The Logistic Principles for Fast Flexible Strategy Design of the Company in Crisis Time

The article deals with design of the logistic principles enabling an enterprise to create a strategy flexible in terms of business and marketing and stable and steady in terms of manufacturing. In order to create a strategy model the following principles can be applied: shortening the period of capacity planning combined with flexible planning, SYNCRO – MRP (Material Required Planning) principle, the application of forecasting in capacity planning, creation with partners of one of the cooperation forms such as supply chain, demand chain, lean supply chain, agile supply chain, leagile supply chain, and using the DBR (Drum Buffer Rope), APS (Advanced Planning System) and SCP (Supply Chain Planning) systems. The article describes application of this principle for model design of the flexible strategy for Chemosvit fólie a. s. company, and the results of this application in the crisis time 2009–2011.SYANCRO-MRP, capacity planning, forecasting, supply chain, demand chain

Kaizen – Right Management Summary

The article deals with the analysis of the Kaizen principles so called the continual improving principles. It compares the Japanese and European view at the control of the changes. Then the article describes the implementation of Kaizen principles in the companies

Hierarchical sales forecasting system for apparel companies and supply chains

The typical problems facing with apparel companies and supply chains are forecasting errors, because fashion markets are volatile and difficult to predict. For that reason, the ability to develop accurate sales forecasts is critical in the industry. There are several research studies related to forecasting apparel goods, but very often only for one level. However, apparel companies and supply chains deal with a number of levels at which the forecasts could exist and require consistent forecasts at all of them. The paper presents a hierarchical middle-term forecasting system designed for this purpose on the basis of a literature review. The system is built by the top-down forecasting approach and verified by means of a case study in a particular apparel company. The weaknesses of the system are identified during discussion of the results acquired. A generalised concept of the ANN forecasting model is designed for elimination these weaknesses.Web of Science21611

Principles of computer simulation design for the needs of improvement of the raw materials combined transport system

This article is focused on computer simulation design for raw materials transportation. The creation of a simulation model of the combined transport system for the raw materials transportation has its own problematic parts. In general, these are parts, which represent transport nodes, i.e. parts of the system in which raw materials are reloaded from one vehicle to another. The given operations are in practice dependent on the preparedness of all transportation means, which participate in it. To locate operations of reloading of the raw materials from one vehicle to another and the check of the preparedness of the vehicles of the reloading in the simulation system is more demanding because it is necessary to take into consideration several aspects, such as an existence of a vehicle with raw materials, an existence of a vehicle to which it is to be reloaded a suitable freeloader, and so on. The article focuses on defining a procedure and correct steps at the creation of the simulation computer model of the combined raw materials transport system in the EXTENDSIM simulation system based on specific data from a real transport system. As is clear from the proposed procedure of the creation of the combined raw material transport system, as a check element of the transport system preparedness, it is suitable to use the "Gate" block and its features in the EXTENDSIM simulation system. As transpires from the results of simulation of the combined raw material transport system, about 322,000 tons of raw materials at 90-96% with the use of all vehicles is transported during the year.Web of Science23217416

Formation and planning of virtual production networks (VPN) in metallurgical clusters

A significant problem of small and medium enterprises in the metallurgical sector is that submitted orders very often exceed the individual production capacity at the disposal of each company according to production capacity limitations (machinery, equipment and time availability), competencies, skills, etc. Therefore, the idea of the creation of virtual production networks (VPN) of small and medium enterprises within a metallurgical cluster appears to be particularly attractive. The development of such networks depends on design solutions and tools which help companies to quickly plan a VPN to jointly execute production orders. In the paper, the new method for formation and rapid planning of virtual production network within metallurgical clusters is proposed.Web of Science53472772

A hybrid decision support system for iron ore supply

Many European metallurgical companies are forced to import iron ore from remote destinations. For these companies it is necessary to determine the amount of iron ore that will have to be ordered and to create such a delivery schedule so that the continuous operation of blast-furnace plant is not disrupted and there is no exceedingly large stock of this raw material. The objective of this article is to design the decision support system for iron ore supply which would effi ciently reduce uncertainty and risk of that decision-making. The article proposes a hybrid intelligent system which represents a combination of diff erent artifi cial intelligence methods with dynamic simulation technique for that purpose.Web of Science511939

Measuring the metallurgical supply chain resilience using fuzzy analytic network process

The article presents a methodology for measuring the metallurgical supply chain resilience, which enables the ascertainment of key resilience capabilities and measurable criteria, and determining a level of the resilience. The methodology is based on Analytic Network Process (ANP), which is used to solve the complex decision-making problems, whose structures can be mapped as non-linear networks. Since ambiguous pairwise comparisons expressed by fuzzy sets are considered, the Fuzzy Analytic Network Process (FANP) is applied. The methodology is verified on the generalised model of a metallurgical supply chain. The SuperDecisions software was used for the application. The experiments performed demonstrate the high level of suitability of the FANP approach for measuring metallurgical supply chain resilience.Web of Science55478678