Technology planning "bullwhip" in the electronics industry supply chain

Abstract

This work considers the upstream flow of product attribute forecast information often used to drive the technology planning process. It is noted that, while downstream customers are willing to pay for improvements in key product attributes, they do not always provide accurate and timely product attribute forecasts to upstream suppliers. As a result of this increasing distortion of product attribute demand as information flows upstream, upstream suppliers often either fail to develop technology that will be needed in the marketplace or develop technology that ultimately is unused. This is shown to be a strategic, technology planning analog to the tactical, order decision problem of order quantity bull whip observed in the field of supply chain management. As such, we define the problem under consideration here as technology planning bullwhip in the supply chain. We include examples of this problem from the electronics industry.