality products to its customers. They have an
assemble-to-order manufacturing process featuring lean and just-in-time techniques. They
utilize one manufacturing shift per day and offer a seven to 10 day assembly lead time to
customers. Manufacturing lead time averages two days, 60% of which constitutes direct labor
touch time. 200 production orders are launched daily, and 10-300 purchased SKUs are used
for each product. There is additional lead time for component picking and staging. Only 1%
of purchased SKUs are shared in common between saleable products. This non-commonality
presents challenges to keep inventory levels low and service levels high as well as potential
vulnerability to disruptions in the supply chain.
Echelon 3 INTs Component Procurement
INT purchases components (5,000 SKUs per year) from 500 suppliers with business totaling
$275 million. Approximately 10% of all SKUs are sole-sourced. 650 to 700 material
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shipments composed of 1,500 SKUs are received weekly, and the SKUs range from one to
three per shipment. 55% of purchases are direct imports; 90% of which are transported via air
(freight forwarders), and 10% by ship through ports. Inbound transportation comprises less
than 1% of sales. The majority of SKUs purchased by INT are made in Singapore, U.S.,
China, Malaysia, and Mexico (in order of volume).
We focused on two of INTs major suppliers (Supplier 1 and Supplier 2) and two
others INT considers critical (Supplier 3 and Supplier 4). A common distributor (Supplier 5)
to INT, ABC, and XYZ is discussed later. INTs order lead time from Supplier 1 and
Supplier 2 ranges from 45-90 days. INT transports the materials through Expediters
International using 15% expedited air (two to three days) and 85% regular air (three to five
days). INT holds 40-45 days of on-hand inventory from Supplier 1, and 70-80 days from
Supplier 2. If INT faced an immediate loss of Suppliers 1 or 2, it has more than ten other
suppliers with which to choose, but comprehensive supply might take two to four months.
The order lead time from Supplier 3 (a critical supplier) ranges from 45-90 days, and
all of its materials are transported via air (three to five days) through freight forwarders, in
which multiple carriers are used. INT holds 30-45 days of on-hand inventory from Supplier
3. INTs order lead time from Supplier 4 (another critical supplier) ranges from 30-45 days.
They hold 60-70 days of on-hand inventory from Supplier 4. These suppliers transport 90%
of the materials via FedEx air (two days), and the rest, FedEx ground (five days).
Suppliers 3 and 4 are critical to our understanding of supply chain vulnerabilities.
With immediate removal of Supplier 3, one half of INTs products would cease to be
manufactured for 30-45 days while it switches to an Asian supplier. If INT lost Supplier 4, it
would take an estimated two years for INTs engineers to redesign certain components
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common to its product line (patented by Supplier 4), and find a new suppler to build to
blueprint.
Echelon 4 Delivery to INTs Suppliers
This section describes the replenishment processes for two of INTs major suppliers
(Supplier 1 and Supplier 2), and two of INTs critical suppliers (Supplier 3 and Supplier 4).
Supplier 1 is located in Singapore and accounts for 16% of INTs annual purchases. Its order
lead time from time of order placement to receipt ranges from 15-120 days and its on-hand
finished goods inventory ranges from seven to 10 days. Inbound transportation is
predominantly ground since Supplier 1 sources 100% of its materials from local Asian
countries.
Supplier 2 is located in Malaysia and accounts for 4% of INTs annual purchases. Its
order lead time ranges from 1-130 days and on-hand finished goods inventory ranges from
seven to 10 days. The majority of Supplier 2s materials are transported via ground
transportation from Thailand and China.
Supplier 3 is a sole-sourced French supplier that provides components used in half of
INTs finished products. Supplier 3 sources brass, copper, and other metals with an average
order lead time of two months.
Supplier 4 is a sole-sourced supplier with sites in Mexico and Asia, and makes
common components used to manufacture numerous INT products. Products made in Asia
are 100% sourced from Asia, while those manufactured in Mexico are 60% sourced in
Mexico and 30% in Asia.
