Analysis of the Bullwhip Effect in a Multiproduct Setting with Interdependent Demands

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Raghunathan, Srinivasan; Tang, Christopher S.; Yue, Xiaohang
• 署名单位: University of Texas System; University of Texas Dallas; University of California System; University of California Los Angeles; University of Wisconsin System; University of Wisconsin Milwaukee
• 刊物名称: OPERATIONS RESEARCH
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0030-364X
• DOI: 10.1287/opre.2016.1571
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 424-432
• 关键词: supply-chain; time-series; IMPACT

摘要

The bullwhip effect has been extensively studied primarily based on the analysis of various single-product models with a few exceptions. We extend the single-product analysis to the multiproduct setting of interdependent demand streams with auto-correlation and cross-product correlation, as well as contemporaneous correlation across forecasting errors. We find that interdependency between demand streams plays a critical role in determining the existence and magnitude of the bullwhip effect. Specifically, we consider two operating environments: (a) The firm orders product-specific materials so that the ordering decision is based on the product level; and (b) the firm orders generic materials so that the order decision is based on the category level. We show that, even with demand pooling, a firm operating at the category level can experience a larger bullwhip effect and a larger order variance under certain conditions that depend on the number of products in the category and the demand dependencies.