Supply chain management analysis: A simulation approach of the value chain operations reference model (VCOR)

The impact of globalization and worldwide competition has forced firms to modify their strategies toward a real time operation with respect to customer's requirements. This behavior, together with the possibilities of communication offered by the up to date Information and Communication Technologies, moves the top management toward the concept of extended enterprise in wich a collaborative link is established among supplier, commercial partners and customers. When the information flows involves each agent of the chain, from suppliers to the final distribution centres, the extended enterprise becomes a virtual firm, which can be defined as a set of stand-alone operational units that acts to reconfigure itself as a value chain in order to adapt to the business opportunities given by Market. The present work is intended to verify the effective quantitative advantages given by the introduction of the Value Chain concept into the supply chain management through a simulation approach. The paper, after a description of SCOR and VCOR methods, makes a comparison between the two methods by the implementation of a simulation approach which point out the main additional requirements that are added to the VCOR model for its implementation.