The Performance of a Supply Chain System with Three Successive Suppliers

In this paper, we develop a general framework for the performance of one specific supply chain type. The supply chain consists of three successive suppliers, operating in a make-to-order environment. The customer demand is immediately fed back to the first supplier. All suppliers work along the same lines and produce the goods according to the first-come–first-served discipline. Once each supplier finishes its production, the goods are immediately sent to the next supplier. The performance of this supply chain is measured in terms of lead time and its constituent parts, and output. By simulation, we investigate the effect of varying different input parameters on these performance measures. While the average value of the performance measures reveals a clear pattern, the squared coefficient of variation of the performance measures does not. A specific relation between the average lead time and the output rate is also observed.