Complexity analysis of supply chains

The analyses of complexity problem in supply chains by both quantitative and qualitative methods are discussed in this paper. Based on a state-of-the-art survey of the literature of studying supply chain from the viewpoint of complexity theory, a detailed qualitative analysis of supply chain complexity is given. The current methods of measuring system complexity and their applications in supply chains are briefly introduced. An improved information-entropy based method for measuring and analyzing the supply chain complexity is presented, and for examining how this method works, step by step, an application on inventory complexity is discussed. Some further analyses of the method are also carried out.