STUDY OF INFORMATION SHARING PLATFORM

IN ECO-SUPPLY CHAIN

Qinlan Tian and Xuedong Chen

School of Economics and Management, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, China

Keywords: Ecological supply chain, Information sharing, Information interaction, Information sharing platform,

Algorithm.

Abstract: Based on the importance of effective information sharing in ecological supply chain, we build a logical

model of information sharing platform in eco-supply chain. After that, we expound the information sharing

mechanism and the ecological supply chain information interaction of the platform. At the same time, in

order to realize the ecological effects in the ecological supply chain, we put forward the ecological detection

algorithms of information shared and the logistics optimization algorithms of vehicle route arrangement.

1 INTRODUCTION

It is easy to produce the “bullwhip effect" of demand

enlargement, because the enterprises are unable to

realize effective information sharing in the supply

chain. However, this increases the production,

supply, inventory management and marketing risk of

the upstream suppliers, and even causes the chaos of

production, supply and marketing in the ecological

supply chain.

In addition, the demand information's

enlargement makes the production of the products

on the entire supply chain be increased exponentially

from the ecological perspective. The production of

the mass products is necessarily to consume large

amounts of water, coal, electricity and raw materials,

etc

(Wensheng, 2010). As a result, a lot of gas

pollutants would be discharged to the environment.

The production process not only wastes resources

but also causes environment damage. But, the tenet

of ecological supply chain is to make the

consumption of resources and the negative effects of

the ecological environment to the minimum. Thus,

effective information sharing is very important in the

ecological supply, and so, it is necessary to research

the information sharing platform in ecological

supply chain from the perspective of information

process.

2 STUDY OF INFORMATION

SHARING PLATFORM IN ECO-

SUPPLY CHAIN

As is mentioned above, information sharing in

ecological supply chain has very important

significance. So it is necessary for us to study how to

realize information sharing in the ecological supply

chain. In our general view, there are two kinds of

information participants in ecological supply chain.

One is the information providers. The other is the

information demanders. The realization mechanism

of sharing information is as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Realization mechanism of information sharing in

ecological supply chain.

432

Tian Q. and Chen X..

STUDY OF INFORMATION SHARING PLATFORM IN ECO-SUPPLY CHAIN .

DOI: 10.5220/0003590704320437

In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (KMKSSC-2011), pages 432-437

ISBN: 978-989-8425-54-6

 2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

2.1 The Construction of Information

Sharing Platform in Ecological

Supply Chain

In fact, the information providers in the ecological

supply chain include supplier, producers, sellers,

logistics providers, government agencies.

Meanwhile, each provider is also a demander.

Therefore, for many participants, we should consider

to build an information sharing platform in

ecological supply chain to realize the above way of

information sharing.

Enterprises in supply chain set up information

platform to share information cooperate. The

construction of information sharing platform is

invested by each member enterprise in the supply

chain. At the same time, the government department

is responsible for coordination, supervision and

control. The information sharing platform in

ecological supply chain follows Figure 2.

Figure 2: Information sharing platform in ecological

supply chain.

2.2 The Illustration of Information

Sharing Platform in Ecological

Supply Chain

The participants of the platform are suppliers,

producers, sellers (retailers and distributors

collectively), logistics providers, and government

departments. With customer's products as the core,

they form a net chain structure, in which the

suppliers are mainly responsible for raw material

purchase, the producers are responsible for the

product production and manufacturing, sellers are

responsible for product sales, logistics providers are

in charge of the whole supply chain transportation.

They have formed upstream and downstream

relations which is shown in the below Figure 3. Each

participant is given certain privileges and provided

an interface to get into the platform. The platform is

made of four layers. They are customer layer,

control layer, application layer, and the database

service layer. The customer layer provides each

node enterprises an interface for registration. The

control layer comprises some modules including

logistics optimization and ecological detection

modules. The application layer manages the shared

information. While the database service layer

provides data support for the operation of whole

platform. The whole platform is based on the

Internet. So, the participants can obtain and send

relevant information after they login in the platform.

Each node enterprise should share information

which has been detected by ecological detection

module to this platform except the government

departments and logistics providers. The ecological

detection modules are used to detect whether the

information shared to the platform conforms to the

ecological requirements. Each ecological detection

module includes some different detection

algorithms. The enterprises in the same role

correspond to the same ecological detection module,

while enterprises in different roles correspond to

different ecological detection module, because the

information shared by them need to detect different

kinds of ecological indices. For example, the

detection control module of producers is more

concerned about the recycling and utilization rate of

waste, the utilization rate of raw materials and so on.

But the detection control module of suppliers is

more concerned about the recycling and utilization

rate of purchasing materials.

Figure 3: The upstream and downstream relations in the

supply chain.

2.3 Information Interaction in

Ecological Supply Chain

Information Sharing Platform

The information shared in ecological supply chain

not only includes the information of the traditional

supply chain, but also the ecological information of

each enterprise and the government's eco-policy

information. The convenient, timely, accurate

information interaction among enterprises in

ecological supply chain improves each other’s

operation efficiency. Information interaction among

enterprises in ecological supply chain is as follows.

