Network evolution model for supply chain with manufactures as the core.

Haiyang Fang,Ling Fang,Wu Li,Dali Jiang,Jing Zhao,Jian Yang,Tinghong Yang

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0191180

Haiyang Fang, Ling Fang + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0191180

Copy DOI

Abstract

Building evolution model of supply chain networks could be helpful to understand its development law. However, specific characteristics and attributes of real supply chains are often neglected in existing evolution models. This work proposes a new evolution model of supply chain with manufactures as the core, based on external market demand and internal competition-cooperation. The evolution model assumes the external market environment is relatively stable, considers several factors, including specific topology of supply chain, external market demand, ecological growth and flow conservation. The simulation results suggest that the networks evolved by our model have similar structures as real supply chains. Meanwhile, the influences of external market demand and internal competition-cooperation to network evolution are analyzed. Additionally, 38 benchmark data sets are applied to validate the rationality of our evolution model, in which, nine manufacturing supply chains match the features of the networks constructed by our model.

Highlights

The supply chain network consists of overwhelming number of enterprises and their mutual partnerships, in which the enterprises cooperate with the core enterprises directly or indirectly [1,2,3]
The supply chain network is defined as a directed weighted network G = (V, E, W), where V is the set of all the enterprise nodes, E is the set of all edges, and W is the set of all weights
The discussion mainly includes the analysis of evolutions in various time steps, effects of external market demand and internal competition-cooperation to network evolutions, and benchmark data validation

Summary

Introduction

The supply chain network consists of overwhelming number of enterprises and their mutual partnerships, in which the enterprises cooperate with the core enterprises directly or indirectly [1,2,3]. The supply chain network with manufactures as the core controls material flow, information flow and value flow from the process of raw material purchasing, through the processes of semi-finished products processing, manufacturing, warehousing, distribution, and to retail process that sells products to consumers[4,5,6,7]. It has most common characteristics as other complex networks, such as large scale, sparse connection, small world, scale-free, dynamic, self-similarity, and super family [8,9,10,11,12].

Methods

Results

Conclusion