MAS 2013 Proceeding

Simulating an internet product delivery supply chain with multi-item orders

Authors:   Oliverio Cruz-Mejia, Richard Eglese

Abstract

The increase of e-commerce has developed new challenges for online retailing companies delivering product orders to customers. With this challenge, a new type of supply chains have been developed aiming to cope with a strict control of lead time and associated costs. In this paper a model of an internet product delivery supply chain with multi-item orders is simulated. We address specifically the mismatch between supply and demand when retailers for any reason are unable to estimate the configuration of multi- item orders or single item orders. Three scenarios of demand configuration are simulated (demand as expected, lower than expected and higher than expected) using discrete-event simulation to look at the effect on lead time. A detailed numerical analysis is used to draw conclusions.

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