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INTs Contingency Planning
Over INTs supply base, 10% of its components are sole-sourced and proprietary. If INT lost
a supplier for one of these components, it would take six to nine months on average to find
another supplier to design and manufacture the needed part. For a non-proprietary product,
INT could find a new supplier within two months. (According to Berry et al. (1994), U.S.
electronics OEMs sole-source 7% of their components, and single-source 30%. Sole sourcing
often helps to create long-term supplier relationships and streamline information flow that
might reduce demand amplification. However, this efficiency presents associated risks of
disruption.)
INT is highly dependant upon electricity and currently does not own a backup
generator to power its operations or mission critical systems. This vulnerability became
apparent when INT experienced manufacturing downtime of two days after a power box
located off property was destroyed in a car accident. $11 million in products were shipped
late to INTs customers because they lacked a contingency plan. Additionally, if a mode of
shipment were suddenly removed, INT would expedite outbound products via air, and would
incur seven to ten times the cost over its current ground vessel costs.
ABC CORPORATION
ABC makes high-end instruments for diagnosing and monitoring the performance of
electrical equipment. ABCs costs are considerably higher than their competitors, as is the
quality of their products. ABCs shortages usually become lost sales.
ABC Corporation utilizes cutting-edge manufacturing processes modeled after the
Toyota Production System. This includes one-piece production and build-to-order
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manufacturing. ABC averages 95% on-time order fulfillment with a five-day delivery
schedule (from order to shipment). ABC carries less than two weeks of on-hand inventory.
The majority of its products are used in automotive, utilities, hi-tech, military, and aerospace
industries.
Echelon 1 Delivery to ABCs Customers
ABC sells its 200 types of finished products to distributors accounting for 50% of sales, and
the other half to individual customers, including the U.S. Government. ABC offers customers
a one to five week lead time. ABC ships 50 to 150 orders per day with one to 100 items per
shipment. 40% of their sales are exports.
Echelon 2 ABCs Assembly of the Electronic Products
ABC manufactures 50% of their products in-house (the Product Group), and outsources the
rest to various turnkey operations in East Asia (the OSP Group). ABC uses 70 to 150 SKUs
to manufacture each product. Should a disruption occur, this relatively small number of
SKUs in a product might enable ABC to provide higher service levels and a correspondingly
lower risk of delay than INT and XYZ. Assembly orders are typically delayed, rather than
split, until sufficient backordered components arrive to complete assembly.
Echelon 3 Delivery of Components to ABC
The in-house fabrication lead time for ABCs Product Group is one to 10 days, with the
build-to-order process taking one to seven of those days. For the OSP Group, ABCs
procurement lead time is one to 12 weeks (80% is two weeks or less). The material and
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component on-hand inventory level for the Product Group and OSP Group averages one to
two weeks (critical inventory may reach four weeks). Inbound transportation into ABCs
factory is roughly 80% ground and 20% air (with shippers: 55% UPS, 28% FedEx, and 17%
Roadway). ABC receives 40 to 50 material shipments per day with one to 20 component
SKUs per shipment. ABC buys many of their supplies on consignment, not paying for them
until they enter assembly. An example of this includes materials from Supplier 2 that
provides an on-site warehouse for ABC. Supplier 2 coordinates just-in-time all logistics for
warehousing and transporting components to ABCs assembly processes. Although ABC
pays a premium for this service, it allows the JIT operation to run seamlessly with minimal
inventory.
Echelon 4 Delivery to ABCs Suppliers
Suppliers to the OSP Group include two domestic and 18 international suppliers, totaling
over $60 million per year in purchases. The OSP Groups three largest suppliers in China and
Japan account for 63% of total supplies.
Unless stated otherwise, subsequent metrics relate to ABCs in-house Product Group.
