The Network Programming Research Of Multi-echelon Supply Chain Under Uncertain Environment With The Consideration Of Market Risks

Researches about network design of supply chain are important areas among researches on the supply chain management. Researches about network design of supply chain in the uncertain environment are not only present main trends of studies in network design of supply chain, but also hot and difficult questions in this area. As the conversion from "seller's market" to "buyer's market" and changes in competition, customers'expectations keep rising. In order to maintain the competitiveness, enterprises must, by coordinating approach, integrate internal and external logistics flow, information flow, and capital flow effectively, and at the same time, achieve optimal overall system performance to meet the needs of customers on the basis of coordinating individual performance. Accompanied by the opening up of international markets, the economic situation in each country seems more and more easily to lead to fluctuation in the global market, witch brings huge risks to enterprises and supply chains. In order to avoid losses caused by risks from global market, from a business strategic perspective, with the consideration of uncertain environment where supply chain is in, the way for enterprises to enhance the supply chain's ability to avoid risks and the reliability of the supply chain members by organizing the supply chain network to enable better coordination and cooperation of information, capital and material among different members in the supply chain becomes another area of focus.So far, a large number of domestic and foreign researches refer to the problem that network design and planning of supply chain, but various parameters in a lot of researches are identified as certain parameters, however, actually, enterprises are in an environment where there are many uncertain factors to be considered. The number of researches about establishment of an effective supply chain network model in uncertain environment is a relatively small one. Among researches about network design of supply chain network design, those reducing total costs in supply chain with another goal to optimize the level of customer service, combined with options of transportation and control of service time is few. Few researches is about combining risk factors into the model designed for optimizing network system of supply chain in the uncertain environment.This paper works on multi-stage network optimization problems of supply chain in uncertain environment with the consideration of customer service and market risks, based on previous researches. Main points of this paper and its innovation are as follows:Firstly, to reduce disadvantages in services of previous studies and to solve the multi-criteria optimization for network design of supply chain, practically, this paper concerned about locations of distribution centers and retailers, allocation of single-product multi-period carryings and choice of level of service (LOS) of transportation in the network of a three-echelon supply chain with undetermined demand, lead time and customers" expectation of services. A fuzzy multi-criteria programming model is formulated to minimize the total cost and enhance customer service levels by reducing transport time, while satisfying capacity, demand and customer's expected LOS constrains. According to particular undetermined elements in the model, weighted additive fuzzy multi-criteria mixed integer programming with a fuzzy chance constrained programming are developed to solve the problem. Finally, the application of the model and methodology in a real case of the supply chain network optimization problem of the Yunnan Pu'er tea plant illustrates how the model is feasible and effective.Secondly, to reduce disadvantages in risks of market of previous studies and to solve the problem of multi-echelon supply chain programming problem, this paper aims to reduce the cost of the supply chain with the concern of the risk of market. To solve the problem of selection of suppliers and third-part carriers and allocate quantity between selected suppliers and carriers, a multi-objects programming model with objects of reducing the cost of supply chain, decreasing the risk of market and increasing the reliability of partners is established, under constrains of demand and capacity. In the approach, not only demand, but price of raw material, reliability of suppliers and carriers are all considered as uncertain parameters. Because of the fussy random parameters in the model, approaches of fussy random programming and STEP multi-objects programming are used to solve the multi-objects model with fussy random parameters. Finally, the application of the model and methodology in a real case of the supply chain network optimization problem of a tea plant is used to prove the efficiency and usefulness of the proposed model.