Modeling of Supply Chain as Flexible System

This research aims to enrich some insights into performance improvement in supply chains operating with knowledge sharing. Such knowledge sharing supply chains have various forms of decision options. These can be viewed and modeled as flexible system. The overall theme is to enhance the research on improving the competitiveness of supply chains (viewed as flexible systems) operating under various flexibility scenarios of decision knowledge sharing (DKS) and dynamic control. The study focuses on flexibility as a means to enhance the cost performance with and without decision knowledge sharing under non-ideal (i.e. no dynamic control) and ideal (i.e. dynamic control) scenarios. The studies are further extended to develop the combined effects of supply chains flexibility types and decision knowledge sharing modes, which also include the time delays and cost penalty scenarios. The research efforts are motivated by study on supply chain flexibility, dynamic switching and with dynamic control between buyers-suppliers and the associated knowledge sharing contexts. The important research contributions are duly highlighted and their industry implications discussed, wherever applicable.