Multilevel decision making for supply chain management

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.Multilevel decision-making techniques aim to handle decentralized decision problems that feature multiple decision entities distributed throughout a hierarchical organization. Decision entities at the upper level and the lower level are respectively termed the leader and the follower. Three challenges have appeared in the current developments in multilevel decision-making: (1) large-scale - multilevel decision problems become large-scale owing to high-dimensional decision variables; (2) uncertainty - uncertain information makes related decision parameters and conditions imprecisely or ambiguously known to decision entities; (3) diversification – multiple decision entities that have a variety of relationships with one another may exist at each decision level. However, existing decision models or solution approaches cannot completely and effectively handle these large-scale, uncertain and diversified multilevel decision problems. To overcome these three challenges, this thesis addresses theoretical techniques for handling three categories of unsolved multilevel decision problems and applies the proposed techniques to deal with real-world problems in supply chain management (SCM). First, the thesis presents a heuristics-based particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm for solving large-scale nonlinear bi-level decision problems and then extends the bi-level PSO algorithm to solve tri-level decision problems. Second, based on a commonly used fuzzy number ranking method, the thesis develops a compromise-based PSO algorithm for solving fuzzy nonlinear bi-level decision problems. Third, to handle tri-level decision problems with multiple followers at the middle and bottom levels, the thesis provides different tri-level multi-follower (TLMF) decision models to describe various relationships between multiple followers and develops a TLMF Kth-Best algorithm; moreover, an evaluation method based on fuzzy programming is proposed to assess the satisfaction of decision entities towards the obtained solution. Lastly, these proposed multilevel decision-making techniques are applied to handle decentralized production and inventory operational problems in SCM

Interaction of optimization models and information sharing in a two echelon supply chain

Uncertainty in the manufacturing industry has been a research interest for many years. Deterministic and stochastic optimization methods have been proposed in the past. The objective of this thesis is to study the interaction of these models in a supply chain with a varying error in demand forecast. All the possible combinations of the optimization strategies in a two-echelon supply chain have been considered. Results indicate that the performance of the supply chain is driven by the choice of strategy of the supplier. Stochastic optimization is very efficient in lowering the operational costs and bull-whip effect in most cases. However, in cases where the trend in demand variation is smooth, use of deterministic strategy by both stakeholders is beneficial and it helps in lowering operational cost. Information sharing results in cost saving in most of the cases. It increases with increase in root mean squared error in demand forecast when the supplier uses deterministic strategy

Supply Chain

Traditionally supply chain management has meant factories, assembly lines, warehouses, transportation vehicles, and time sheets. Modern supply chain management is a highly complex, multidimensional problem set with virtually endless number of variables for optimization. An Internet enabled supply chain may have just-in-time delivery, precise inventory visibility, and up-to-the-minute distribution-tracking capabilities. Technology advances have enabled supply chains to become strategic weapons that can help avoid disasters, lower costs, and make money. From internal enterprise processes to external business transactions with suppliers, transporters, channels and end-users marks the wide range of challenges researchers have to handle. The aim of this book is at revealing and illustrating this diversity in terms of scientific and theoretical fundamentals, prevailing concepts as well as current practical applications

Orchestrating ‘Institutional Network’ for the Sustainability of IS Program: Evidence from Indian Public Healthcare

Sustaining an IS program in healthcare encounters the complexities of the dynamic and loosely connected network of institutionally powerful actors. We apply ‘orchestration’ framework to examine the orchestration of public healthcare by a low power stakeholder for sustaining an IS program. We study the case of a hospital information systems running across 20+ hospitals in Himachal Pradesh, India, for more than a decade. Analysis informs that institutional network orchestration goes through multiple interconnected stages, each presenting unique dilemmas. The orchestrator takes different roles to perform various relation and material institutional work across these stages and often leverages on unanticipated events, just by being physically and temporally present. We identify four orchestration stages—promoting member engagement, building distributed ownership, managing partnership, and managing coherence. Initial stage institutional work helps orchestrator accumulate ‘symbolic power’, which proves critical in later stage orchestration. Findings contribute to orchestration framework and inform IS in healthcare literature

