The Impact Of Demand And Inventory Management Policies On Bullwhip Effect In Production Networks

The bullwhip effect is a phenomenon consisting in variance amplification of orders as they move up a supply chain. The immediate bullwhip effect consequences are the increase of inventory costs, poor custoiner services and inefficient utilization of resources due to the difficulties of production planning activities in highly variable conditions. There are many factors that cause the bullwhip effect, but if is particularly due to demand forecasting and inventory management policies. In this paper the impact on bullwhip effect of different policies to manage demand and inventories has been evaluated through discrete event simulation, using the ARENA (R) simulation package.