Abstract

A network analysis of spot-market broker operations in supply chain management is presented with a case study of a brokerage firm. By modeling the connections between brokers and vendors, users can define metrics that correlate the strategies to select the vendors with profitability, which identifies new operating policies. Profitability is affected not only by the number of interactions between brokers and vendors but also by the quality of those interactions. The quality of interactions is quantified. The extent to which this approach can yield operating policy guidelines and serve as a tool to evaluate broker performance is demonstrated.