The Product Groups suppliers also represent over $60 million per year in purchases, and are
located in the United States, Canada, Mexico, China, Japan, and Malaysia. The four largest
suppliers account for 43% of the total of this supply, and are located in New York, Arizona,
Canada, and China. Supplies to these four are, in turn, covered by 60% domestic vendors
located in NY and Arizona, 20% in Canada, and 20% in China. Inbound shipments for the
domestic suppliers arrive from U.S. seaports, Mexico, and Canada. Overall, the transport mix
is 30% air, 30% ship, and 40% truck.
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Twenty percent of INTs supply base is sole-sourced. An example of a critical sole-
sourced material includes proprietary custom component features assembled in California.
They, in turn, obtain silicon from the Far East and component systems from California. The
sole-source supplier then transports the custom features through distribution partners with a
stocking agreement. The distributors provide forecasts of demand and the sole-source
supplier manufactures to forecast with a buffer. If demand spikes from INT and other
customers, the sole-source supplier expedites the channel to satisfy the critical need and refill
the stock and buffer.
ABCs Disruptions and Contingency Plans
When asked to discuss a disruption that had occurred in their business, ABC mentioned the
West Coast port lockout. As the lockout approached, ABC prepared with contingency plans
to use alternative sources and routing. They also established larger inventory buffers to cover
demand over longer lead times. Increased inventory, holding, and expediting costs were
incurred during the lockout, but were considered negligible relative to costs of possible
shortages.
ABC is highly dependent on electricity and telecommunications. They have backup
generators to run their mission critical IT system, including ERP, for one week should a
power disruption occur. They do not have telecommunications backup or contingency plans.
They believe these contingency plans must be more fully developed to decrease disruption
risks in critical infrastructure inherent in the post-911 business world.
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XYZ CORPORATION
XYZ designs, develops, and manufactures systems for use by OEM aerospace
manufacturers. XYZ focuses on three product groups for use on 42 aircraft types, which
serve 450 customers in 49 countries. XYZ is more vertically integrated than most of its
competition. This enables rapid prototyping of new products, but presents challenges to keep
product costs down and maintain service levels.
Echelon 1 Delivery to XYZs Customers
XYZs six largest customers comprise 51% of its business, with the largest two representing
one third of total business. XYZ quotes lead times of four to 20 weeks, and takes two to four
weeks to assemble its products. XYZ averages 200-250 orders from customers per week,
which translates into 355 shipments per week. 25% of the orders are exported, all via
airfreight. Domestically, nearly all deliveries are either customer pickup or ground delivery.
Customers determine the delivery service with typical options of UPS surface, BAX, and
FedEx ground/economy.
The price of XYZs products is insignificant relative to the value of its customers
products. XYZs customers accept, but do not appreciate, backorders. Repeated poor delivery
performance would result in temporary or permanent loss of a customer in XYZs small
customer base.
Echelon 2 XYZs Assembly of the Electronic Products
XYZs end products contain between 200 and 700 component SKUs. Of the assembly orders,
65% are made-to-order, and the rest forecasted spares. This mix results in varied finished
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goods inventory levels: less than one week for make-to-order products, three to four weeks
on expensive spares, and up to three months on less expensive spares. XYZ operates with a
direct labor percentage of 11-13%, with 15-20% touch time of the total lead time. Assembly
orders are typically delayed until sufficient backordered components arrive to fully satisfy
demand requirements, although orders may be split for customer orders deemed critical
Echelon 3 Delivery of Components to XYZ
XYZ draws from over 300 international and domestic component suppliers and distributors,
receiving approximately 55 material shipments per day with an average of two SKUs per
shipment. 20% of XYZs components are sole-sourced, and consequently represent a
significant supply risk. With 90% of their shipments coming via diverse ground delivery and
only 10% expedited by air, XYZ is reasonably buffered against risks in the transportation
system. Only seven to 10% of their component shipments are direct imports, though it is
unclear what percentage of this represents critical inventory. XYZ experiences a purchasing
lead time between six and eight weeks, including one to seven days of transportation. XYZ
averages 10 weeks of inventory to cover the lag between ordering and delivery.
