This book discusses supply chain management, focusing on developments within modelling the dynamic behaviour of the supply chain. Aimed at postgraduate students, researchers and practitioners, this book provides an in-depth knowledge of the dynamics of supply chains. Business trends such as the globalisation process and the increase of competition across many industrial sectors have forced companies to concentrate on their core competences and to outsource those activities in which they do not excel. As a consequence, companies no longer produce and distribute their goods in isolation, but being part of a supply chain or supply network, i.e. a set of interrelated companies who ultimately deliver the goods and services to the final customer. Despite the prevalence of supply chains as the primary form of production and distribution, their performance can be seriously hampered by the complex dynamics resulting from the collaboration and coordination (or lack thereof) among their members. This book provides the reader with modelling tools to understand, analyse and improve the dynamic behaviour of supply chains. It assembles seminal works on supply chain models and recent developments on the topic in order to provide a comprehensive, unified vision of the field for researchers and practitioners who wish to grasp the challenges of supply chain management. Aside presenting the main elements, equations and performance indicators governing the dynamics of a supply chain, and the book addresses issues such as the effect of timely and accurately sharing the information across members, the influence of restrictions on the productive capacities of their members, or the impact of the variability of the lead times, among others. Furthermore, more complex supply chain structures such as non-serial supply networks or closed-loop supply chains are modelled and discussed. Relevant managerial insights regarding the causes of supply chain underperformance, as well as avenues to improve their efficiency can be extracted from the resulting models.

This book offers an introduction to structural dynamics, ripple effect and resilience in supply chain disruption risk management for larger audiences. In the management section, without relying heavily on mathematical derivations, the book offers state-of-the-art concepts and methods to tackle supply chain disruption risks and designing resilient supply chains in a simple, predictable format to make it easy to understand for students and professionals with both management and engineering background. In the technical section, the book constitutes structural dynamics control methods for supply chain management. Real-life problems are modelled and solved with the help of mathematical programming, discrete-event simulation, optimal control theory, and fuzzy logic. The book derives practical recommendations for management decision-making with disruption risk in the following areas: How to estimate the impact of possible disruptions on performance in the pro-active stage? How to generate efficient and effective stabilization and recovery policies? When does one failure trigger an adjacent set of failures? Which supply chain structures are particular sensitive to ripple effect? How to measure the disruption risks in the supply chain?

Supply Chain Simulation allows readers to practice modeling and simulating a multi-level supply chain. The chapters are a combination of the practical and the theoretical, covering: knowledge of simulation methods and techniques, the conceptual framework of a typical supply chain, the main concepts of system dynamics, and a set of practice problems with their corresponding solutions. The problem set includes illustrations and graphs relating to the simulation results of the Vensim® program, the main code of which is also provided. The examples used are a valuable simulation tool that can be modified and extended according to user requirements. The objective of Supply Chain Simulation is to meet the demands of supply chain simulation or similar courses taught at the postgraduate level. The “what if” analysis recreates different simulation scenarios to improve the decision-making process in terms of supply chain performance, making the book useful not only for postgraduate students, but also for industrial practitioners.

Infrastructures in Practice shows how infrastructures and daily life shape each other. Power grids, roads and broadband make modern lifestyles possible – at the same time, their design and day-to-day operation depends on what people do at home and at work. This volume investigates the entanglement of supply and demand. It explains how standards and 'normal' ways of living have changed over time and how infrastructures have changed with them. Studies of grid expansion and disruption, heating systems, the internet, urban planning and office standards, smart meters and demand management reveal this dynamic interdependence. This is the first book to examine the interdependence between infrastructures and the practices of daily life. It offers an analysis of how new technologies, lifestyles and standards become normalised and fall out of use. It brings together diverse disciplines – history, sociology, science studies – to develop social theories and accounts of how infrastructures and practices constitute each other at different scales and over time. It shows how networks and demands are steered and shaped, and how social and political visions are woven into infrastructures, past, present and future. Original, wide-ranging and theoretically informed, this book puts the many practices of daily life back into the study of infrastructures. The result is a fresh understanding of how resource-intensive forms of consumption and energy demand have come about and what is needed to move towards a more sustainable lower carbon future.

This book is the first to bring an economics perspective in a rigorous manner to complex decision-making in the management of supply chains. It provides the foundations for the modeling of the interrelationships among decision-makers in supply chains, ranging from manufacturers, distributors, and retailers, to the consumers, assuming individualized behavior. The models handle both competition and cooperation and provide the resulting product flows and prices in the chains. A unique network economics perspective is brought to the issue, setting the book apart from the numerous management and operations research volumes available. After an introduction of the theoretical foundations, the book then extends and applies the theory to energy supply chains in the form of electric power generation and distribution networks. The relationships between electric power supply chains and transportation networks are vividly captured through theoretical results and the solution of practical examples. The book then explores environmental supply chain and financial networks with intermediation, which are interpreted as supply chains and also solved as such. Throughout, the underlying theme is that of transportation networks and how the relationships between supply chain networks and the more established theory of transportation network equilibria can be applied and exploited for logistic-type applications. Economists and transportation researchers will find the book's theory and applications of great interest. Operations researchers and management scientists as well as practitioners in business logistics will be interested in the book's methodological and practical tools.