An Approach to Investigate the Impacts of Sharing Production Information on Supply Chain Dynamics from the Perspective of Supply Chain Scheduling

Under the tide of globalization and mass customization, manufacturer is seeking dynamic outsourcing of some operations to other specialists (i.e. contract manufacturer) in order to improve cost effectiveness of its supply chain. The benefits of outsourcing cannot be realized unless information sharing and coordinated scheduling between independent organizations in a supply chain are well configured. This paper presents a systematic approach of how to investigate the impacts of sharing information on make -to-order supply chains from the perspective of distributed scheduling so as to optimize the supply chain dynamics. Different modes of information sharing and some key production information are identified for further analysis.