A quantitative evaluation method of supply chain information network

Example of SCM of the production company applying a production seat system

Abstract

Supply chain (SC) entities, such as retailers, wholesalers, manufacturers, supplier and others, store　and/or produce information on demand, capacity, inventory, and so on. Supply chain management (SCM) can be performed by using such information. Namely, it is critical for successful supply chain management to build an adequate information network among entities to acquire necessary information. However, there has been almost no quantitative method to evaluate the adequacy of the information network in a supply chain. Therefore, we develop a method that quantitatively evaluates the adequacy of an information network for managing a supply chain. The method divides the information network into several sub-networks based on the type of information. Each sub-network is evaluated by the sub-network evaluation index, which is calculated as the sum of the absolute　differences between the rank of importance of each entity in the sub-network and the rank of its own information　referred to by other entities in a sub-network divided by the maximum sum of the ranking difference value for　the number of entities in the supply chain. Then the information network is evaluated comprehensively as the　evaluation index SCV, which is calculated as the sum of the weighted value of each sub-network evaluation　index. The effectiveness of the proposed evaluation method is examined in the case of SCM of the production　company which applied a production seat system.