Perspectives on Various Issues of Interest

Zebra Love

Core Properties of Complex Adaptive Supply Network

A Complex Adaptive Supply Network (CASN) is a system of interconnected autonomous entities that make choices to survive and, as a collective, the system evolves and self-organizes over time.

 

CASN consists of four key elements: (i) organizational entities exhibiting adaptivity, (ii) a topology with interconnectivity between multiple supply chains, (iii) self-organizing and emergent system performance, and (iv) an external environment that coevolves with the system. Each of these fundamental elements within a CASN can maintain several properties, such as capacity and service level (entity); path length, redundancy, and clustering (topology); efficiency and flexibility (system); and demand, dynamism, and risk (environment). The properties of these elements can be used to describe the state of a CASN at a moment in time or over a finite span of time. It is the interactions across these entities over time and the evolution of their properties that need to be understood more fully for effective supply chain management.

 

Source: Pathak, S., Day, J. M., Nair, A., Sawaya, W., and Kristal, M. 2007. Complexity and Adaptivity in Supply Networks: Building Supply Network Theory Using a Complex Adaptive Systems Perspective. Decision Sciences Journal, Vol. 38, Iss. 4., 547-580.