Towards a use of network analysis: quantifying the complexity of supply chain networks.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the complexity and organization level of "Supply Chain Network" (SCN) and working toward a development of a "Supply Chain Network Analysis" (SCNA). The supply network of an important northern Italy industrial group is discussed showing a practical application of the procedure. By measuring flows of goods and interactions between different sectors of activity within the supply chain borders, a network of flows is built and successively investigated by network analysis, a tool widely applied in ecosystem ecology. By calculating the reciprocal dependence of compartments and the organization of flows, network analysis is a promising method for measuring how much the fluxes inside the supply chain are constrained, providing general criteria for improving organization and control system entropy. The result of this study supports the idea that the ecosystem approach can provide an interesting conceptual perspective in which supply network can be framed, and that network analysis is a promising tool to handle these issues in practice.