Research On Manufacturer Flexibility And Cost Optimization Of Supply Chain

Supply chain management has been considered as an important method by many enterprises to decrease the total cost and to increase the production efficiency as the information technology is constantly improved. To adapt a flexible and an efficient supply chain system, the flexibility and cost must be considered at the same time. In this way, the flexibility and cost could be optimized and compromised simultaneously.In this research, a supply chain system is considered. And the suppliers transport the raw materials to the manufacturers, the finish goods is sent to the distribution centers, the distribution items are then transported to the consumers in the system. A "two-stage model" is used to find the optimal solutions for the system. In the first stage, we find the minimum total cost and the maximum supply chain flexibility. After finding the first's stage solutions, we compute the optimal manufacturing flexibility and cost for the second stage. Because of the multiple objectives is considered, one may use the "weight method" to obtain the optimal solutions for flexibility and cost. The LINGO software provides the decision-makers to find feasible solutions and choose one or several solutions for them. We also adopt real data to verify the model and the sensitivity analysis is performed for the effect of each parameter.