Information transformation in a supply chain: a simulation study

We study the information transformation by simulating a multi-stage supply chain when the end customer's demand is a general autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) process, and the information, represented in the form of orders, is propagated from downstream to upstream in the supply chain. Our simulation results indicate several important and novel phenomena that need further theoretical analysis: (1) the anti-bullwhip effect and the transition from the regular bullwhip effect; (2) the trend of information transformation at higher stages of a supply chain; (3) the impact of lead-time on information transformation and the so-called 'lead-time paradox'. In this paper, we will demonstrate these aspects via extensive computational experiments.