Collect Supply Chain Network Data

Depending on the type of analysis, a DSS may require collecting information from various parts of the company. For example, supply chain network design requires both static and dynamic information from different parts of the company. The static data include plant production rates, locations of the plants, warehouses, and customers as well as warehousing costs and transportation costs, and the dynamic data involve forecasts, orders, and current deliveries. This type of information will not usually be found in one database or one department in a company. 

The first step is to collect the relevant data regarding costs and demands faced by the supply chain. For a typical supply network, such as the one shown in Figure 2.3, some of the data that will affect performance of the chain are ... 

Manage return business rules, performance, data collection, return inventory, capital assets, transportation, network configuration, regulatory requirements and compliance, and supply chain return risk... 

Network optimization models are useful for managers considering regional configmation during Phase II. The first step is to collect the data in a form that can be used for a quantitative model. For SunOil, the vice president of supply chain decides to view the worldwide demand in terms of five regions— North America, South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. The data collected are shown in Figure 5-3. 

Additionally, we collected data pertaining to the types of supply chains the respondents were involved in (domestic vs. global and simple vs. complex). In particular, the respondents had to indicate (1) if their firms rely on global supplier networks, and (2) if they consider their supply chains to have a high degree of complexity. The means for these two items were on or close to the scale mean of three (3.00 and 3.18) and the standard deviations were around one (1.37 and 1.01). This shows that on average the respondents reported on a fairly homogeneous set of supply chains. 

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