Measuring the Impact of Supplier-Customer Information Sharing on Production Scheduling

Nowadays, implementing collaboration strategies between the members of the supply chain has been an important research topic to obtain a more reactive and flexible supply chain in the highly competitive markets. However, few studies have been done on the impact of such collaboration strategies at one of the lower short-term decision levels: production scheduling. This article is devoted to the study of information sharing between the members of a supply chain in a dynamic context. We consider a typical make-to-order direct sell supply chain without finished products inventory, similar to the one implemented by Internet PC sellers. We compare various scheduling algorithms implemented to study different scenarios of information sharing among the members of the chain. We have considered scenarios where no information is shared and scenarios where some or all information is shared. A simulation study is developed in order to get some insights about the impact of information sharing on the performance of the chain. Our results suggest improvement in the performance that shows the importance of collaboration and information sharing between the members of the chain. [Article copies are available for purchase from InfoSci-on-Demand.com]