Department of Quantitative Methods in Economics and Management, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Las Palmas, Spain.
Institute of Tourism and Sustainable Economic Development (TIDES), Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Las Palmas, Spain.
PLoS One. 2019 Jul 10;14(7):e0218958. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0218958. eCollection 2019.
Several studies have shown that the performance of a supply chain is heavily influenced by the pattern of relationships among firms. This paper analyzes the structure of relationships (network topology) that leads to the highest agility of a food supply chain when sudden demand changes occur. To do this, a simulation model that represents a supply chain and specific rules to allocate orders is built. The supply chain in the model follows the specific characteristics of trade in the primary sector. The model is fitted to the conditions of a real seafood supply chain in Mexico. Agility is measured through the effect on the order fulfillment of a sudden demand shock and the recovery time of this rate to previous values. The simulation results show that the most suitable structure depends on how product is distributed among suppliers. If product is evenly shared, supply chains with homogeneous topologies are more agile than supply chains with heterogeneous topologies, but the result is the opposite if product is unevenly shared among suppliers. Other previous recommendations, such as having multiple suppliers and horizontal links, are confirmed by the simulations. These findings contribute to the general debate on which is the optimal topology for an agile supply chain.
已有多项研究表明，供应链的绩效在很大程度上受到企业间关系模式的影响。本文分析了在突发需求变化时，导致食品供应链具有最高敏捷性的关系结构（网络拓扑结构）。为此，构建了一个代表供应链的仿真模型和特定的订单分配规则。模型中的供应链遵循初级部门贸易的特定特征。该模型适用于墨西哥真实海鲜供应链的条件。敏捷性通过对突发需求冲击的订单履行的影响以及该速度恢复到先前值的时间来衡量。仿真结果表明，最合适的结构取决于产品在供应商之间的分配方式。如果产品均匀分配，具有同构拓扑结构的供应链比具有异构拓扑结构的供应链更敏捷，但如果产品在供应商之间不均匀分配，则结果相反。其他先前的建议，如拥有多个供应商和横向链接，也得到了模拟的证实。这些发现有助于就敏捷供应链的最佳拓扑结构展开更广泛的讨论。
