Industrial Management & Data Systems

Emerald Article: Benefits of information sharing with supply chain

partnerships
Zhenxin Yu, Hong Yan, T.C. Edwin Cheng

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partnerships", Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 101 Iss: 3 pp. 114 - 121
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Zhenxin Yu, Hong Yan, T.C. Edwin Cheng, (2001),"Benefits of information sharing with supply chain partnerships", Industrial
Management & Data Systems, Vol. 101 Iss: 3 pp. 114 - 121
http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/02635570110386625

Zhenxin Yu, Hong Yan, T.C. Edwin Cheng, (2001),"Benefits of information sharing with supply chain partnerships", Industrial
Management & Data Systems, Vol. 101 Iss: 3 pp. 114 - 121
http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/02635570110386625

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Benefits of information sharing with supply chain
partnerships
Keywords
Decentralization supply chain,
Partnering, Information exchange,
Pareto analysis
Abstract
The power of information
technology can be harnessed to
help supply chain members
establish partnerships for better
supply chain system performance.
Supply chain partnerships can
mitigate deficiencies associated
with decentralized control and
reduce the ``bullwhip effect''. This
study illustrates the benefits of
supply chain partnerships based
on information sharing. For a
decentralized supply chain
comprising a manufacturer and a
retailer, we derive the members'
optimal inventory policies under
different information sharing
scenarios. We show that
increasing information sharing
among the members in a
decentralized supply chain will
lead to Pareto improvement in the
performance of the entire chain.
Specifically, the supply chain
members can reap benefits in
terms of reductions in inventory
levels and cost savings from
forming partnerships with one
another. A case study is provided
for illustration.
This research was partially
supported by The Hong
Kong Polytechnic University
under research grant
number G-V625.
Industrial Management &
Data Systems
101/3 [2001] 114±119
# MCB University Press
[ISSN 0263-5577]
[ 114 ]
Zhenxin Yu
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Hong Yan
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong
T.C. Edwin Cheng
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Introduction
Globalization of business has been
accelerating in pace in the last two decades
due to the rapid development of technology in
manufacturing and information, increased
cost pressure and more aggressive demand
from customers. Traditional production-
distribution schemes have been dramatically
changed. Most companies have been forced to
relocate or redesign their manufacturing
network in different countries. New
partnership relationships among suppliers,
manufactures, retailers and other parties
have replaced the conventional free market
structures. Although the supply chain is
frequently referred to as the logistic network
in the literature, supply chain management
emphasizes the overall and long-time benefit
of all parties on the chain through
cooperation and information sharing. By
coordinating different parties along the
logistics network, or establishing business
partnerships, supply chain management
creates a win-win situation for all members.
Information sharing on a supply chain brings
about a great advance in business
connections, such as vendor managed
inventory (VMI), cross-docking and quick
response (QR).
A supply chain partnership is a
relationship formed between two
independent members in supply channels
through increased levels of information
sharing to achieve specific objectives and
benefits in terms of reductions in total costs
and inventories. It promises a win-win
situation for the members involved. This
paper illustrates the benefits of supply chain
partnerships through an analytical model.
The partnerships are focused on the basis of
different levels of information sharing
between two adjacent partners on the chain.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
http://www.emerald-library.com/ft
Supply chain uncertainty and the
bullwhip effect
Uncertainties in a production distribution
chain are usually buffered by inventories. To
formulate an effective inventory control
policy, uncertainties in the system need to be
identified. In traditional logistics studies, a
supply chain is often considered as a multi-
site inventory system. There are three
distinct sources of uncertainty that affect a
supply chain: suppliers, manufacturers and
customers. Uncertainties are caused by
delayed deliveries, machine breakdowns,
order fluctuations, etc., which necessitate
increased inventories. Uncertainties will
propagate through the supply chain in the
form of amplification of ordering variability,
which leads to excess safety stock, increased
logistics costs and inefficient use of
resources.
