Deploying Big Data Enablers to Strengthen Supply Chain Agility to Mitigate Bullwhip Effect: An Empirical Study of China’s Electronic Manufacturers

Abstract

With the development of economic globalization, the uncertainty of supply chains is also increasing, and alleviating the bullwhip effect has become an important issue. From previous discussions on alleviating the bullwhip effect, there was no research on alleviating it by enhancing supply chain agility through improving big data. Moreover, it has not been found that quality function deployment is used to analyze the interdependence between big data and supply chain agility, as well as between supply chain agility and the bullwhip effect. In particular, the interaction of bullwhip effect factors are not considered. In this study, the multicriteria decision-making integrated framework is proposed and the largest relay manufacturer in China is taken to identify key big data enablers to enhance supply chain agility and mitigate the bullwhip effect, thus providing an effective method for electronic equipment manufacturing enterprises to develop a supply chain that can quickly respond to changes and uncertainties. These big data enablers can enhance supply chain agility and reduce the bullwhip effect. This framework provides an effective method for electronic manufacturers to formulate supply chain agility indicators and big data enablers to mitigate the bullwhip effect and also provides a reference for other manufacturing enterprises in supply chain management.

Keywords

• big data
• supply chain agility
• bullwhip effect
• quality function deployment
• multicriteria decision-making