STUDY OF INFORMATION SHARING PLATFORM IN ECO-SUPPLY CHAIN

433

2.3.1 The Information Interaction of

Government

The information shared among government

department and other node enterprises consists of

related environmental protection laws and

regulations, environmental protection policy and

environmental protection practice achievement of

the enterprises. The government will provide the

latest environment evaluation indices standard to the

platform at any time, such as energy utilization rate

index, equipment and material utilization rate index,

recycling index of waste, etc. Meanwhile, the

government departments share ecological

information of other enterprises from the platform,

such as the amount of waste recycling, the utilization

rate of energy, emissions intensity of waste gas, etc.

This behavior is necessary for the enterprise and

government to understand the present reverse

logistics in supply chain promptly. So, they can

identify problems timely and modulate the operation

procedure in ecological supply chain to promote

waste recycling utilization effectively.

2.3.2 The Information Interaction of

Suppliers

The information flow of suppliers mainly includes

information that suppliers share with other node

enterprises. The suppliers provide materials demand

and supply information for logistics providers. The

suppliers provide quality, order of producers, order

implementation, products and technology

improvement information for producers. The

suppliers provide various ecological indices

information for supply chain platform. Meanwhile,

suppliers obtain from the platform producers’

demand, inventory, production planning

information, etc. They also receive feedback

information of its ecological information. Then they

adjust their production ways of products to accord

with ecological requirements according to the

feedback information timely. So, they can control

ecological level of the whole supply chain from the

source.

2.3.3 The Information Interaction of

Producers

Producers have a direct link with suppliers, sellers,

logistics service providers from. Producers provide

the material information needed by the future

production cycle, real-time updating inventory

information and production planning information for

the suppliers. To ensure the enterprises of the supply

chain develop coordinately, producers are also

required to share the new product’s development

information with the suppliers, which includes new

craft, new technology and new material information.

The producers share sellers with the product ，order

and order executive information. They also share the

goods supply information with the logistics

providers. At last, they send out kinds of ecological

indices information to ecological supply chain

platform. Meanwhile, the producers can obtain

information shared form other node enterprises in

the platform. After receiving the feedback

information, the producers adjust their production

ways of products to conform to ecological

manufacturing, such as craft, design, packaging, etc.

2.3.4 The Information Interaction of Sellers

Aiming at reducing supply chain cost and preventing

upstream enterprise from overstocking products,

sellers should share theirs inventory information

with suppliers, so that the suppliers can organize

flexible production, especially when the uncertainty

brought by demand fluctuation and occasional

glitches in production and transportation is evitable ,

sharing the inventory information is particularly

important. At the same time, sellers would also share

logistics demand information. Just like other role of

member enterprises, the sellers also share kinds of

ecological indices information to ecological supply

chain platform and receive information from the

platform. Based on the feedback information from

the platform, the sellers try their best to achieve

ecological marketing standard.

2.3.5 The Information Interaction of

Logistics Providers

The information flow is composed by the

information the logistics providers send to the

platform and prepare to share with other members of

eco-supply chain, such as the optimal route schemes,

logistics route, vehicles information, etc. The

logistics providers are the important link in the

entire eco-supply chain, because the logistics

providers are responsible for the material, product

transportation and the feedback of order information

of the entire supply chain. If it is necessary, the

logistics providers will keep certain inventory for the

producers. At last, Logistics providers also share

kinds of ecological indices information to ecological

supply chain platform.

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3 THE ALGORITHM RESEARCH

OF INFORMATION SHARING

PLATFORM IN ECOLOGICAL

SUPPLY CHAIN

The ecological detection modules comprise some

different ecological detection algorithms and the

logistics optimization module consists of some route

optimization algorithms in the platform. The

platform can maintain its ecological characteristics

because of these modules that play a control

function. In the following, we choose two algorithms

of these modules to explain the control process.

3.1 Logistics Optimization Algorithm

of Vehicle Route Arrangement

Ecological supply chain means that we would take

advanced logistics technology to reduce

environment pollution and resources consumption

caused by logistics and that we should make the

processes of logistics activities and environmental

protection coordinate and unified in promoting the

development of economy, under the guidance of the

sustainable development concept (Hock, 1999).

After the ecological supply chain information

sharing platform is established, logistics providers

can make a comprehensive consideration of logistics

service request in the supply chain. Then, they could

find the optimal logistics arrangement strategy to

minimize the logistics cost and reduce the

environment damage caused by logistics process by

means of the logistics optimization module.

3.1.1 Algorithm Statement

The optimization problems of logistics distribution

vehicle route are called Vehicle Routing Problem,

which is called VPR for short abroad. The classical

Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) involves a set of

delivery customers to be serviced by a homogeneous

fleet of vehicles housed at a central depot. The

objective of the problem is to develop a set of

vehicle routes originating and terminating at the

depot such that all customers are serviced, the

demands of the customers assigned to each route do

not exceed the capacity of the vehicle that services

the route, and the total distance traveled by all

vehicles is minimized (Jun and Yaohuang, 2001). In

this paper we consider an easy optimization

algorithm with constraints of vehicle capacity, the

distance between each two demanders and the

demanders’ goods weight in the logistics

optimization module.

