The Study On Offshoring Fuzzy Decision-making Problem

Offshoring refers to the practice that an enterprise outsources a part of its sup-ply chain to a foreign supplier-usually the manufacturing link of products. The enterprise employing offshoring strategy is mainly to utilize foreign cheap labor and reduce the production cost. However, the enterprise is also likely to encounter vari-ous risks in the actual process of offshoring, such as supplier default, tariff barriers, financial crisis, exchange-rate appreciation and so on. Therefore, making a correct offshoring decision-making is very crucial for the enterprise. In this thesis, we mainly consider the impact of exchange-rate uncertainty on the offshoring strategy, and will use two-stage fuzzy optimization methods to study the offshoring decision-making problem.For offshoring decision-making problem, this thesis first presents a two-stage fuzzy equivalent value model, in which the company’s uncertain profit is measured by the equivalent value of fuzzy variable. When the first stage decision-makings and exchange-rate are fixed, we analyze the properties of the second stage programming, and obtain the analytical expression of the second stage optimal value. Since the demand for the product is deterministic, we decompose the feasible region into two subregions, and then discuss the local optimal solution on each subregion. According to the obtained theoretical results, we design a solving method to solve the two-stage fuzzy equivalent value model. Furthermore, we consider the risk resulted from uncertain profit, and a new type of second moment is defined as the risk criterion. By introducing a risk coefficient, we propose a two-stage fuzzy equivalent value-second moment model. Based on the same feasible region decomposition, we prove that the proposed model is convex on each subregion. When the uncertain exchange-rate has a discrete possibility distribution or a continuous possibility distribution, we obtain the equivalent model on each subregion, and then solving methods are separately designed for these two cases. Finally, some numerical experiments are provided to illustrate the modeling ideas and the effectiveness of the solving methods.The major new results of this thesis include the following four aspects:(ⅰ) Two classes of two-stage fuzzy optimization models are proposed for offshoring decision-making problem; (ⅱ) We analyze and discuss the properties of two classes of two-stage fuzzy optimization models; (ⅲ) The equivalent models of two classes of two-stage fuzzy optimization models in subregions are obtained; (ⅳ) Solving methods based on feasible region decomposition are designed for the two classes of models, and some numerical experiments are provided to illustrate the modeling ideas and the effectiveness of the solving methods.