The impact of downstream information sharing on upstream supply chain with fuzzy demand

Information sharing issue is addressed in a three level supply chain with fuzzy demand. The chain consists of an upstream supplier, a manufacturer and a retailer, all of who adopt the order-up-to policy with a periodic review procedure to replenish their stock. The external demand is a fuzzy auto-correlated AR (1) process. The impact of downstream information sharing is investigated quantitatively on the supplier, and the results demonstrate that the supplier's forecast and performance, such as inventory level and average cost, have been improved through the downstream information sharing. Finally, numerical examples are provided to validate the value of information sharing and identify the sensitivity of supplier's performance to demand characteristics and replenishment lead times.