Echelon 4 Delivery to Suppliers of XYZ
Of the more than 300 international and domestic suppliers of XYZ, we chose three (Supplier
6, Supplier 7, and a common Supplier 5) for Echelon 4. Supplier 6 has a distribution hub in
Boston and Supplier 7 in Fort Worth. These distributors employ diversification strategies,
multiple transportation modes, and inventory holding policies to help ensure minimal risk to
their customers.
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Supplier 6 procures materials from source companies in Israel, Japan, Europe, and
U.S., and makes its components in the Philippines, Malaysia, Mexico, and various other
foreign countries. Multiple source companies ensure redundancy and limit supplier risk at
this echelon. Once fabricated, the electronic components are shipped to Supplier 6s central
U.S. distribution hub in Boston. The mode of shipment depends on the origin of the foreign
country and the nature shipments, but 85-90% of Supplier 6s components are shipped to
Boston via air/truck combination, and 10-15% via seaport/truck combination. All domestic
shipments are transported via truck. Supplier 6 incurs a 20-50% premium for rush orders
Supplier 7 operates similarly to 6. A distribution hub in Fort Worth, Texas receives
components from abroad and maintains inventory that turns an average of six times per year.
Representatives at Supplier 7 estimated that in the event of a complete halt of deliveries, they
would run out of components for key customers within six weeks. To keep the likelihood of a
complete shutdown at a minimum, Supplier 7 geographically dispersed its own supply
companies by operating in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, South America, and North
America. Supplier 7 also diversifies its modes of shipment receipt; 25% of all foreign
shipments arrive via air (Dallas/Ft. Worth airport), 50% via ports in Texas and New Orleans,
Louisiana, and 25% via ground transport (usually shipments from Central America and
Mexico). All domestic shipments are handled by trucking shippers.
Despite this diversification strategy, Supplier 7 encountered problems with a Texas
port closure. This left representatives with a feeling that despite an ability to reroute, an
unannounced port closure of greater than one hundred days would be problematic
economically. Additionally, Supplier 7 represents a potential source of vulnerability for
XYZs critical inventory. A crisis would result in Supplier 7 emptying pipeline inventory of
144
critical parts within six weeks. With only two additional weeks of inventory on XYZs
shelves, XYZ would find itself in a materials shortage within two months.
XYZs Disruptions and Contingency Plans
Besides the economic risks born by the nature of the business, supply chain structure and
transportation dependencies, XYZ representatives also sense exposure in manufacturing and
testing to electrical and telecommunications disruptions. The company does not operate with
a backup generator, and has no contingency plans in the event of a prolonged blackout.
Additionally, nearly all customer and order records are stored electronically. Although a
blackout poses no real risk of data loss, the company admitted that data access could hamper
significantly the firms operations were a blackout to last longer than a few days.
Regarding telecommunications risk, the company is dependent upon phone, email, and
internet connections for order receipt and fulfillment, customer service, intra-organizational
communications, business research, and other important functions. Recently, XYZ
experienced loss of land-phone service for just under a week. During this time,
representatives were forced to use cellular phones, an issue that caused significant customer
service friction. Quoting company representatives Were both electric power and
telecommunications to go down simultaneously, this company would stop dead in its tracks.
COMMON SUPPLIER 5
Supplier 5 is a large U.S.-based components distributor that supplies electronics firms
worldwide. The following is from the perspective of Supplier 5, versus that of its customers
INT, ABC, and XYZ. Supplier 5 services 40,000 North American customers, 30,000 of
145
which are found in their Components Division. Supplier 5s customer sales and outbound
transportation activities are voluminous and diverse, maintaining in the aggregate a relatively
stable delivery schedule of 100,000 shipments per week. 65% of shipments to major
customers are made via UPS, FedEx, and LTL ground, and 23% are shipped via two to three
day air (UPS, FedEx, and DHL). EMERY two to three day air is used to deliver shipments to
Canada. 12% of deliveries are made using FedEx overnight service. Currently, 25-30% of
shipments are expedited over their normal delivery time, which is similar to their pre-9/11
levels in the peak of 2000.
