Supply Chain Quality Management Model And Its Application For Complex Products In "Main Manufacturer-supplier" System

A complex product (Cop) is a high cost and engineering-intensive item, which is complicatedfrom both technical and managerial perspectives. The complex product, such as an aircraft, warshiprocket, or satellite, needs to be assembled with various subsystems and components from suppliers.Owing to the huge complexities in product structure, manufacturing processes and managementactivity, the complex product tends to be created by a network of strategic alliance of firms operatingwith a project organization. As a consequence, the quality of the complex products sold to customersdepends on not only the main manufacturer’s process/assembly quality, but also the quality of thecomponents or subsystems provided by suppliers. In other words, the quality competition of complexproducts is extended from main manufacturers to networked supply chains. As the “productionorganizer” and “system integrator”, the main manufacturer, which expects to achieve a qualityadvantage and occupy a leading position in an intense quality race, should strictly control the qualityof components from its suppliers and attempt to ensure the supply chain having a high qualitycompetition.From a main manufacturer’s perspective, this thesis contributes to supply chain qualitymanagement of complex products in the “main manufacturer–suppliers” production system bystudying many key problems and investigating important methodologies, which concludes domains asfollows.(1) Quality assurance contract design for complex products. A flexible methodology is developedto assist a main manufacturer in designing a quality assurance contract to induce its suppliers ofcomponents for a complex product to adhere to a priori quality strategy. More specifically, anEdgeworth box is employed to examine quality-profit Pareto equilibriums for participants to provide abasic qualitative understanding about transactions between the main manufacturer and its suppliers. Aprincipal-agent model is proposed as a research framework, which can reflect the businessrelationship between the main manufacturer and each supplier. Given this framework, the equilibriumunder symmetric information is investigate to obtain the first-best solution as a benchmark, whichaids the main manufacturer in acquiring the components with optimum quality by designing a forcingcontract with its suppliers. Furthermore, a dynamic game is used to determine the equilibrium underasymmetric information and a Lagrangian function is ascertain to determine the relationship between the quality control parameters and the second-best solution. Consequently, the optimum qualityreward function and price discount, which can be considered as the incentive and punitive strategies,respectively, can be implemented to induce the supplier to meet the optimum quality desired by themain manufacturer.(2) Quality profit allocation and conflict analysis in the supply chain of complex products. A newgrey Shapley model is proposed to allocate quality cooperative benefits to the participants in aalliance with grey payoffs. More specifically, the grey Shapley model is designed and proved itseffectiveness, symmetry and additivity with grey number operation regulars. Besides, the Raiffasolution is addressed to allocate profit in a large alliance and a multi-objective programming model isused to get the whitening result of the grey Shapley model. Additionally, based on Petri net andconflict analysis theory, a novel PNCA (Petri net for conflict analysis) is designed, which containstransition and preference labels to describe decision makers’(DMs’) decision activities and profitcomparisons. Additionally, a generating approach is proposed, which can help DMs to construct aPNCA. Furthermore, based on players’ bounded rationality, the equilibrium of PNCA is studied toprovide scientific supports for DMs’ decision-making.(3) A graphical model for detecting the outsourced quality constraint of a complex product. Agraphical model is proposed for a main manufacturer to detect the quality constraint of the outsourcedparts of complex products, such as aircraft, warships and satellites. More specifically, a multi-factorquality loss function is defined which measures the suppliers’ generalized quality losses as input.Based on a graphical evaluation and review technique (GERT), a novel supplier-GERT model isestablished to reflect the quality loss flow in a supply chain as a quantitative framework. Given thefunction value and graph model, a detection algorithm is developed to determine the suppliers’ qualityimpacts on the final product, so that the bottleneck of the supply chain can be found, whichconstitutes a fresh perspective on the supply chain quality management of a complex product.(4) A hierarchical decision model to select quality control strategies for complex products. Ahierarchical decision model is proposed to select the optimal quality control strategies among variousalternatives to pursue the most satisfying quality improvement for the supply chain in producing acomplex product, such as an aircraft, warship and satellite. More specifically, a novel framework,referred to as house of supply chain quality (HSCQ), is designed to provide necessary information formanaging the supply chain quality, which can be transformed to a multi-objective program todetermine the optimal quality control strategies and allocate proper quality control resources. Basedon the relationships of the suppliers in the supply chain, an HSCQ network can be constructed and an associated multilevel multi-objective program can be established as the hierarchical decision model,which assists the enterprises in different tiers to choose the optimal quality control strategies formanaging the quality of their outsourcing products. The result can significantly improve the overallquality performance of the supply chain.(5) Dynamic evaluation and tolerance optimization for key quality characteristics in the supplychains of complex products. According to the outsourcing quality management in “mainmanufacturer-suppliers” production model, a structural equation model is constructed to evaluate thequality performances of outsourcing components. The quality loss functions are designed regarding tothree quality types, which are nominal-the-best type, larger-the-better type and smaller-the-better type.A two-order factor model is established to describe the supply chain and evaluate qualitycharacteristics’ contribution to final products. A programming model is proposed to optimize thequality tolerances of the above quality characteristics. This part provides a new methodology toevaluate the outsourcing quality performance and optimize the quality requirements of the keyoutsourcing characteristics.