In a supply chain, every member of the
chain needs to make a forecast of its
downstream site's product demand for its
own production planning, inventory control
and material requirement planning. Usually,
the demand forecasting includes some
uncertain terms, which can be described as
demand variability. An important
phenomenon observed in supply chain
practices is that the variability of an
upstream member's demand is greater than
that of the downstream member. This effect
was found by logistics executives at Procter
& Gamble (P&G) and called the ``bullwhip
effect''. In recent years, it has become a major
concern for many manufacturers,
distributors and retailers. For a
manufacturing system, this phenomenon can
be described as the variance of production
exceeding the variance of sales under the
optimal behavior even if the manufacturer
can backlog excess demand (Kahn, 1987). The
causes of the bullwhip effect have been
identified as: demand forecasting, order
batching, price fluctuation and rationing
game (Lee et al., 1997). Basically, the bullwhip
Zhenxin Yu, Hong Yan and effect is largely caused by variability of
T.C. Edwin Cheng ordering. To mitigate or eliminate this effect,
Benefits of information information sharing between members of a
sharing with supply chain
partnerships supply chain should be increased to reduce the
Industrial Management & uncertainty. Increasing vertical information
Data Systems sharing using Electronic Data Interchange
101/3 [2001] 114±119
(EDI) technology can enhance shipment
performance of suppliers and greatly improve
the performance of the supply chain system
(Srinivasan et al., 1994). The expanding
importance of information integration also
prompts increasing attention to establish
strategic supply chain partnerships.
Deficiency of decentralized control
Modern organization management theory
suggests that decentralizing decision rights
is an effective way of managing a large
organization. To make timely decisions
effectively, decision rights should be
assigned to the person who is just at the
decision spot and has specialized knowledge
of his or her surroundings. In a supply chain,
the participants may belong to different
organizations (within the same company or
across companies). Each member has its own
decision rights to make control policies at its
spot, i.e., it acts as a single decision maker to
optimize its costs or benefits. Thus, the
supply chain is operated in a decentralized
fashion. One problem of this decentralized
control is, however, the whole system may
not achieve the optimum performance even
though each member optimizes its own
performance. For example, in a supply chain
with multi-echelon, one site decides to reduce
its inventories. In order to maintain its
service level, the inventory pressure is often
put on its upstream sites (or suppliers). If this
site's improvement is achieved by only
increasing the upstream site's inventories, it
will hardly yield improvement for the whole
system's performance. A ``broken'' supply
chain will have substantial stock held at one
site to enable another site's stock reduction
(Davis, 1993). This deficiency caused by
decentralized control has led to the evolution
of partnership relations between buyers and
suppliers. Therefore, it is expected that if
each member of the supply chain has more
information about other members, and treats
each other as strategic partners, it would be
easier to achieve an optimum performance
based on each member's control policy.
A stream of modeling research has been
reported to study different members' optimal
control policies in decentralized supply
chains. Clark and Scarf (1960) made one of the
earliest efforts in decentralized optimization
of a two-echelon system. Federgruen and
Zipkin (1984) extended their result to the
infinite-horizon case. The echelon stock
policy was studied by Chen and Zheng (1997).
Most research suggests centralized
information can improve a decentralized
supply chain's performance, and different
control policies have been studied under an
environment of information cooperation (see,
for example, Tzafestas and Kapsiotis, 1994;
McGavin et al., 1997; Chen, 1999).
Information sharing and
partnership
The reason for uncertainties is that perfect
information about the system cannot be
secured. While every single member has
perfect information about itself,
uncertainties arise due to a lack of perfect
information about other members. To reduce
uncertainties, the supply chain member
should obtain more information about other
members. If the members are willing to share
information, each of them will have more
information about others. Therefore, the
whole system's performance will be
improved because each member can gain
improvement from information sharing. This
cooperation mode for increasing information
sharing among supply chain members can be
called a supply chain partnership. With
partnership, the negative impact of the
bullwhip effect on a supply chain can be
reduced or eliminated because it can help the
supply chain members share more
information to reduce uncertainties. The
deficiency of decentralized control is also
associated with uncertainties. Thus, with
information sharing, the decentralized
supply chain can achieve the optimal
performance under centralized control.
Among existing quantitative studies of
information sharing and supply chain
partnerships, Iyer and Bergen (1997)
examined the impact of quick response (QR)
on the fashion apparel industry. Baganha
and Cohen (1998) presented a hierarchical
model as an analytical framework to examine
the stabilizing effect of inventories in supply
chains. EDI implementation can incorporate
information flow between a supplier and a
retailer, which will benefit a two-echelon
supply chain model (Gavirneni et al., 1999).
