Decision Strategies Based on Meteorological Forecast Information in a Beer Distribution Game

Abstract

With the corporate environment nowadays being surrounded by plenty of information, the sharing of information among businesses through mutual cooperation tops the list of hot issues. Predictions of demands from the customer, business, or consumer by sharing information can affect the inventory and order production system. However, notwithstanding the importance of sharing information, empirical studies on quantitative use of information still remain insufficient in spite of many a discussion now being made on the sharing of information. This paper proposes to examine the ways meteorological information may affect the rises in the achievements of supply chains in distributive businesses, the kind of information that noticeably affects the consumer behavioral patterns in the distributive businesses but rarely perceived as a form of information shared by businesses. This study is based on a model in which meteorological information has been added as the one used to predict demands, after the beer distribution game has been modified to fit the current status, and simulations under an assumptive situation, where decisions are made on a daily basis, were conducted 50 times for a period of 1000 days for the generalization of the results, while at the same time a Duncan Test was conducted to determine the threshold to use the meteorological information that will be most profitable to the retailer, wholesaler, supplier and the supply chain as a whole. Our findings indicate that corporations have thresholds that vary from business to business depending upon the ratio of backlog costs to inventory costs. At the same time, our findings also show that there existed effective thresholds depending upon the ratio of backlog costs to inventory costs for the performance of the overall supply chain.

Keywords

• Meteorological Information;
• Information Sharing;
• Beer Distribution Game;
• Supply Chain Management