Order Allocation Model And Simulation Within Multi-suppliers Of An Industrial Cluster

As the development of industrial clusters, the market competitiveness of the same kind ofproduct is strengthen, the quality of the products at the same time can be improved and theproduction cost can be reduced as well. Since the production load is not equilibrium within acluster, it leads to a serious waste of manufacturing resources, and leads to the manufacturer’smissing on-time delivery (OTD), so which in turn affects the manufacturer’s production. Theprevious ways of resource allocation, such as the virtual enterprise organization, are to meet withthe established production tasks by allocating manufacturing resources, while the production loadequilibrium strategy aims to meet with the established manufacturing resources by allocating theproduction tasks. That is, it allocates the order considering the available manufacturing resource soas to realize a reasonable manufacturing resources allocation within a cluster.For downstream enterprises of the supply chain face to order the same kind of product withinsuppliers of an industrial cluster, the order allocation problem is studied in this paper respectivelyeither based on the enterprise’s current adopted order allocation strategy or based on suppliers’production load equilibrium strategy. First the enterprise’s current adopted order allocation strategyand a set period of production datas of the suppliers and manufacturers are studied in this paperby the enterprise survey. Then the order allocation models of a manufacturer vs. multiple suppliersand multiple manufacturers vs. multiple suppliers based on the production capacity and productionload equilibrium are proposed. Considering the uncertainties of the demand and the productioncapacity of enterprise’s actual operating process, each enterprise entity is represented as anindependent agent, and the discrete system simulation under SIMIO is used to verify theproduction load equilibrium strategy from the point of view of dynamic uncertainty, and thesimulation results are analyzed from the point of view of manufacturer, supplier and thewhole supply chain operation. The simulation study results show that, the production loadequilibrium strategy is better than the enterprise’s current adopted order allocation strategy inseveral ways, e.g. better meeting the manufacturers demand, improving the suppliers’ productioncondition and suppliers’ resources utilization, reducing the fluctuations of both individual supplierand the whole supply chain, and increasing suppliers’ response. In summary, the production loadequilibrium strategy can not only guarantee the order’s lead time from the point of view of theavailable manufacturing resources, but also lead to promote the whole supplier group’s operationlevel, so as to realize the optimization of the entire supply chain. Research results will enrich thetheory and method of the order allocation, and offer a new idea and method for manufacturing resources reasonable allocation of the industry cluster.