A data structure for supply chain management systems

Purpose – Efficient operation of supply chain management (SCM) software is highly dependent on performance of its data structures that are used for data storage and retrieval. Each module in the software should use data structures that are appropriate for the types of operations performed in that module. The purpose of this paper is to develop and introduce an efficient data structure for storage and retrieval of data related to capacity of resources. Design/methodology/approach – A major aim of supply management systems is timely production and delivery of products. This paper reviews data structures and designs an efficient data structure for storage and retrieval of data that is used in the scheduling module of SCM software. Findings – This paper introduces a new data structure and search and update algorithms. This data structure can be used in SCM software to record the availability of non‐storable resources. Originality/value – This is the first paper that discusses the role of data structures in SCM software and develops a data structure that can be used in the scheduling routine of SCM systems. Scheduling is one of the complex modules of SCM software. Some of the special characteristics related to capacity of resources to develop a data structure that can be efficiently searched and updated as part of scheduling routines were used in the new data structure. This data structure is a modified version of threaded height‐balanced binary search tree. Each node in the proposed tree has one more key than a node in the ordinary threaded height‐balanced binary search tree. The available algorithms in the literature on search and update operations on height‐balanced binary search trees are modified to suit the proposed tree.