Supplier 5 has roughly 280 suppliers and receives 3500 shipments per week (2500
shipments/week for the Components Division 71% of total in North America alone). 25%
of Supplier 5s materials are imports, purchased from American multinational companies
with overseas manufacturing plants, rather than from foreign companies. The majority of
Supplier 5s material shipments arrive via two to three day air, with the remainder arriving
via a geographically favorable California seaport. Supplier 5 does not choose its mode of
shipping. In its terms of procurement, ownership of goods is not taken until they reach the
U.S. port. Part delivery to Supplier 5s manufacturing headquarters is usually one to two days
via ground transportation. Overall, Supplier 5 operates with a total order/transportation lead
time of two to three weeks for semiconductors, three to 12 weeks for non-commodity items,
and seven-week average for all others.
The characteristics of Supplier 5s supply chain render it reasonably well protected
against transportation, supplier, and infrastructure risk. In the event that a mode of domestic
or international outbound shipment was removed, Supplier 5 would simply switch to another
ground carrier. Outbound transportation could be shifted to other carriers, while realizing
146
only a two to three day delay in lead time and a 10% increase in shipping costs. Supplier 5
maintains a system for managing significant disasters, where major customers would receive
first priority, other customers who provide stable product forecasts second priority, and so
forth.
With respect to its supply chain, less than 20% of the purchased SKUs are sole
sourced, and contingency plans are in place to handle disruptions for all but 8% of their
suppliers goods. Since Supplier 5 employs engineers on staff, a planned contingency for a
loss of a sole-source supplier would be to redesign the part and outsource it. The current
expectation is that a disruption to Supplier 5s supply chain would extend delivery lead times
by only two to three days, but result in a 30% increase in freight costs (non-contract
shipments would need to be auctioned). Supplier 5 maintains a disaster recovery team to
minimize the effects of a major disruption in their supply chain. In the event that a major
mode of shipment was removed, Supplier 5 is confident that it would be able to switch
modes quickly (for example, seaport to airport), relying on relationships with multiple
carriers (UPS, EMERY, DHL, FedEx). These carriers are anxious to service essential
customers such as Supplier 5 and would be able to absorb extra demand. For example, when
UPS workers threatened to strike, Supplier 5 began the process of coordinating alternative
carriers. Supplier 5s disaster planning team has also developed contingency plans to deal
with commercial disruptions caused by the SARS virus.
Supplier 5 is reasonably well insulated against disruptions to critical civic
infrastructure such as electric power or telecommunications networks. Supplier 5 asserts that
their status as a global company protects them against major disruptions since their many
plants around the world can accommodate the loss of one plant. That being the case, Supplier
147
5 acknowledges their dependence on electrical power, and maintains backup capabilities to
counter a grid disruption. Its power company supplies electricity through two separate
electrical grids. Thus, a backup grid is in place to sustain operations.
Supplier 5 has a central IT site that handles all networking for each location
worldwide. They have an on-site diesel generator that can feed their IT systems for up to four
days. These systems are tested weekly to ensure properly working condition. Additionally,
they have a one-hour battery backup, and maintain backup data facilities off-site.
Similarly, all telecommunications lines have dual backup to avoid disruptions to their
data communications systems. If the phone lines are down, Supplier 5s email system will
still be operational. Additionally, managers are instructed to use cell phones 100% of the
time internally, which is effective given the mobile nature of managers work. Otherwise,
Supplier 5 does not maintain a telecommunications contingency plan.
