Supply Chain Risk Management: An Agent-Based Simulation to Study the Impact of Retail Stockouts

In today´s highly dynamic and competitive environment, companies are under the pressure to improve their supply chain strategy in order to be more responsive to customer demand. However, supply chains are susceptible to unanticipated events that make responsive supply chain management a challenging task. One such disruption event is a product stockout at the retailer. In this paper, we investigate retail stockouts through the development of an agent-based simulation model in order to develop a better understanding of the effect of different stockout lengths for different products (with different consumer response profiles to stockouts) on both the retailer and the manufacturer of the product. We consider the change of market share as a measure of resilience for both the manufacturer and the retailer to examine the impact of the stockout. Insights are developed for manufacturers and retailers in responding to the stockout disruption.