The Bullwhip Effect: Applying Stochastic Models on Beer Distribution Game

Supply chain management is a fledgling science which concerned with synchronization of both material flow and information flow by integrating companies for a common objective to meet the requirements of the end customer. Bullwhip effect is an important research topic of the supply chain management. The Bullwhip effect is precarious to both short and long run competitive advantage, the dependability sustainability advantage of the chain. This paper proposes to show the impact of the Bullwhip effect on the supply chain using experimentally simulated data from Beer distribution game. The game represents a simple supply chain which consists of factory, distributor, wholesaler and retailer. The paper used empirical models of ANOVA, spectral density estimation, ARMAX and Cochrane- Orcutt autoregression. The result of the study prevails that when we quantify the impact of the Bullwhip effect to different actors of the supply chain with respect of inventory holding cost and stock-out case it is found that different cost implications. When quantifying the impact of the Bullwhip effect to the whole supply chain it is found that at least one of the competitive advantages of the chain is lost. When generalizing it the all the actors in the supply chain will suffer from the Bullwhip effect. The overall evidence from statistical causality analysis suggest that without proper both intra-organizational and inter-organizational coordination of the companies across the supply chain it is difficult to have effective and efficient customer relationship management, customer demand management and inventory management.