A holonic approach based integration methodology for transportation and warehousing functions of the supply network

The supply chain (SC) is often defined as a network that is composed of different functions, including suppliers, manufacturing plants, warehouses/distribution centers, retailers and customers. A supply network (SN) is a sequence of different and multiple numbers of functions and individual functional units that must satisfy all capacities and demand requirements imposed by customers with minimum cost to the network. The most important functions of a SN are warehousing and transportation functions. This paper addresses the warehousing and transportation network design problem that involves determining the best strategy for distributing the sub-products from the suppliers to the warehouse and from the warehouse to the manufacturers. Considering some similarities between holonic systems and SN systems, a holonic approach based modeling methodology is proposed in this study. A multiple supplier, single warehouse and multiple manufacturer system are considered to be an integrated warehousing and transportation network. Consequently, a linear programming model is presented to maximize the profit of both of the overall SN and the individual functional units of the SN functions.     

Development and Applications of Holonic Manufacturing Systems: A Survey

This paper surveys the literature in the holonic manufacturing systems area in an attempt to bring together the key issues in the development and applications of holonic systems. A brief introduction presents the characteristics of today’s manufacturing environment and the requirements for next generation manufacturing systems. Then, starting with considerations about the origins of the holonic concept and its first applications in manufacturing, the paper presents the advances made in applying the holonic concept to manufacturing systems area. Several considerations for the development of holonic manufacturing systems and specific holonic system requirements are discussed. As holonic concept is considered a solution for next generation manufacturing systems, there is a significant number of applications and implementations of the holonic concept in manufacturing systems domain. The most important and relevant approaches developed so far are presented. Finally, a short conclusion and future research directions in the area are provided     

An inclusive and extensible architecture for electronic brokerage

The output and experience of a large European project in Electronic Brokerage called “Generic Architecture for Information Availability” (GAIA) is presented. The paper describes a reference model and functional architecture for value-added mediation in Electronic Commerce. The customers are provided with a uniform way of accessing heterogeneous suppliers without changes in the supplier software. A way of employing distributed objects for large-scale service integration and multi-enterprise transactions is shown. The issues encountered during the implementation of the Common Brokerage Architecture (CORBA)-based pilot prototype and the application of the architecture in three diverse domains are presented.     

The relationships among supply chain partnerships,customer orientation,and operational performance: the effect of flexibility

The research goal of this study was to investigate how supply chain partnerships and customer orientation affect the operational performance of food service companies by moderating flexibility. In total, 725 invitation messages were mailed to members of Ihergo, Groupon, 17P, of which, 166 were returned (a return rate of 22.9 %). Structured equation modeling with PLS analysis allows empirical assessment of the measurement model used in this study. Companies will redefine their business models by connecting suppliers’ and customers’ view, and by integrating customers’ opinions and queries for the planning and development of new products. Linkage efficiency suppliers will reduce inventory and decrease perishable for food service companies based on the driving force to buy in the virtual environment. Product innovation and reduction of the time to market by supplier integration and customer integration are important to food service companies, and flexibility plays an important role in food service companies.     

A system architecture for holonic manufacturing planning and control (EtoPlan)

In this paper, we present the system architecture of a flexible manufacturing planning and control system, named EtoPlan. The concept is based on the holonic control approach of building multiple and temporary hierarchies (holarchies). This paper describes the system architecture for flexible planning and control of activities and (groups of) Resources in a manufacture-to-order environment. The system architecture consists of generic control modules that can be applied on different hierarchical levels and for different kinds of manufacturing activities. The main function of the Resource Controller is the Determine Applicability function.     

IT sourcing reflections

For more than a decade, the authors have studied the best, worst, and emerging information technology sourcing practices in 543 large and small organizations world-wide. From an initial focus on cost reduction in the early 1990s, the authors found that customers now expect many business advantages from IT outsourcing, including better service, infusion of new technology, transformation of fixed IT budgets to variable IT budgets, improved business processes, and even increased revenues. In short, customers expect IT outsourcing to transform IT functions into lean, dynamic groups that respond quickly to business needs and opportunities. But how do customers actually achieve such business advantage? Customers must become adept at managing four continual processes to successfully exploit IT outsourcing:

• Assess the in-house IT portfolio to determine which activities are best outsourced
• Evaluate market options for the best sourcing models and best suppliers to achieve customer objectives, ranging from simple ASP provision to the creation of customer-supplier joint ventures
• Craft contracts to align customer and supplier expectations and incentives; and
• Continually manage supplier relationships.

Major supplier lessons are also identified, which call for superior supplier integrity in selling, negotiating, and delivering IT services. The overall lesson is that outsourcing can achieve significant results, but it requires new management capabilities.     

