| Product and process design is central to determining the performance of a supply chain. They have a strong influence on the total costs. This dissertation studies the impact of two product and process design strategies for effective supply chain management: postponement and process sequencing. The dissertation is divided into two parts. The first part advances theories and contains analytical models for studying the impact of postponement and process sequencing decisions. The second part describes a model that one can use to study various supply chain structures. This model was used in an application case.;We first develop an analytical framework to model divergent systems with stage-dependent lead times, and intermediate stocks, where end-product demands are correlated. This analytical framework is used to derive the steady-state characteristics of the system.;The steady-state characteristics of the divergent system are employed to study the impact of postponement and process sequencing. Our model considers various costs such as inventory holding costs, standardization costs (or redesign costs), and changes in unit processing costs due to this redesign. We derive analytical results for several special cases of cost structures for each strategy.;The joint problem of standardization and process sequencing can be formulated as an integer program. We show that the constraint matrix for this formulation is totally unimodular, and hence, it can be solved optimally as a linear program. We also investigate the joint problem of postponement and process sequencing. We develop two alternate formulations for this problem and outline the heuristics to obtain the optimal solutions for these formulations.;In the second part of this dissertation, we develop an analytical model that can be used to analyze various problems in supply chain management. This model was applied in the introduction of a new line of products at a large electronics manufacturer. We describe our experience and also present the results of that analysis. |
