Understanding the inventory dynamics in supply chains requires understanding how one can control delay differential equations.
Delays in supply chains arise due to
- Transportation of products
- Outsourcing
- Production/lead times
- Decision making
- Information availability
Presence of delays may lead to undesirable oscillations in inventories. This ultimately reflects to costs, quality of service and demand amplification.
How can we explain inventory oscillations as a function of delays? We combine this problem with our expertise on stability charts, which in essence display which combinations of delays are "friendly", i.e. lead to desirable behavior of the inventories. With these unique tools in hand, we investigate the following open problems:
- Presence of multiple delays (delay heterogeneity) and how delay effects cross couple when affecting inventory oscillations
- Extraction of high-dimensional stability charts
- Utilization of stability charts for better supply chain management, such as for ordering, policy writing and cost optimization
- Understanding collaboration across supply chains for improved inventory regulation
We see the impacts of our research in the following areas
- Improved supply chain management through "delay management"
- Stability charts to assist supply chain managers
- Assistance in policy writing and negotiations
- Direct impacts to supply chain management for early stage firms
- Cost minimization for companies that are prone to large delivery delays due to outsourcing
- Reverse supply chains
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