Ecological Supply Chains Performance Evaluation and Disruption Risk Management Strategies

ABSTRACT

This article presents the ecological supply chain (ESC) model and demonstrates its benefits. The causes that make an ESC vulnerable to disruption risks are analyzed; the objective is to balance the cost and the disruption risk. Also, it provides supply management strategies, demand management strategies, product management strategies, and information management strategies. Practice in China is reviewed. Based on exergoeconomics theory, the ESC is regarded as a huge energy system providing new perspective. The sustainability of the ESC system is discussed under the circumstances of exergoeconomics. The metric of “system negative environment effect” is introduced to measure ESC system performance. Finally, a real case example is used to illustrate the models and get some conclusions.

Key Words:

• ecological supply chain
• disruption risks
• robust strategy
• exergoeconomics
• exergy
• optimizing model

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work is supported by the new century outstanding talent plan in Fujian, China. Thanks go to Dash Wu, Affiliate Professor, RiskLab at University of Toronto, CA for editing and reviewing this article.