The Effects of Customer Value on Loyalty and Profits in a Dynamic Competitive Market

Providing high value products and services to customers normally leads to customer loyalty and profits. In practice, the relationship of customer value, loyalty, and profits can be observed in the market. However, the dynamic interactive relationships which lead to customer loyalty and profits still remain ambiguous. In this paper, the Agent-Based Computational Economics (ACE) model is introduced to explore the formation of customer loyalty in the Taiwanese imported lumber market. Using agents with reinforced learning algorithms in trading simulations, the effects of customer value on loyalty and profit are incorporated and examined in this interactive dynamic model. As results, the positive correlations among variables of customer value, loyalty, and profits are observed. A controlled experiment shows that changing customer value leads to changes in customer loyalty and profits, but price is not the determinant factor for improving customer loyalty. The R ² values of customer loyalty and profits elucidate that they are increasing as the time lapsed elongate. Providing high value of products and services is a better strategy for suppliers to attract potential loyal customers.      

Optimization of cost and service level in the presence of supply chain disruption risks: Single vs. multiple sourcing

The coordinated supplier selection and customer order scheduling in the presence of supply chain disruption risks is studied for single and multiple sourcing strategies. Given a set of customer orders for products, the decision maker needs to select a single supplier or a subset of suppliers for purchasing parts required to complete the customer orders, and schedule the orders over the planning horizon, to mitigate the impact of disruption risks. The suppliers are located in different geographic regions and the supplies are subject to different types of disruptions: to random local disruptions of each supplier individually, to random regional disruptions of all suppliers in the same region simultaneously and to random global disruptions of all suppliers simultaneously. For any combination of suppliers hit by different types of disruptions, a formula for calculating the corresponding disruption probability is developed. The obtained combinatorial stochastic optimization problem is formulated as a mixed integer program with conditional value-at-risk as a risk measure. The problem objective is either to minimize expected worst-case cost or to maximize expected worst-case customer service level, i.e., the expected worst-case fraction of customer orders filled on or before their due dates. The risk-averse solutions that optimize worst-case performance of a supply chain under disruptions risks are compared for the two sourcing strategies and the two objective functions. Numerical examples and computational results are presented and some managerial insights on the choice between the two sourcing strategies are reported.     

云采购平台虚拟供应商资源动态分配

重点探讨将云计算技术运用到采购环节中,构建云采购平台,探讨如何分配载有虚拟供应商资源的虚拟机,改善顾客满足情况。首先提出了云采购平台的概念,假设虚拟机载有供应商资源;其次提出了载有虚拟供应商资源的虚拟机分配流程,并且建立模型;然后分别采用最佳递减匹配（BFD）方法和仪跟踪多群粒子群优化（FTMPSO）算法对其求解;最后分析求解结果。采用最佳递减匹配算法时,优先满足的属性不同,得到的顾客满足情况不同;仪跟踪多群粒子群优化算法对虚拟供应商资源进行分配得到的顾客满足率高于用最佳递减匹配算法对虚拟供应商资源进行分配的顾客满足率。     

A genetic algorithm based method for bidding strategy coordination in energy and spinning reserve markets

The problem of building optimally coordinated bidding strategies for competitive suppliers in energy and spinning reserve markets is addressed based on the Monte Carlo simulation and a refined genetic algorithm (RGA). It is assumed that each supplier bids a linear energy supply function and a linear spinning reserve supply function into the energy and spinning reserve markets, respectively, and the two markets are dispatched separately to minimize customer payments. Each supplier chooses the coefficients in the linear energy and spinning reserve supply functions to maximize total benefits, subject to expectations about how rival suppliers will bid. A stochastic optimization model is first developed to describe this problem and a Monte Carlo and genetic algorithm based method is then presented to solve it. A numerical example is utilized to illustrate the essential features of the method.     

Intelligent evaluation of supplier bids using a hybrid technique in distributed supply chains

The main idea of this research is to devise the smart module to pick the best supplier bid(s) automatically. The hybrid model is composed of three useful tools: fuzzy logic, AHP, and QFD. The approach has been carefully implemented and verified via a real-world case study in a medium-to-large industry manufacturing vehicle tires and other rubber products. A collection of 12 assessment criteria classified into two categories have been considered. Eight factors are derived from customer suggestions and the other four are design specifications required to manufacture the product. The main outcomes are: a hybrid autonomous model to evaluate supplier bids without direct human intervention; devising a hybrid three-module method and overcoming complexity of computations in resulting algorithm by means of agents; outlining the best criteria to assess suppliers; evaluating the suppliers based on voice of customer during all stages of the process; and discussing analysis, design, and implementation issues of the evaluation agent. The paper includes implications for development of an integrated total system for supply chain coordination. The most important advantages of this work over earlier researches on supplier selection are: implementation of an autonomous assessment mechanism using intelligent agents for the first time, making the best out of three widely applied methodologies all at once, evaluation process mainly based on features of customer order, coordination of supply job based on a bidding system, and portal-mediated operation and control.     

