Review and critique of supplier selection process and practices

With increasingly competitive global world markets, companies are under intense pressure to find ways to cut production and material costs to survive and sustain their competitive position in their respective markets. Since a qualified supplier is a key element and a good resource for a buyer in reducing such costs, evaluation and selection of the potential suppliers has become an important component of supply chain management. Hence, development of an effective and rational supplier selection model is naturally desirable. Several evaluation and selection models for supplier selection have been proposed and reported in the supply chain literature. This paper reveals the findings of a wide ranging literature review of supplier selection practices and models. Altogether 147 refereed academic journal articles are reviewed and classified into five categories. A list and summary of the papers falling into each category with brief annotations is provided. The areas that have received little attention or lack of research interest are discussed and some new research settings are also suggested

Supplier selection problem: A state-of-the-art review

In the global competitiveness and growing market environment, “Actual competition is not between firms against firm, than supplier against supplier”. Globally in the fastest market development world gets closer and closer. Consumers prefer fast delivery, economical product, excellent service and high quality product with desired service level. For successful management of this supply chain, supplier considered as the base source for all processes. Therefore, an efficient supplier selection and evaluation process needs to be incorporate. The main purpose of this paper is to provide an extensive state-of-the-art literature review and critique of the studies related to various aspects of supplier selection problem over the past two decades. Research papers appearing in the reputed and leading international journals from 1991 to 2011 are gathered and analyzed. Primary focus is given on more than 200 published and unpublished works. It has been referred extensively to carry out state-of-the-art review for supplier selection problem. Finally, paper provides future perspective based on current research trends available in the published literature

Analyzing supplier selection criteria with lean philosophy adoption: study in the Turkish automotive industry

With the increase in competition between companies in the global markets, companies try to find new ways to improve themselves and offer better value to their customers. One of the most important activities that are continuously developing in markets is supplying. Global companies look for better suppliers in order for efficient and qualified production. Therefore, they have various standards for selection of suppliers and these standards are evolving with new improvements. Lean manufacturing originates from automotive production in order to increase the efficiency of production. Overtime it has evolved to a business philosophy and today it can be seen in many other areas beside production. One of the areas that lean is frequently seen is supply chain management. Many experts claim that in order to be lean all the activities inside a supply chain must be lean. Namely, lean companies must adopt lean supply techniques and choose their suppliers with considering lean principles. The objective of this work is to understand the change in the requirements of customers in B2B markets with the adoption of lean philosophy. Lean mainly improves relationships, logistics and production areas; and provides efficiency in the long term with suppliers. While this study analyzes criteria change for supplier selection over years, it also shows the effect of lean diffusion on criteria selection. Turkish automotive industry is selected in order to study criteria for supplier selection and evaluation. Thus, interviews were arranged with the managers of procurement teams in various automotive companies in Turkey. The results show that quality, delivery and relationship performance are the most important criteria for automotive manufacturers. Moreover, they require the basics of lean principles from their suppliers; even though the suppliers in the market are not considered as completely lean

Artificial intelligence and multiple criteria decision making approach for a cost-effective RFID-enabled tracking management system

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonThe implementation of RFID technology has been subject to ever-increasing popularity in relation to the traceability of items as one of the most advance technologies. Implementing such a technology leads to an increase in the visibility management of products. Notwithstanding this, RFID communication performance is potentially greatly affected by interference between the RFID devices. It is also subject to auxiliary costs in investment that should be considered. Hence, seeking a cost-effective design with a desired communication performance for RFID-enabled systems has become a key factor in order to be competitive in today‟s markets. This study introduce a cost and performance-effective design for a proposed RFID-enabled passport tracking system through the development of a multi-objective model that takes in account economic, operation and social criteria. The developed model is aimed at solving the design problem by (i) allocating the optimal numbers of related facilities that should be established and (ii) obtaining trade-offs among three objectives: minimising implementation and operational costs; minimising RFID reader interference; and maximising the social impact measured in the number of created jobs. To come closer to the actual design in terms of considering the uncertain parameters, a fuzzy multi-objective model was developed. To solve the multi-objective optimization problem model, two solution methods were used respectively (epsilon constrain and linear programming) to select the best Pareto solution and a decision-making method was developed to select the final trade-off solution. Moreover, this research aims to provide a user-friendly decision making tool for selecting the best vendor from a group which submitted their tenders for implementing a proposed RFID- based passport tracking system. In addition to that a real case study was applied to examine the applicability of the developed model and the proposed solution methods. The research findings indicate that the developed model is capable of presenting a design for an RFID- enabled passport tracking system. Also, the developed decision-making tool can easily be used to solve similar vendor selection problem. Research findings demonstrate that the proposed RFID-enabled monitoring system for the passport tracking system is economically feasible. The study concludes that the developed mathematical models and optimization approaches can be a useful decision-maker for tackling a number of design and optimization problems for RFID system using artificial intelligence mathematical algorithm based techniques

Supply chain operation strategies and risk management with working capital consideration: a case study of the supply chain of lightning protection products in China

