Replenishment control systems for responsive supply chains under dynamic and sudden lead-time disturbances

ABSTRACT

This paper takes up the mathematical modelling and dynamic behaviour of a distribution warehouse of a responsive supply chain when subject to sudden increases in replenishment lead times, which are dynamic in nature. The warehouse is at the downstream end of the supply chain, and caters to the demand off-take of the responsive chain. We study analytically the effect of large and sudden increases in replenishment lead times on the system, and derive the performance behaviour of the system, looking at how quickly the system recovers from the disruption and is restored to normal operation, with the objective of being able to come up with a dynamic control scheme with enhanced performance. We find that the conventional dynamic control schemes perform poorly; and we therefore propose a modified dynamic control scheme which enhances the control and performance of such systems. Additionally, we present a comparison of the performance of this system with that of one with zero lag and sudden demand increase, which highlights the increased difficulty of controlling this system with sudden lags compared to the other. Concomitantly, the comparison also highlights the utility of such dynamic controls in achieving better performance of the chain under such conditions.

KEYWORDS:

• Supply chain dynamics
• replenishment controls
• dynamic modelling of supply chains
• dynamic lead-time disturbances
• responsiveness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kannan Nilakantan

Prof Kannan Nilakantan holds a Bachelor's degree in engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and a PhD from the Indian Institute of Science, B'lore, and a Master's in Mathematics from University of South Florida, wherein was also inducted to the Phi-Kappa-Phi Honours Society of the USA Prof. Nilakantan was with the National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai, and currently with the mathematical modelling group in IMT-Nagpur, India. He has published papers in international journals like Applied Mathematical Modelling, Annals of Management Science, Engineering Intelligent Systems, IMA Journal of Management Mathematics, IJOQM IJSS, IJCSM, IJAMS, JMM, IJBSR, IJBPSCM, IJLSM, AMS, JORS, etc. His research interests are in the applications of Dynamic Optimisation in industrial and business systems.