However, there exists a large amount of
literature on the concepts of supply chain
partnerships projecting extremely optimistic
views about their promise as win-win
partnerships without rigorous analysis to
support the cause of optimism (Maloni and
Benton, 1997). There is a lack of research that
adopts more rigorous analytical approaches
to examine the supply chain partnership
issues.
[ 115 ]
Zhenxin Yu, Hong Yan and
T.C. Edwin Cheng Methodology
Benefits of information
sharing with supply chain To illustrate the benefits of partnerships with
partnerships information sharing, we use a decentralized
Industrial Management & supply chain consisting of a single retailer
Data Systems and a single manufacturer to model the
101/3 [2001] 114±119 partnership. We define three levels of
information integration to describe three
types of partnerships under different
information sharing situations. Then, a cost-
minimizing model is formulated as the
building block of the modeling analysis. We
use this basic model to derive each supply
chain member's optimal inventory policies
under the three levels of information
sharing. From the comparison of inventory
reductions and cost savings among the three
information integration levels, we show that
``Pareto improvement'' will be achieved, i.e.
both the retailer and the manufacturer are at
least as well off and at least one of them is
better off. Therefore, we conclude that the
information sharing-based partnership can
improve the overall performance of a
decentralized supply chain.
We now introduce the three levels of
information sharing. According to different
situations of information sharing and
ordering information coordination, the
partnership between the retailer and the
manufacturer can be described as one of the
following integration levels (see Figure 1).
1 Level 1: This is referred to as
``decentralized control''. The inventories
at different sites of the supply chain are
controlled independently. There is neither
information sharing nor any ordering
coordination between the retailer and the
manufacturer. Both the retailer and the
manufacturer make their inventory
decisions according to their own
forecasting. The retailer uses the
customer demand information and the
Figure 1
Three information sharing levels
manufacturer uses the retailer's ordering
information. We suppose both of them use
the base stock policy as their inventory
control policy. The base stock policy is of
the (s, S) type with periodic review
procedures, which means an order will be
placed to replenish the stock level to S at
each time period if the stock level is less
than the reorder point s. S is called the
order-up-to level.
2 Level 2: It is referred to as ``coordinated
control''. The two neighboring inventories
are coordinated with sharing of the
customer ordering information. In this
situation, the manufacturer will obtain
the customer demand information,
together with the retailer's ordering
information, and then make its inventory
decision based on both the current
customer demand information and the
retailer's ordering information.
3 Level 3: We name this situation as
``centralized control''. Under this
situation, the decentralized supply chain
can obtain the optimal performance
achievable by a supply chain under
centralized control. Based on EDI, both
the retailer and the manufacturer can
retrieve the customer's demand
information in a synchronized manner.
VMI can be adopted. This means the
manufacturer takes the initiative to make
major inventory replenishment decisions
for the retailer in parallel with its own
inventory decisions. In this case, the
manufacturer will not depend on the
retailer's ordering information, but on the
customer's demand directly.
Model formulation
We present the basic cost-minimization
model for two supply chain members. It is
assumed that the retailer orders a single item
from the manufacturer at each time period.
Both of them adopt the order-up-to inventory
policy with a periodic review procedure and
any excess demand is backlogged. At the
beginning of each period, the retailer and
manufacturer should decide their order-up-to
levels. For each of them, the decision is made
based on such a basic inventory model.
Mathematically, the inventory problem is
given by
" #
X1 X
t‡L
t 1 L
Min Z ˆ  cRt ‡  G…St ; Dl ;
tˆ1 lˆt

where
!‡ !‡
X
t‡L X
t‡L X
t‡L
G…St ; Dl ˆ h St Dl ‡g Dl St
lˆt lˆt lˆt

with x+ = max {0, x} and St = Wt + Rt.

[ 116 ]
Zhenxin Yu, Hong Yan and
T.C. Edwin Cheng
Benefits of information
sharing with supply chain
partnerships
Industrial Management &
Data Systems
101/3 [2001] 114±119
The notation is: reduced due to improvement in the
Rt: quantity ordered in period t, manufacturer's supplying reliability
Wt: quantity on hand plus on order in because of the adoption of VMI policy.
period t, Without any information cooperation
L: lead time in terms of number of from the manufacturer, the retailer's lead
periods, time is an estimation of the
c: unit cost of ordering, manufacturer's times for order
h: unit holding cost, processing, manufacturing and
g: unit shortage cost, delivering. The supply chain partnership
: discounted factor for each period under Level 3 allows the manufacturer to
(0 <  < 1).