Partner selection in sustainable supply chains: a fuzzy ensemble learning model

With the increasing demands on businesses to operate more sustainably, firms must ensure that the performance of their whole supply chain in sustainability is optimized. As partner selection is critical to supply chain management, focal firms now need to select supply chain partners that can offer a high level of competence in sustainability. This paper proposes a novel multi-partner classification model for the partner qualification and classification process, combining ensemble learning technology and fuzzy set theory. The proposed model enables potential partners to be classified into one of four categories (strategic partner, preference partner, leverage partner and routine partner), thereby allowing distinctive partner management strategies to be applied for each category. The model provides for the simultaneous optimization of both efficiency in its use of multi-partner and multi-dimension evaluation data, and effectiveness in dealing with the vagueness and uncertainty of linguistic commentary data. Compared to more conventional methods, the proposed model has the advantage of offering a simple classification and a stable prediction performance. The practical efficacy of the model is illustrated by an application in a listed electronic equipment and instrument manufacturing company based in southeastern China

Sustainable Industrial Engineering along Product-Service Life Cycle/Supply Chain

Sustainable industrial engineering addresses the sustainability issue from economic, environmental, and social points of view. Its application fields are the whole value chain and lifecycle of products/services, from the development to the end-of-life stages. This book aims to address many of the challenges faced by industrial organizations and supply chains to become more sustainable through reinventing their processes and practices, by continuously incorporating sustainability guidelines and practices in their decisions, such as circular economy, collaboration with suppliers and customers, using information technologies and systems, tracking their products’ life-cycle, using optimization methods to reduce resource use, and to apply new management paradigms to help mitigate many of the wastes that exist across organizations and supply chains. This book will be of interest to the fast-growing body of academics studying and researching sustainability, as well as to industry managers involved in sustainability management

Performance Improvement Through Benchmarking for Small and Medium Manufacturers (SMM)

Die wichtigsten Kostenfaktoren innerhalb einer Lieferkette lassen sich drei Kategorien zuordnen: Produktions-, Transport-und Lagerkosten. Die Strukturen dieser operativen Kosten im Hinblick auf die Gesamtkosten variieren stark je nach Industriesektor. Produktionskosten stellen dennoch die höchste Kostenart in fast allen Branchen dar, weniger bedeutend folgen danach jeweils die Transport- und Lagerkosten. Die Optimierung einer dieser Kategorien ohne Rücksicht auf die anderen kann zur Erhöhung der Gesamtkosten sowie der allgemeinen Leistungsfähigkeit führen. Diese Dissertation befasst sich mit dem „production distribution problem“ wobei synchronisierte Strategien entwickelt werden können, um die Leistung der Supply Chain zu verbessern und gleichzeitig die Gesamtkosten zu minimieren. Dazu wurde eine Fallstudie aus der Realität untersucht, nämlich das Praxisbeispiel eines Herstellers von Waschmitteln. Zwei Hauptszenarien werden bewertet. Das erste Szenario ist der konventionelle Plan, wobei die Hersteller dominieren. Dies bedeutet, dass der Hersteller findet seinen eigenen optimalen Job-Scheduling-Plan, während die Distribution versucht mit Hilfe dessen ihren optimalen Plan zu finden. Dadurch erhöhen sich die Distributionskosten. Das zweite Szenario betrifft die Synchronisation der Produktions-, Lagerhaltungs- und Transportzeitpläne. Ein zu diesem Zweck entwickeltes Java-Programm und die Job-Scheduling-Software Simal wurden für die Modellierung der konventionellen und integrierten Szenarien verwendet. Beide Szenarien wurden verglichen und validiert. Die Fallstudie betrachtet mehrere Produkte sowie ein schwer zu planendes flowshop- System. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Gesamtkosten, einschließlich der Einrichtungs-, Lager- und Transportkosten, minimiert werden können, wenn das synchronisierte System angewendet wird.The main cost factors within a supply chain can be put into the categories of production, transportation, and inventory costs. The composition of these operational costs relative to total costs varies largely by industry. However, production cost is the largest of all in almost all the industries, followed by transportation and inventory costs. Optimizing one of these categories without consideration of the others may increase the total cost and reduce the overall performance. This dissertation deals with the production distribution problem of developing synchronized strategies to improve the supply chain performance and to minimize the total cost. A real case study is investigated. This real-life case study is a powder detergent plant located in Libya. There are two main scenarios evaluated. The first scenario is the conventional plan, where the manufacturer dominates. This means the manufacturer finds his own optimum job-scheduling plan, and the distributor tries to find the optimum plan according to it. This will increase the distribution cost. The second scenario involves synchronizing the production, inventory and transportation schedules. A Java program and SimAl (job-schedulingsoftware) were constructed for modelling conventional and integrated scenarios. The two scenarios were compared and validated. The case study considered multiple products and a flowshop system which is difficult to schedule. The results show that the total costs, including setup, inventory and transportation, can be minimized when the synchronized system is applied

