The Estimation of the Bullwhip Effect and Stock Functions Using Response Surface Methodology

A major cause of supply chain deficiencies is the bullwhip effect. This phenomenon refers to demand variability increases as one move up the supply chain. Supply chain managers experience this variance amplification in both inventory levels and orders. Other side, dampening variability in orders may have a negative impact on customer service due to increase in inventory variance. The contribution of this paper is the estimation of the bullwhip effect and stock functions with using of response surface method under causes of the bullwhip effect in a three stage supply chains consisting of a single retailer, single wholesaler and single manufacturer with both centralized and un-centralized chains and show that with Considering the importance of the bullwhip effect reasons and interactions between them, the percent of optimal reasons and interactions between them and the level of desirability of bullwhip effect and net Stock will be illustrated by a model.