UC Riverside

This study models the supply chain related financial performance of a manufacturer evaluated by the accumulated cash at the end of a one-year period. The aim of this study is to provide a comprehensive approach for modeling of financial supply chains and to show how some of the project scheduling techniques aiming to improve the Cash Conversion Cycle (CCC), e.g., Lead Time crashing or delaying the payments to the upstream supply chain partners, may effect the financial performance. We simulated a manufacturer adopting "make to stock" policy over a one-year period using Monte Carlo Simulation. While traditional approach promotes shorter CCC, our simulation results show that there is an optimal Cash Conversion Cycle below which harms the company profitability. So, by analyzing the results our study finds the optimal financial and operational policies for the company corresponding to the optimal CCC level.