Supply Chain Analysis via the Queuing Theory Approach

An important issue in the supply chain concerns minimizing response time for the delivery of goods to the final destination, which can be achieved through selecting the correct route.  The optimal path connecting the origin and destination nodes through the least intermediate nodes is called the shortest path. The shortest path in supply chain networks considered in this paper concerns the problem of sending an order from an original node to a destination node on a network which lacks a perfect and permanent fixed structure. The queuing theory measures were employed in the present enquiry to find out the shortest path. Initially, the supply chain and queuing network were concisely introduced and then, the two-input and three-stage supply chain of Balan Sanaat Company was displayed. Each input order to the supply chain is represented by two stochastic variables including the occurrence time and the number of commodities to be delivered. Further, the measures of the performance and productivity measures were extracted via the queuing network approach to serve the purpose of the study which was to compute the minimum response time for the delivery of items to the final destination along the three-stage network. The average number of items that can be delivered during this minimum response time constitutes the optimum capacity of the queuing network. At each stage of the queuing network, decisions regarding the most appropriate delivery route to the next node in the shortest possible time is made right at the preceding delivery node.