Post-seismic supply chain risk management: A system dynamics disruption analysis approach for inventory and logistics planning

Post‐seismic inventory and logistics planning under incomplete and fuzzy information is an important yet understudied area in supply chain risk management. The goal of this paper is to propose a system dynamics model to analyze the behaviors of disrupted disaster relief supply chain by simulating the uncertainties associated with predicting post‐seismic road network and delayed information. The simulation results indicate: (1) information delay has different influences over the relief head‐quarter (the upstream) and the disaster‐affected areas (the downstream); and (2) the change of road conditions and shipment schedules have impact on the on‐time transportation rate in supply chain management. Furthermore, this paper defined and tested supplies' replenishment solutions combined with three inventory planning strategies and four forecasting methods under different lead time uncertainties. The results show that: (1) a strategy that considers information from both the post‐seismic management center and the affected areas can provide a better logistic plan than an one takes information from one side; (2) the smooth‐the‐trend forecasting method is suitable for inventory and logistic planning when the post‐seismic situations are volatile, while the quick‐response forecasting method has good performance in stable environments. In addition, this paper proposes decision tree to help decision makers choose the appropriate stocking strategies.