Ecological Supply Chains Performance Evaluation and Disruption Risk Management Strategies.

This article presents the ecological supply chain (ESC) model and demonstrates its benefits. The causes that make an ESC vulnerable to disruption risks are analyzed; the objective is to balance the cost and the disruption risk. Also, it provides supply management strategies, demand management strategies, product management strategies, and information management strategies. Practice in China is reviewed. Based on exergoeconomics theory, the ESC is regarded as a huge energy system providing new perspective. The sustainability of the ESC system is discussed under the circumstances of exergoeconomics. The metric of “system negative environment effect” is introduced to measure ESC system performance. Finally, a real case example is used to illustrate the models and get some conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]