Session: DFMLC-03-01-Design for Supply Chain and End of Life Recovery

Paper Number: 89936

89936 - Exploring the Effects of Partnership and Inventory for Supply Chain Resilience Using an Ecological Network Analysis 

Traditional supply chain policies and design efforts, such as lean-manufacturing, prize efficiency over all other factors. These traditional design principles are being challenged as supply chains around the globe struggle to bounce back from an array of recent disruptions. This brings up the longstanding battle between profit driven efficiency goals and redundancy efforts that support demand in times of need. Supply chain design guidelines that address resilience thus require a balanced approach between efficiency and redundancy, one that presents flexibility in a way that acknowledges profit requirements. Ecologists have used Ecological Network Analysis to reveal a unique balance of pathway efficiency and redundancy characteristic of biological ecosystems. This balance is the result of efficient steady-state operations and survival despite unexpected disruptions. Supply chain networks are here evaluated using the same ecological analysis, providing quantitative design guidelines for achieving an ecologically similar system-level resilience. This study builds off past bio-inspired supply chain work to simulate profit-based supply chain performance during disruptions from an ecological perspective.  Significant insights include that the validity of ecologically inspired supply chain design is contingent on the supply chain’s properties and that under the right conditions, the ecological balance of efficiency and redundancy can vastly improve the performance of supply chains during disruptions.

Presenting Author: Abheek Chatterjee Texas A&M University

Presenting Author Biography: Abheek Chatterjee is a Ph.D. mechanical engineering candidate at Texas A&M University. He joined the BiSSL research group in Fall 2018 from NIT Warangal, where he spent 2 summers at Georgia Institute of Technology doing research under Dr. Tequila Harris. Abheek was awarded the J. Mike Walker 66′ Department of Mechanical Engineering Emil Buehler Aerodynamic Analog Fellowship Fall of 2019, a J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering Graduate Summer Research Grant for Summer 2020, and a J. Mike Walker 66′ Department of Mechanical Engineering Graduate Student Fellowship Fall of 2020 & 2021. His 2020 IDETC-CIE conference paper won Best Paper from the SEIKM program under the CIE division. He is also a 2021/2022 J. Mike Walker '66 Department of Mechanical Engineering PF2ME fellow.

Authors:

Tyler Wilson Texas A&M University
Abheek Chatterjee Texas A&M University
Astrid Layton Texas A&M University