Study of supply chain disruptions at a high tech corporation

Although supply chain disruptions are inevitable, frameworks have been developed for addressing supply chain risks. These frameworks present methods on mitigating, reducing or managing the risks through different approaches such as multiple sourcing. The research presented here identified two factors that contribute to successful recovery from supply chain disruptions. One factor is efficient communication between stakeholders in a supply chain. The communication needs to be present before a disruption occurs to enable fast detection. After a disruption occurs efficient communications will help minimize confusion and provide clear understanding of the recovery effort between stakeholders. The other factor is the inventory position downstream of the disruption. In particular, the available days of supply downstream from the disruption relative to the length of the disruption are crucial to the ability of a supply chain to recover from the disruption without disturbing the continuity of supply. In response to the effect of the days of supply compared to the recovery time a simple model is developed for assessing supply chain risk for an enterprise that sells products defined through a bill-of-materials.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering Systems Division.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Doucakis, Theodore

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Chris Caplice.

• Engineering Systems Division.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/40097

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/40097