Flexibility or adaptability? Which one is more suitable for distributed supply chain?

Supply chains need to be flexible and adaptive because their operations are always subject to a variety of uncertainties. The main objective of this paper is to study how flexibility and adaptability in delivery quantity and due date can improve the performance in a network of two-level multi-product supply chains. Effect of uncertain customer demand and also supplier capacity, and supplier´s capacity utilization are studied. Flexibility and adaptability are realized based on two coordination mechanisms. Agent-based simulation is employed in this study to model the operations of supply chains. Simulation results indicate that introduction of such flexibility and adaptability can improve the cost and the fill rate of the system. However, there is a trade-off in selecting the coordination mechanism between adaptability and flexibility subject to capacity utilization.