148
APPENDIX C
CASE INTERVIEW PROTOCOL
Electronics Firm
Customer Base/Distribution
1. Who are your major customers?
2. Approximately what proportion of your companys revenue does each major customer
provide?
3. What are the major products your company makes for these customers?
- If you know, what are the SIC/NAIC codes associated with these products?
4. How are products transported to each of these major customers?
- What are the modes, format, and proportion of shipments (e.g., Express mail,
DHL, two day air, overnight delivery; 80% of shipments to major customer
x)?
- If delivery time is not guaranteed, what is the average and range of delivery
times for each mode?
- Approximately how many shipments are made per day (week or month)?
Approximately how many product types are in a shipment?
- What percentage of your shipments are exports? What modes of transportation
do you use for these exports?
149
- If a mode of domestic or international shipment mode were suddenly
removed:
- How would you then ship goods to each of these customers?
- What additional delay would be incurred?
- What additional shipment cost (as a percentage over preferred method)
would be incurred?
- If faced with the problem of rationing a shortage of components, what
factors would you consider in deciding which customers would receive
priority?
Production
1. Would you classify your business as make to stock, make to order, assemble to order,
other?
2. For the products sold to the major customers identified earlier, what is the approximate
average and range of:
- Quoted lead times for these products?
- Manufacturing lead times for these products?
- What percentage of this lead time would you guess is actual direct labor
touch time?
- Purchased lead times for materials used to make these products?
3. Approximately how much finished goods inventory (in days average and range) do you
maintain for these products?
150
4. Approximately how many production orders are launched per day (week or month) into
your factory?
5. What is the approximate average and range of direct labor percentage in a product's
selling price; raw material percentage; profit before taxes?
6. What is the approximate average and range of number of SKUs for purchased material
for any given product?
- Approximately what is the percentage of purchased SKUs that are shared in
common between saleable products?
Supply Base
1. Approximately what percentage of the purchased SKUs is sole sourced?
2. Approximately how many suppliers of materials do you have?
3. Who are your major suppliers?
- Approximately what is the proportion of business for this supplier to total
supplier business?
4. Choose two critical purchased materials (e.g., ones that tend to be in short supply, are
indispensable, are sole sourced, have long lead times, etc.).
- What are they?
- Who supplies them?
- How are they transported?
- From the time you place a purchase order, what is the approximate average
and range of lead times for materials delivered by each of these major and
critical suppliers?
151
- Approximately how much material inventory (in days average and range) do
you keep on hand for materials provided by each of these major and critical
suppliers?
- If you know, what is the SIC or NAIC code of each supplier or commodity
they supply?
- How do these suppliers transport materials to you?
- What are the modes, format, and proportion of shipments?
- If delivery time is not guaranteed, what is the average and range of delivery
times for each mode?
5. Approximately how many material shipments do you receive per day (week or month)?
- Approximately how many material SKUs are in a typical shipment?
- What percentage of your shipments are direct imports?
- What modes of transportation do you use for these imports?
- If a mode of shipment (domestic or international) were suddenly removed,
how would each supplier then ship goods to your site?
- If faced with the problem of losing one of these suppliers, what alternatives
would you have, which alternative would you choose, and why?
- Who would you guess are major suppliers of materials that your supplier uses
to make or store the materials shipped to you?
- How would you guess these materials are delivered to your suppliers
supplier?
152
More on Possible Disruptions
1. Do you recall some disruption (even a small one) in your business?
- What happened?
- What were the short-term consequences, e.g., delays, additional costs?
- How was the problem resolved?
2. Electric Power: In what general ways is your firm dependent on electric power?
- What if there is a disruption in power; how would you respond?
- Do you have emergency back up?
- Over what duration?
- Which critical items would be supplied with emergency power and which
would not?
3. Telecommunications: In what general ways is your firm dependent on
telecommunications?
- What if there is a disruption in production due to telecommunications; how
would you respond?
