An exploratory study on the implementation of information sharing among heterogeneous retailers

Information sharing among supply chain partners is known to have a positive effect on supply chain performance, reducing supply chain inefficiencies and the bullwhip effect. However, modern decentralized supply chains present numerous barriers and difficulties to successfully implement such coordination practice in the entire supply chain, often achieving an intermediate state or partial information sharing. In this scenario, the presence of companies which are operationally heterogeneous may increase these difficulties, since it is not clear in the research literature how to proceed in order to select the best partners to share information with. In this paper we analyse the implementation of partial information sharing on a multi-echelon supply chain with heterogeneous retailers. We show how the selection of retailers for partial information sharing has a relevant impact on reducing the bullwhip effect, in particular for high level of retailers' heterogeneity.