Impact of Supply Chain Strategies on Bullwhip Effect

Abstract

Changes of today’s firm’s competitiveness strategies from firms level to improved Supply Chain level causes increases in number and importance of Supply Chain studies in the literature. Variation between demand and orders is became the most important problem and most studied Supply Chain topic. This problem named in literature as Bullwhip Effect, is studied in this thesis with possible 11 factors effect on bullwhip. By using the improved Bullwhip Effect formula; lead time, review period, demand distribution, ordering cost, numbers of forecast periods are found as the factors which have significant effect on Bullwhip. In addition to this, for the use of similar Supply Chain researches, or real Supply Chain members, an improved spreadsheet simulation tool is prepared to test the proposed Supply Chain structures effects on different Supply Chain performance measures.