At the beginning of period t, a decision to
order a quantity Rt of the item is made. This
time point is the ``decision point'' for period t.
Products ordered will arrive after L periods.
The decision variable St is the amount of the
item on hand plus on order (including those
in transit) after the decision Rt has been
made before demand Dt is experienced.
This model is used to find the optimal
order-up-to level St of each supply chain
member. Then, we can investigate the
ordering decisions and inventory control
policies of the retailer and the manufacturer
at the three levels of information integration.
Analysis
The basic model gives us the optimal order-
up-to levels of the retailer and the
manufacturer under the three different
information integration scenarios. By using
the optimal order-up-to levels of the two
members, we can analyze their average
inventory levels and expected inventory
costs. The benefits of the information sharing
are shown by comparing the average
inventory levels and expected costs of Level 2
and 3 to those of Level 1. The deduction of the
optimal inventory control policies and the
comparison of the policies under different
scenarios involve complicated mathematical
analysis. The comprehensive analytical
details can be found in Yu et al. (1999). The
comparison results of the two supply chain
members' performance improvement are
shown in Table I.
1 The retailer's benefits. Under Level 2, the
retailer's order-up-to level remains the
same as that under Level 1 and so do the
average inventory level and expected
inventory cost. This result means the
retailer will not obtain any improvement
by sharing the customer ordering
information with the manufacturer. The
reason for this outcome is that the retailer
already knows the customer's demand and
there is no further customer demand
information that the retailer can obtain
when it shares the information with the
manufacturer. Under Level 3, the retailer
can gain performance improvement. The
reason is that the retailer's lead time is
share the lead time information with the
retailer. This leads to reduction in the
retailer's lead time variability, or may
even make the manufacturer shorten the
retailer's lead time. Therefore, the retailer
can achieve benefits in both inventory
level and expected cost from the
partnership with information sharing.
2 The manufacturer's benefits. From the
results in Table I, we can see that the
manufacturer's optimal order-up-to level
decreases with an increasing level of
information integration and so do the
average inventory level and expected
inventory cost. This observation shows
that the manufacturer's inventory
decreases with an increasing level of
information sharing. The manufacturer
can achieve reductions both in inventory
level and expected cost. Under Level 2, the
retailer shares the customer demand
information at the ordering time with the
manufacturer so the manufacturer can
reduce a portion of the retailer ordering
uncertainty, which is from the
accumulated uncertainty of customer
demand. With the adoption of VMI (Level
3), there is no accumulated customer
demand uncertainty for the
manufacturer's decision making.
Obviously, the manufacturer's inventory
level can be further reduced. It is obvious
that the manufacturer can obtain more
benefits than the retailer with increasing
information sharing. Therefore, the
manufacturer should offer the retailer
some incentives to induce the retailer to
participate in information sharing.
Pareto improvement
Pareto improvement implies that all members
in a system are at least as well off, and some
members are better off. From the comparison
results (see Table I) of inventory reductions
and cost savings of the supply chain
members under the three relationship
integration levels, we see that the
manufacturer can obtain proportionate
benefits with an increasing level of
information integration. Under the supply
chain partnership with information sharing,
both the retailer and the manufacturer are at
[ 117 ]
Zhenxin Yu, Hong Yan and Table I
T.C. Edwin Cheng
Benefits of information Results
sharing with supply chain
partnerships
order-up-to level
Industrial Management &
Data Systems Information sharing levels
101/3 [2001] 114±119
Level 1
Level 2
Level 3
Notes: R = retailer; M = manufacturer; ± = the value equals that of Level 1; ; = the value is less than ``±'';
;; = the value is less than ``;''
least as well off, and at least one of them ± the
manufacturer ± is better off. The partnership
can improve the overall performance of the
supply chain. Therefore, we conclude that
with information sharing-based supply chain
partnerships, Pareto improvement can be
achieved in respect of the overall
performance of the supply chain.
