Chaos – Limitation or even end of supply chain management

Proven in the early 1960s, weather forecast is not possible for an arbitrarily long period of time for principle reasons. (No supercomputer will ever be able to calculate whether it will rain in exactly 30 days or not) Supply chain management has lots of similarities to weather forecast. This paper clearly shows that supply chain management has its limitations. Starting from a certain point it is impossible to make any predictions even with the best underlying model, the biggest computer and the best software. At this point any attempts to optimize are a waste of resources. Therefore it is indispensable for every major company to check its supply chain for chaos as the phenomenon is called. This paper clearly states how such a check should be performed. In a simple example of warehouse optimization the onset of chaos is calculated mathematically.