Supply networks need to exhibit stability in order to remain functional. Here, we apply a generalized modeling (GM) approach, which has a strong pedigree in the analysis of dynamical systems, to study the stability of real‐world supply networks. It goes beyond purely structural network analysis approaches by incorporating material flows, which are defining characteristics of supply networks. The analysis focuses on the network of interactions between material flows, providing new conceptualizations to capture key aspects of production and inventory policies. We provide stability analyses of two contrasting real‐world networks—that of an industrial engine manufacturer and an industry‐level network in the luxury goods sector. We highlight the criticality of links with suppliers that involve the dispatch, processing, and return of parts or sub‐assemblies, cyclic motifs that involve separate paths from a common supplier to a common firm downstream, and competing demands of different end products at specific nodes. Based on a critical discussion of our findings in the context of the supply chain management literature, we generate five propositions to advance knowledge and understanding of supply network stability. We discuss the implications of the propositions for the effective management, control, and development of supply networks. The GM approach enables fast screening to identify hidden vulnerabilities in extensive supply networks.

 

Identifying dynamical instabilities in supply networks using generalized modeling

Güven Demirel Bart L. MacCarthy Daniel Ritterskamp Alan R. Champneys Thilo Gross

Journal of Operations Management

Volume 65, Issue 2 
Special Issue: A Complex Adaptive Systems Paradigm for Operations & Supply Chain Issues
March 2019
Pages 136-159

Source: onlinelibrary.wiley.com

The US government’s cocaine interdiction mission in the transit zone of Central America is now in its fifth decade despite its long-demonstrated ineffectiveness, both in cost and results. We developed a model that builds an interdisciplinary understanding of the structure and function of narco-trafficking networks and their coevolution with interdiction efforts as a complex adaptive system. The model produced realistic predictions of where and when narco-traffickers move in and around Central America in response to interdiction. The model demonstrated that narco-trafficking is as widespread and difficult to eradicate as it is because of interdiction, and increased interdiction will continue to spread traffickers into new areas, allowing them to continue to move drugs north.

 

Modeling cocaine traffickers and counterdrug interdiction forces as a complex adaptive system

Nicholas R. Magliocca, Kendra McSweeney, Steven E. Sesnie, Elizabeth Tellman, Jennifer A. Devine, Erik A. Nielsen, Zoe Pearson, and David J. Wrathall
PNAS published ahead of print April 1, 2019 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1812459116 

Source: www.pnas.org

Rich data are revealing that complex dependencies between the nodes of a network may not be captured by models based on pairwise interactions. Higher-order network models go beyond these limitations, offering new perspectives for understanding complex systems.

 

From networks to optimal higher-order models of complex systems
Renaud Lambiotte, Martin Rosvall & Ingo Scholtes
Nature Physics volume 15, pages 313–320 (2019)

Source: www.nature.com

aka hypergraphs

For more than 150 years, the structure of the periodic system of the chemical elements has intensively motivated research in different areas of chemistry and physics. However, there is still no unified picture of what a periodic system is. Herein, based on the relations of order and similarity, we report a formal mathematical structure for the periodic system, which corresponds to an ordered hypergraph. It is shown that the current periodic system of chemical elements is an instance of the general structure. The definition is used to devise a tailored periodic system of polarizability of single covalent bonds, where order relationships are quantified within subsets of similar bonds and among these classes. The generalized periodic system allows envisioning periodic systems in other disciplines of science and humanities.

 

Formal structure of periodic system of elements
Wilmer Leal and Guillermo Restrepo

Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences
Published:03 April 2019 https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.2018.0581

Source: royalsocietypublishing.org

The research space in complex social networks grows every year as they are systems with many levels of complexity and there is a constant need to challenge our current understanding in the field. The results of the community research efforts enable the understanding of different social phenomena including social structures evolution, communities, spread over networks, and control in and of complex networks. This huge interest in the analysis of large-scale social networks resulted in a lot of new approaches, methods, and techniques but with every advancement in this area, we uncover new challenges and new levels of complexity in the network universe that are far from being explored and addressed. The increasing complexity of the tasks to be performed in terms of network analysis together with the volume, variety of social data about people and their interactions, and velocity with which this data is generated in the online world poses new requirements and challenges on researchers. One of them is how to build accurate methods that would be able to cope with these vast amounts of data. This issue is a result of an attempt to address these emerging challenges with a big emphasis on the applicability of the developed approaches.

 

Editorial
Analysis and Applications of Complex Social Networks 2018
Katarzyna Musial, Piotr Bródka, and Pasquale De Meo

Complexity
Volume 2019, Article ID 9082573, 2 pages
https://doi.org/10.1155/2019/9082573

Source: www.hindawi.com