3.1.2 Description and Flow Charts of the

Algorithm

With the delivery of directly round trip used by all

demanders as the initial feasible arrangements, the

algorithm is designed to find the two demanders of

the largest savings:

① connecting the two demanders when their

total freight volumes are no more than the volumes

of the vehicle's load carrying ability; adding the

demander of the largest savings ,when connecting

with the former two demanders, to the line until the

total amounts of the freights in the line equal or

surpass the limit of the vehicle load, then adding the

final demander when the sum of its demand and the

previously total freight volumes surpasses the limit

of the vehicle. The line generated through the

method above ensures that the freight volumes

provided for the demanders just equal the vehicles'

full load.

② connecting the two demanders when their

total freight volumes is equal to the volumes of the

vehicle's load carrying ability;

③ connecting the two demanders when their

total freight volumes surpass the volumes of the

vehicle's load carrying ability, which ensures the

vehicle fully loaded. Then the remaining demanders

and the distributing vectors are organized into a new

distribution route planning; the results of the

solution by adopting the above method repeatedly

until all the possible demanders are connected

completely will be the optimal solution.

The flowchart of optimization algorithm in

vehicle routing is as shown in the following Figure

3.1.3 Algorithm Examples

As the following, the table 1 gives the shipments of

each logistics demander and the table 2 gives the

distance between logistics provider and demanders.

Here, we assume the capacity of the vehicles is 1.

LP-- logistics provider, D — demanders.

Table 1: Shipments of each logistics demander.

LP 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

freight 0.3 0.35 0.3 0.2 0.6 0.3 0.5 0.4

STUDY OF INFORMATION SHARING PLATFORM IN ECO-SUPPLY CHAIN

435



Figure 4: The flowchart of optimization algorithm (Xuezhi

and Gongyu, 2008).

Table 2: Distance between logistics provider and

demanders.

D1 9 D1

D2 14 5 D2

D3 21 12 7 D3

D4 23 22 17 10 D4

D5 32 31 26 27 25 D5

D6 40 41 36 31 29 10 D6

D7 50 49 44 37 31 18 8 D7

D8 52 51 46 39 29 20 10 10 D8

We take the delivery of directly round trip used

by all demanders as the initial feasible arrangement.

As a result, we need eight vehicles and the total

transportation distance is 486. If the logistics

optimization algorithm is used to optimize the

transportation, the final route arrangement is like

this: R1=(0 1 2 3 0); R2= (0 4 5 6 0); R3=(0 6 7 8 0).

Taking logistics optimization algorithm, we only

need 3 vehicles for the distribution and the total

transportation distance is 257.

3.2 Ecological Detection Algorithm of

Sharing Information

As is mentioned above, the information shared to the

platform from the enterprises in different roles

should be detected by ecological detection module.

In the following, we take a simple specific example

to illustrate the ecological detection process.

3.2.1 Algorithm Statement

The ecological detection algorithms are designed to

keep the platform ecological. And different kinds of

information from different roles of the platform

correspond to different ecological detection

algorithms. Although the ecological detection

algorithms are different, the design ideas of them are

the same. The following algorithm is based on the

customer order information shared by the sellers of

the auto industry.

3.2.2 Description and Flow Charts of the

Algorithm

The sellers register the platform through the

platform’s interface. After that they send out the

information they want to share with other

enterprises. Before the information goes into the

platform, it must to be tested by the ecological

detection module. The ecological detection module

detects whether the customer order information

shared complies with the ecological standard,

referring to the latest policies issued by government.

If it complies with the ecological indices it will go

into the information sharing region of platform

directly. If it does not conform to ecological indices,

first, the ecological detection module will send the

detection result to sellers and ask them to take some

improvement measures; second, the module send the

information to the information sharing region.

The flowchart of ecological detection algorithms

about customer order information shared is as shown

in the following Figure 5..

4 CONCLUSIONS

The information shared in the ecological supply

chain not only involves the information shared in the

traditional supply chain, but also ecological

information. In order to realize the effective

information transfer and sharing, we consider

building ecological supply chain information sharing

platform. Compared with the traditional supply

chain information sharing platform, we add some

control modules that contain some different

algorithms, in order to guarantee the information

shared ecological. Different roles in the platform

send different kinds of information to the platform,

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436



Figure 5: flowchart of ecological detection algorithms

all of which need to be detected. So, there should be

a lot of algorithms. This needs our further study.

REFERENCES

Hou Wensheng. The Research of Information Sharing

Degree in the Regional Ecological Supply Chain [J].

Beijing Jiaotong University. 2010.

Hock. From reversed Logistics to Green Supply Chain [J].

Supply Chain Management, 1999, 4(3):129-134.

Li Jun, Guo Yaohuang. Logistics distribution vehicles

optimized scheduling theory and method [M]. Beijing:

China materials press, 2001.

Zhang Xuezhi, Chen Gongyu. An Improved Saving

Method of the Vehicle Routing Problem [J]. Systems

Engineering, 2008 (11):68-70.

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