JEL: G32; D21With the advent of economic globalization, competition is increasingly hinged on supply chain. Meanwhile, working capital becomes a key element of a successful supply chain. This thesis researches the supply chain of a typical lightning protection products manufacturer in China, i.e. Company Z. The thesis starts with the working capital issues in the supply chain of Company Z; then, with the help of questionnaires and a sensible indicator system and weight assignments; analyzes and summarizes the status quo of the working capital and related key issues in the supply chain consisting of Company Z and its suppliers and customers. Building on such analysis, a two-dimensional classification matrix is created to divide suppliers and customers into four groups (namely, strategic-type, partner-type, general-type, and bottleneck-type) and supply chain operation strategies are devised for each group. Furthermore, based on such supply chain operations strategies of Company Z, a working capital risk management mechanism with an early warning system is developed, and a supply chain-based financing platform is designed to help the supply chain participants seek financing and share the risks with working capital.Com o advento da era da globalização económica, a cadeia de suprimentos tornou-se cada vez mais importante para a concorrência empresarial, e ao mesmo tempo, o fundo de maneio tornou-se num elemento chave para o sucesso da gestão da cadeia de suprimentos. Neste trabalho, a cadeia de suprimentos de uma empresa chinesa de fabricação de produtos típicos de proteção contra relâmpagos, a empresa Z, é o objeto de estudo. Tomando como ponto de partida os problemas de fundo de maneio existentes na cadeia de suprimentos da empresa Z, por meio de questionários combinados com o estabelecimento de um sistema de indexação e de ponderação, foram realizadas análises precisas sobre problemas-chaves existentes e da situação atual da gestão do fundo de maneio da cadeia de suprimentos a montante e a jusante da empresa Z. Estabeleceram-se matrizes bidimensionais de classificação para respectivamente subdividir os fornecedores e clientes em quatro categorias, a saber, categoria de fornecedores/clientes estratégicos, categoria de fornecedores/clientes parceiros, categoria de fornecedores/clientes comuns e categoria de fornecedores/clientes críticos (“engarrafamentos”) e propor estratégias diferentes na cadeia de suprimentos para diferentes categorias. Por fim, o nosso estudo indica que segundo a estratégia de operação da cadeia de suprimentos da empresa Z, deve ser estabelecido um mecanismo de controle e gestão de risco de fundo de maneio, um sistema de alerta de risco e, ainda, projetar uma plataforma de financiamento a fim de prover o financiamento emergente da cadeia de suprimentos da empresa Z e a partilha dos riscos de gestão do fundo de maneio

Developing the Utilization of Contract Manufacturing

Hankintatoimen merkityksen huomioiminen on lisääntynyt suuresti niin tieteellisissä tutkimuksissa kuin yrityksissä. Tässä tutkimuksessa pyrittiin selvittämään, miten sopimusvalmistusta ostava eli käyttävä yritys voi kehittää toimintaansa. Asiaa tarkasteltiin yhden kohdeyrityksen näkökulmasta. Näin tutkimuskysymykseksi rajautuikin: Miten sopimusvalmistuksen käyttöä voidaan kehittää keskikokoisen yrityksen korkean teknologian projektiluontoisissa asiakastuotteissa? Tutkimuksen pohjaksi suoritettiin laaja kirjallisuustutkimus, joka lähti liikkeelle tutkimuksen termien määrittelystä. Teoriasta saatiin rakennettua malli sopimusvalmistuksen käytön kehittämiseen. Mallissa yhdistettiin niin uusien sopimusvalmistajien etsintä ja arviointi kuin sopimusvalmistajien jatkuva kehittäminen. Mallia kehiteltiin edelleen puolistrukturoiduissa haastatteluissa. Haastattelujen avulla mallia saatiin tarkannettua muun muassa sisällyttämällä siihen mahdollisesti sopivia työkaluja. Lopuksi mallia sovellettiin vielä kohdeyritykseen käytännössä. Näin saatiin kehitettyä kohdeyrityksen toimintaa ja toisaalta pystyttiin kehittämään edelleen myös luotua mallia. Tässä tutkimuksessa hyödynnettiinkin integroivaa tutkimusta, jossa reaalimaailman kohdetta hyödynnetään sekä teorian luomisessa että teorian soveltamiskohteena. Tutkimuksen tuloksena saatiin luotua viitekehys sopimusvalmistuksen käytön kehittämiselle, joka nimettiin tutkimuksessa ASET-malliksi päävaiheidensa mukaan: arviointi, suunnittelu, etsintä ja toteutus. Kyseisen syklisen mallin avulla pystyttiin kehittämään kohdeyrityksen toimintaa, ja näin ollen mallin hyödyllisyys myös käytännössä varmistettiin. Viitekehykseen sisältyvien työkalujen osalta tosin havaittiin, että niihin liittyen jatkotutkimus olisi suositeltavaa. /Kir11The importance of procurement is being recognized more and more in scientific papers and also in the companies. The objective in this research was to find out, how a com-pany that buys, and so uses, contract manufacturing can improve this utilization. This topic was approached via one target company. Because of this, the research question became to be: How utilization of contract manufacturing can be improved in a medium-sized company´s high technology customer projects? This research was based on a comprehensive literature study, starting from the defini-tions of terms used in this research. Based on this study a model for developing the utilization of contract manufacturing was build. The model united searching and evalu-ating new contract manufactures with continuous improvement of them. This model was further developed in semi-structured interviews that were conducted. Through these in-terviews the model became more accurate. For instance tools were attached to it. In the end this model was applied to practice in the target company. This helped the target company to develop it´s utilization of contract manufacturing and this also helped to improve the model even further. This research exploited integrative research in which the same real-world target is used in developing theories and also in applying them. As a result a context for developing the utilization of contact manufacturing was formed. This context was named ASET-model because of the main phases in the model: Evaluating (arviointi), Planning (suunnittelu), Searching (etsintä) and Implementation (toteutus). With this cyclical model the target company´s utilization of contract manu-facturing was developed and so the benefits of this model were verified also in the real-life. However a need for further research concerning the tools attached to the context was recognized