A case study
This section exhibits a case study for
illustrating the benefit of information sharing
in a supply chain. L&TT is a Hong Kong based
multination company, manufacturing and
distributing electronic components to its
customers mainly located in Europe. The
company was established in 1979 and now is a
major supplier of mobile phone components
in the region and the world. With the rapid
development of the mobile phone market, a
large number of new manufacturers and
component suppliers have emerged into the
industry. The prices are reduced and the
ultimate customers are more demanding. The
lead time of the manufacturer, therefore of
the suppliers is required to be shorter and
shorter. The market becomes more and more
time and service-sensitive. A precise forecast
becomes impossible.
From the beginning of 1999, L&TT
increased its inventory level to meet the
customer demand by reducing the ordering
lead time from six weeks to two weeks on
average. However, after implementing this
inventory policy for six months, it has been
observed that although the inventory cost
has increased significantly, the customer
order fulfillment level is not changed.
Furthermore, raw materials for the
company's production pile up. The negative
financial impact is also obvious. It is clear
that a high inventory level without accurate
forecasting does not help in improving the
situation.
Later in 1999, L&TT started seeking a new
solution for the problem. Supply chain
management, characterized by the concept of
information sharing attracted the top
management team. As pointed out above, one
[ 118 ]
Average Average Expected
inventory level inventory cost
R M R M R M
± ± ± ± ± ±
± ; ± ; ± ;
; ;; ; ;; ; ;;
of the most critical issues in the company's
operations can be tracked down to the
incompleteness of information. In this study,
the company is considered as the
manufacturer, we implement our model to
identify the benefit of sharing information
with its upstream suppliers.
The production and sales data of the
company in the first half of 1999 are used. To
fulfill the parameter requirements of the
model, the management team is requested to
make some reasonable estimation. The
current situation is referred to as the first
information sharing level. The comparisons
of computational results are reported in
Figures 2 and 3.
Figure 2 shows the change of average
inventory level, and Figure 3 shows the
change of expected inventory cost on time. It
is clear that both the average inventory level
and the expected inventory cost can be
reduced with an increase in the information
sharing level. Furthermore, the variability of
the average inventory level will decrease
since the variability of the order-up-to level
decreases from time to time.
Conclusions
This paper attempts to illustrate the benefits
of supply chain partnerships with
information sharing. Based on a two-stage
decentralized supply chain comprising a
retailer and a manufacturer, modeling study
and analysis have been performed to
investigate supply chain members' optimal
inventory control policies. The partnerships
between the retailer and manufacturer are
defined in terms of three information sharing
levels. From the comparison results of
inventory reductions and cost savings of the
two members, it is deduced that Pareto
improvement is achieved in respect of the
entire supply chain performance. Specifically,
both the retailer and the manufacturer can
obtain performance improvement in terms of
inventory level and cost with an increasing
level of information sharing.
The bullwhip effect exists in the
decentralized supply chain in our paper
Zhenxin Yu, Hong Yan and Figure 2
T.C. Edwin Cheng The average inventory level of the factory
Benefits of information
sharing with supply chain
partnerships
Industrial Management &
Data Systems
101/3 [2001] 114±119
Figure 3
The expected inventory cost of the factory
because the manufacturer uses the retailer's
ordering information to determine its
inventory policy without any information
about the customer demand process. With
access to the customer ordering information,
the manufacturer can eliminate the amplified
customer's demand variance in its
replenishment process. If the manufacturer
and the retailer can retrieve the customer
demand information in a synchronized
manner, perhaps by using EDI, a VMI
strategy can be adopted to obtain performance
improvement of the whole system. In the VMI
case, the manufacturer makes the major
inventory replenishment decisions depending
on the customer demand process directly,
without regard to the retailer's ordering
information. According to the quantitative
analysis, we see that the supply chain
partnership can not only help the members of
a decentralized supply chain to eliminate the
bullwhip effect, but also improve the overall
performance of the supply chain. The supply
chain partners can use EDI to support a VMI
strategy for inventory decision making. In our
modeling study, the manufacturer obtains
more benefits than the retailer. Therefore, the
manufacturer should take the initiative to
establish information sharing-based
partnerships and also give the retailer some
incentives (such as sharing logistics costs with
the retailer or guaranteeing supply reliability)
to induce the retailer's cooperation.
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[ 119 ]