Simulation results for supply chain configurations based on information sharing

As supply chains evolve beyond the confines of individual organizations, information sharing has become the Holy Grail in supply chain technology. Although the value of information sharing is well recognized, there is little research on how to use it to configure supply chains. This paper proposes a parameterized model to capture information sharing in a supply chain. By changing the parameters of this model, we actually adjust information sharing and create supply chain configurations. Configurations are the means of responding to events or changes in supply chains in a timely manner. A complete example is used to demonstrate this methodology. We also perform simulation experiments to compare configurations and to understand the effect of information sharing on supply chain performance. Thus, we show how to achieve supply chain configurability by leveraging information sharing.