“A Comparative Research Upon Various Techniques and Models of Supply Chain Network” |

ABSTRACT:

A supply chain is a complex network which involves theproducts, services and information flows between suppliers and customers. Atypical supply chain is composed of different levels, hence, there is a need tooptimize the supply chain by finding the optimum configuration of the networkin order to get a good compromise between the multi-objectives such as costminimization and lead-time minimization. There are several multi-objectiveoptimization methods which have been applied to find the optimum solutions setbased on the Pareto front line. In this study, a swarm-based optimizationmethod, namely, the bees algorithm is proposed in dealing with themulti-objective supply chain model to find the optimum configuration of a givensupply chain problem which minimizes the total cost and the total lead-time.The supply chain problem utilized in this study is taken from literature andseveral experiments have been conducted in order to show the performance of theproposed model; in addition, the results have been compared to those achievedby the ant colony optimization method. The results show that the proposed beesalgorithm is able to achieve better Pareto solutions for the supply chainproblem. Increasing competitive pressures are forcing companies toincrease their rates of innovation. The increasing rate of innovation shortenseach product’s duration in the market, thereby compressing each product’s lifecycle. Without proper management, increasing product turnover will increasedesign and manufacturing costs. More frequent product development cyclesrequire additional product development resources. Shorter production runsinhibit a company’s ability to achieve manufacturing cost reductions byexploiting the learning curve and scale economies. Unless companies canefficiently manage multiple generations of the product, there is a substantialrisk that costs will spiral out of control. For years, researchers and practitioners have primarilyinvestigated the various processes within manufacturing supply chainsindividually. Recently, however, there has been increasing attention placed onthe performance, design, and analysis of the supply chain as a whole. Thisattention is largely a result of the rising costs of manufacturing, theshrinking resources of manufacturing bases, shortened product life cycles, theleveling of the playing field within manufacturing, and the globalization ofmarket economies. The objectives of this study are to: (1) provide a focusedreview of literature in multi-stage supply chain modeling and (2) define aresearch agenda for future research in this area.