- Do you have emergency back up?
- Over what duration?
- Which critical items would be supplied with emergency power and which
would not?
4. Have we missed any important vulnerabilities with respect to critical infrastructure?
153
Component Supplier
Customer Base/Distribution
1. Approximately how many customers do you have?
- Who are your major customers?
- Approximately what proportion of your companys revenue does each major
customer provide?
2. Approximately how much material inventory (in days average and range) do you keep
on hand for a typical SKU?
3. Shipments
- Approximately how many shipments do you make per day (week or month)?
- Approximately how many SKUs are in a shipment?
- In general, how are shipments made to these major customers?
- What are the modes, format, and proportion of shipments?
- What percentage of the shipments to customers is expedited over normal
delivery at this time?
- What was the percentage when business was at its peak; when was the
peak?
4. What percentage of your shipments is exported?
- What modes of transportation do you use for these exports?
5. If a mode of domestic or international shipment mode were suddenly removed,
- How would you then ship goods to each of these customers?
- What additional delay would be incurred?
154
- How would lead times be affected?
- What additional shipment cost (as a percentage over preferred method)
would be incurred?
6. If faced with the problem of rationing a shortage of components, what factors would you
consider in deciding which customers would receive priority?
Supply Base
7. Approximately how many suppliers of materials do you have?
- Who are your major suppliers?
- Approximately what is the proportion of business for this supplier to total
supplier business?
- Choose two critical purchased materials (e.g., ones that tend to be in short
supply, are indispensable, are sole sourced, have long lead times, etc.).
- What are they?
- Who supplies them?
- How are they transported?
8. Approximately how many material shipments do you receive per day (week or month)?
- Approximately how many material SKUs are in a typical shipment?
- What percentage of the material shipments is expedited over normal delivery
at this time?
- What was the percentage when business was at its peak; when was the
peak?
- What percentage of your shipments is directly imported?
155
- What modes of transportation do you use for these imports?
- Approximately what percentage of the purchased SKUs is sole sourced?
- If faced with the problem of losing one of these suppliers, what alternatives
would you have, which alternative would you choose, and why?
- Choose one major overseas supplier that delivers components to you through
a seaport.
- How does this supplier transport materials to you? What are the modes,
format, and proportion of shipments (e.g., truck from China manufacturer
to Chinese port, carrier to the Port of Long Beach, from the Port of Long
Beach -- 80% of shipments via Express mail, and 20% of shipments
overnight delivery)?
- From the time you place a purchase order, what is the approximate
average and range of lead times for components delivered by this
supplier?
- If a mode of shipment (domestic or international) were suddenly
removed, how would the supplier then ship goods to your site?
How would lead times be affected?
What additional shipment cost (as a percentage over preferred method) would be incurred?
More on Possible Disruptions
1. Do you recall some disruption (even a small one) in your business?
- What happened?
- What were the short-term consequences, e.g., delays, additional costs?
156
- How was the problem resolved?
2. Electric Power
- In what general ways is your firm dependent on electric power?
- What if there is a disruption in power; how would you respond?
- Do you have emergency back up?
- Over what duration?
- Which critical items would be supplied with emergency power
and which would not?
3. Telecommunications
- In what general ways is your firm dependent on telecommunications?
- What if there is a disruption in production due to telecommunications; how
would you respond?
- Do you have emergency back up?
- Over what duration?
- Which critical items would be supplied with emergency power and which
would not?
Have we missed any important vulnerabilities with respect to critical infrastructure?
157
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VITA
Sanjay Kumar was born to Lakshman Singh and Lakshmi Devi in Tezpur, in the Indian state
of Assam. After completing high school, Sanjay pursued education in Production and
Industrial Engineering. He developed an interst in teaching and research and after completing
a Masters in Industrial and Management Engineering. He then joined the University of Texas
at Dallas for a Ph.D. in Management Science with a concentration in Operations
Management.