Designing a graphical user interface for a bilateral negotiation support system

Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) are quickly becoming the standard operating environment for most software programs and operating systems. Ease of use, rapid learning and the ability to retain complex task sequences and operations are some of the advantages attributed to this type of interface. When properly implemented the GUI can provide a natural interaction between the user and the computer. Initial acceptance and continued use of any program can be greatly enhanced by proper design of this interface. It is expected that this trend toward visual representation of a task's objects and actions will be more fully developed and expanded in future years. This thesis explored the principles of interface design with particular attention given to the specific characteristics associated with GUI design. Unique design concepts associated with Negotiation Support Systems were also considered. These design techniques and principles were then applied in the analysis and design of the graphical user interface for a Bilateral Negotiation Support System based on multiple attribute utility theory. The program was written in Microsoft Visual Basic for use under the Microsoft Windows 3.0 operating environment.http://archive.org/details/designinggraphic1094538555Lieutenant Commander, United States Naval ReserveApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Évaluation comparative d'approches de pilotage dans une chaîne logistique forestière

La forêt représente une source avantageuse et renouvelable de matières premières, en nourrissant notamment les activités de production, de construction et de consommation tout en assurant une dynamique économique. Ainsi, l’industrie forestière se caractérise par un réseau logistique complexe soumis à un ensemble de particularités dont un besoin de plus en plus criant en personnalisation du produits, une demande méconnue et incertaine pour certains marchés et une concurrence mondiale en effervescence. Ce réseau est composé par un ensemble de nœuds inter-reliés de flux de matières, d’informations et de transactions financières. Dans ce contexte, cette thèse traite la problématique de la planification et du contrôle des activités logistique d’une chaîne de valeur forestière. Il s’agit d’un réseau qui rassemble les activités nécessaires pour le déplacement des matières premières et leur transformation en produits finis destinés aux clients afin de satisfaire leurs besoins. Notre contribution à travers ce projet est de développer des modèles de planification permettant aux preneurs de décision d’interagir de façon à mieux collaborer, coordonner leurs activités et améliorer leurs manières d’échanger l’information afin de satisfaire la demande du client, développer un avantage concurrentiel durable, et réduire les coûts. Pour que l’industrie forestière puisse atteindre de tels objectifs, nous proposons une méthodologie composée par trois contributions. La première contribution propose un modèle mathématique centralisé dont l’objectif est de maximiser le profit total d’une chaîne de valeur forestière et de déterminer certains paramètres de décision tels que les volumes à récolter et à stocker ainsi que les quantités à livrer. La deuxième contribution présente le développement de modèles coordonnés de même qu’une analyse de performance théorique et statistique de façon à dégager une approche qui permette de planifier et de contrôler plus efficacement les activités d’approvisionnement forestier. La troisième contribution propose une stratégie conceptuelle de mise en place ainsi qu’une plate-forme technologique pour une approche de pilotage considérée bénéfique dans le cadre de la chaîne de valeur forestière à l’étude.The forest is a beneficial and renewable source of raw materials that ensures an economic dynamic. Thereby, the forest industry is characterized by a complex logistics network that is subject to a number of unique factors, such as: a growing need for customization of products, an unrecognized and uncertain demand for a few markets, and fierce global competition. This industry also encompasses a set of interconnected nodes for materials, information, and financial transactions. In this context, this thesis deals with the planning and control of the logistic activities of a forest value chain. It is a network that puts together the needful activities to move the raw materials and process them into finished products for customers. Our contribution through this project is to establish planning models that enable decision-makers to better coordinate their activities and improve their ways of exchanging information between each other in order to meet customer needs, build sustainable competitive advantage, and reduce costs In order to help the forest industry to achieve such objectives, we propose a methodology including three contributions. The first one suggests a centralized mathematical model then maximizes the total profit of a forest value chain by optimizing the quantities to be harvested and stored as well as the ones to be delivered. The second contribution is based on coordinated models that allow for more effective planning and control of forestry supply activities. The third contribution offers a conceptual implementation strategy and at the same time a technological platform which should be helpful to support the implementation of the coordination models developed