The impact of information sharing on different performance indicators in a multi-level supply chain

Abstract

Enterprises can use different methods/principles to obtain competitive advantages. Information sharing (IS) among supply chain (SC) partners is also one of these methods used in enterprises and it has positive effects on overall system performance like reduced inventory level, decreased cost, bullwhip effects and increased profit. In this paper, our aim is to present the impacts of IS on different costs like ordering, holding and penalty costs of each SC member and total system costs in multi SC. We want to show the effects of sharing different types of information simultaneously or separately on SC partners as cost change. Besides, this paper presents the situation of order quantity estimation according to the proximity of actual order quantity in decentralized or centralized demand sharing. A model is developed to determine IS influence on the cost of SC partners. Various IS scenarios are studied in this paper. The customer demand, warehouse order quantity and warehouse-manufacturer lead time are the shared information of scenarios. Results are tested and analysed by using analysis of variance (ANOVA).The findings of this study show that IS especially simultaneously sharing reduces system costs. Lead time sharing provides the lowest cost between other types of sharing. For every system member, holding cost reduces the most during IS. The more accurate demand forecasting is performed in centralized demand sharing compared to decentralized sharing.