Bullwhip effect analysis using supply chain role play game and ranking of supply chains

Abstract

The tendency of orders to increase in variability as one moves up a supply chain is commonly known as the bullwhip effect. In a supply chain, it creates a negative impact on the performance. The objective of the present study is to know the effect of change in customer demand magnitude on bullwhip effect in a four-stage serial supply chain and rank the supply chains using multi-criteria decision making. We conducted the supply chain role play game under no information sharing among the supply chain members and the retailer faces different customer demand magnitudes under backorder, lost sales environment. The statistical test results show that there is a significant difference between variance of orders when customer demand magnitude changes and bullwhip effect increases when demand magnitude increases. The supply chains are ranked based on inventory cost, fill rate and bullwhip effect. Grey relational analysis is used for ranking.