Supply chain structure from supplier to customer, the bullwhip effect and its four root causes, supplier selection with a weighted-scoring model, and supply chain risk and resilience.
This module traces a supply chain's material, information, and financial flows from raw-material suppliers through manufacturing and distribution to the end customer, then turns to the bullwhip effect — the tendency for order variability to amplify at each successive tier moving upstream even when true end-customer demand barely moves — and its four documented root causes: demand signal processing, order batching, price fluctuations and forward buying, and shortage-gaming. Module 7's EOQ and safety-stock logic reappears here, replayed simultaneously across linked tiers, which is exactly what turns individually rational local decisions into chain-wide volatility.
The module closes with a worked weighted-scoring supplier selection example and the resilience trade-offs — dual-sourcing, buffer inventory, deep-tier visibility — that protect a chain against the single-sourcing and geographic concentration risks a purely cost-optimized supply chain tends to accumulate invisibly.