Empirical topological investigation of practical supply chains based on complex networks

The industrial supply chain networks basically capture the circulation of social resource, dominating the stability and efficiency of the industrial system. In this paper, we provide an empirical study of the topology of smartphone supply chain network. The supply chain network is constructed using open online data. Our experimental results show that the smartphone supply chain network has small-world feature with scale-free degree distribution, in which a few high degree nodes play a key role in the function and can effectively reduce the communication cost. We also detect the community structure to find the basic functional unit. It shows that information communication between nodes is crucial to improve the resource utilization. We should pay attention to the global resource configuration for such electronic production management.