The impact of forecast errors on early order commitment in a supply chain

Supply chain partnership involves mutual commitments among participating firms. One example is early order commitment, wherein a retailer commits to purchase a fixed-order quantity and delivery time from a supplier before the real need takes place. This paper explores the value of practising early order commitment in the supply chain. We investigate the complex interactions between early order commitment and forecast errors by simulating a supply chain with one capacitated supplier and multiple retailers under demand uncertainty. We found that practising early order commitment can generate significant savings in the supply chain, but the benefits are only valid within a range of order commitment periods. Different components of forecast errors have different cost implications to the supplier and the retailers. The presence of trend in the demand increases the total supply chain cost, but makes early order commitment more appealing. The more retailers sharing the same supplier, the more valuable for the supply chain to practise early order commitment. Except in cases where little capacity cushion is available, our findings are relatively consistent in the environments where cost structure, number of retailers, capacity utilization, and capacity policy are varied.