Communication gaps in a tender process

Large IT systems are often acquired in a tender process where the customer states the system requirements, a number of suppliers submit their proposals, and the customer selects one of them. Usually the supplier uses an existing system as the basis for his proposal. He adapts it more or less to the customer’s requirements. This paper is a study of a specific tender process. The customer was a Danish municipality that supplied electrical power, water, gas, garbage collection, etc. for around 100,000 households. The customer wanted a new system for meter inspection, invoicing, planning the meter inspector’s routes, etc. We have studied the requirements, how they were perceived by the suppliers, and how they were intended by the customer. The main findings are that the parties didn’t understand each other, although the suppliers sometimes pretended that they did so. One consequence was that the business goals pursued by the customer were not properly achieved. Among the causes of this were an excessively democratic elicitation process and an inadequate use of requirement techniques, particularly use cases. There were also issues that the existing requirement techniques couldn’t deal with, for instance integration with future systems.     

Inventory control model for a supply chain system with multiple types of items and minimum order size requirements

This paper considers a replenishment problem for a single buyer who orders multiple types of items from two or more heterogeneous suppliers in order to sell to end customers. The buyer periodically orders each type of item from the suppliers according to a select inventory control policy. Processing the order, each supplier enforces the policy that an order from the buyer must meet a predetermined minimum order quantity (MOQ). Therefore, the buyer must decide how much to order from each supplier considering the current inventory level, demand forecast, and MOQ requirement. The buyer's problem is formulated as an integer programming model and an efficient implementation strategy is suggested to apply the model to real problems. Numerical experiments are performed to test the validity of the proposed model as well as the efficiency of the implementation strategy. The experimental results show that this model combined with the implementation method yields a considerable cost reduction compared to the most efficient policy currently available.     

Power-based supplier selection in product development projects

As stronger supplier might exert their power to influence a product development project for their own benefit, business negotiations will be more efficient if the customer has a clear understanding of its power with regards to each of its potential suppliers. This article takes the customer perspective in dealing with supplier selection and proposes a method to estimate the power of a customer versus potential suppliers. Based on an evaluation of their power, potential suppliers are then ranked. This selection procedure is illustrated with an example and evaluated against a case study taken from academic literature.     

Marketplace issues in software planning and design

Software management and project decisions must consider many factors. The most recognized return-on-investment drivers include the value to users; the cost of development, maintenance, upgrades, and customer support; and the risks of project failure, budget overrun, and revenue shortfall. We focus on other ROI issues related to positioning software in the marketplace, which serves as an intermediary between a software supplier organization and its customers. Rather than discuss contracted software development for specific customers or open-source software efforts, we emphasize the uncertainties and strategic issues that suppliers encounter in selling or licensing software in the general marketplace. We categorize these issues by the standard ROI measures of revenue, cost, and risk.     

A fuzzy supplier selection model with the consideration of benefits,opportunities, costs and risks

Even though the research on supplier selection is abundant, the works usually only consider the critical success factors in the buyer–supplier relationship. However, the negative aspects of the buyer–supplier relationship must also be considered simultaneously. The main objective in this study is to propose an analytical approach to select suppliers under a fuzzy environment. A fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) model, which incorporates the benefits, opportunities, costs and risks (BOCR) concept, is constructed to evaluate various aspects of suppliers. Multiple factors that are positively or negatively affecting the success of the relationship are analyzed by taking into account experts’ opinion on their importance, and a performance ranking of the suppliers is obtained. TFT-LCD manufacturers in Taiwan, which is the largest TFT-LCD producer country in the world, are facing increasing competition nowadays, and the selection of the most appropriate suppliers for cooperation is essential for firms to achieve competitive advantage. A case study of backlight unit supplier selection for a TFT-LCD manufacturer is presented, and the proposed model is applied to facilitate the decision process. The model is a general form that can be tailored and applied by firms that are making decisions on supplier selection.     

An intelligent supplier management tool for benchmarking suppliers in outsource manufacturing

A global corporation's supply chain usually consists of enterprises and manufacturers that are graphically dispersed around the world, whereby each company is involved in a wide variety of supply chain activities such as order fulfillment, international procurement, acquisition of information technology, manufacturing, and customer service. However, selecting suppliers based on accumulated experience is not both effective and scientific due to subjective judgment and lack of systematic analysis. Therefore, continuously tracking and benchmarking performance of suppliers and forming an appropriate supplier selection mechanism is one of the crucial activities in supply chain management. This paper presents an intelligent supplier management tool (ISMT) using the case-based reasoning (CBR) and neural network (NN) techniques to select and benchmark suppliers. The development of ISMT and how the CBR and NN techniques are used in benchmarking suppliers during the process of new product development in Honeywell Consumer Products (Hong Kong) Limited are presented.     

Leading the Internal Audit Function

Abstract

Customers are increasingly viewing the product and standard service-line offerings from suppliers as commodities. As a result any competitive edge from their offerings is neutralized. To compete suppliers must provide differentiated services to different types of customer segments. However, this means suppliers need to know how profitable, currently and potentially, their customers and prospects are in order to know which types of customers to retain, grow, win-back and acquire as well as how much to optimally spend doing these for each type of customer segment. Most accounting systems fall short providing this information below the product gross profit margin line. What is needed is a profit and loss income report for each customer segment, and ideally for each customer.