Operations planning and flexibility in a supply chain

Abstract

In dynamic competitive markets, the flexibility of manufacturing system networks such as supply chains (SCs) is particularly interesting. The SC flexibility considered in this paper takes into account two main aspects: the process flexibility of each SC firm and the logistics flexibility concerning the possible connections between suppliers, assemblers and markets. Different configurations of an SC are proposed, in correspondence to different degrees of the process and logistics flexibility. The effects of SC flexibility are then investigated on the operations planning performance of an SC subject to production capacity uncertainty and coping with demand volume and mix variability. In particular, an optimization model is defined to analyse the SC performance in every SC configuration. Managerial guidelines, supporting the management of selecting the appropriate degrees of flexibility and the corresponding SC configuration to be adopted, are finally obtained.