Supply Chain Consistent Threshold Accessibilty Measures for Mega-Region Economic Development

摘要

Supply chain networks (comprised of buyer-supplier connections) are integral to specializedmanufacturing industries and vital to mega regions growth and development. Transportationplanning in these regions requires an understanding of specialized industry sectors andenhancement of business network effects which are important for the augmentation of positiveexternalities and competitive advantage through transportation interventions. The directness oflinkages or enhanced access between buyers and suppliers in any production network is moreimportant now than ever before for enabling agglomeration economies, maximizing returns frominvestments and in some cases, industry competitiveness. Physical transport networks play a vitalrole in ensuring that directness in many manufacturing sectors where value chain segments areseparated physically. In this paper, the contribution of transportation infrastructure in megaregionscharacterized by such supply chains to enhance business networks is approached bypresenting a framework for a behaviorally-consistent directness measure explicitly linked totransport infrastructure. Enhanced accessibility provided by transportation, can be measured bythis index by allowing a systematic identification of links from the standpoint of thebuyer/supplier. Such a directness measure has been broached in the literature but this is, to ourknowledge, the first attempt at developing a measure like this. Next, we illustrate how themeasure may be analyzed using the context of the automobile manufacturing chain that is part ofthe Southeast Piedmont Atlantic Megaregion.