Abstract
The technology in Taiwan’s panel industry is changing fast. However, after the financial tsunami and the increased price for raw materials, enterprises’ abilities to select suppliers and purchase have great influences on plan implementation. Therefore, with the prevailing issues of supply chain management, how to evaluate and select appropriate suppliers has become a very important topic for enterprises. Depending on customers’ needs, the requirements for suppliers vary from industry to industry. On this basis, this study summarizes and analyzes the literature on supplier selection to develop the supplier selection criteria, constructs the hierarchical network architecture by an expert interview, and proposes a complete supplier evaluation model by the fuzzy theory and network analysis. This study shows that the order of the important dimensions is as follows: performance evaluation, customer service, technology and competitiveness, cost benefits, and architecture, and the most important criterion is quality. Finally, the material suppliers of backlight modules in the panel industry are taken as the examples and ranked by VIKOR, based on their merits and demerits, to help related industries to understand their current advantages and disadvantages according to the selection results obtained by the fuzzy analytical network process and improve the gap between their actual situations and enterprises’ expectations and thus enhance their competitiveness.
Highlights
Since the panel industry and DRAM industry were introduced in Taiwan, under the “Two Trillion and Twin Star Development Program,” the government has made great efforts to guide enterprises and conditionally prohibited the industries from entering mainland China
For panel manufacturers, the material cost of backlight modules accounts for about 20–25% of the total cost, indicating the importance of raw materials to the panel industry
As the parts and components of backlight modules are reusable and their costs are high, if the quality, materials, and services can be improved, costs can be reduced, and this result is consistent with the literature
Summary
Since the panel industry and DRAM industry were introduced in Taiwan, under the “Two Trillion and Twin Star Development Program,” the government has made great efforts to guide enterprises and conditionally prohibited the industries from entering mainland China. In addition to the existing labor costs and process optimization, materials are the main reason for panel price fluctuations. E majority of panel materials are backlight modules, liquid crystals, polarizers, ICs, and PCBs. In terms of cost, if the backlight modules require repair, the suppliers will repair and replace components on-site. E main materials to be replaced are membranes and light bars, which are reusable. For panel manufacturers, the material cost of backlight modules accounts for about 20–25% of the total cost, indicating the importance of raw materials to the panel industry. As raw material supply and management are the main parts to enhance competitiveness and reduce costs, many panel manufacturers integrate or form strategic alliances with upstream backlight module plants to maximize benefits
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