Supply Chain Performance Evaluation Using Spreadsheet Simulation

The objective of this paper is to develop a spreadsheet-based simulation methodology to evaluate the performance of a serial supply chain under different inventory position based ((r, Q) and (r, S)) and non-inventory position based (Fixed Order Quantity (FOQ) and Demand Flow Strategy (DFS)) periodic review inventory policies. The performance measures comprises of Fill Rate, Risk of Shortage, Bullwhip Effect and Total Cost of Supply Chain. An experimental study with four scenarios are carried out for two customer demand distributions under information sharing and no information sharing scenarios to determine performance measures in lost sales environment. The best performing inventory control policy for each scenario is found by conducting Grey Relational Analysis and the analysis show that one of non-inventory position based policy, FOQ is the better policy compared to other three policies.