Abstract
Abstract The characteristics of today's competitive environment, such as the speed with which products are designed, manufactured, and distributed, and the need for higher responsiveness and lower operational cost, are forcing companies to search for innovative ways to do business. The concept of agile manufacturing has been proposed in response to these challenges for companies. This paper copes with the strategic and tactical level decisions in agile supply chain network design. An efficient mixed-integer linear programming model that is able to consider the key characteristics of agile supply chain such as direct shipments, outsourcing, different transportation modes, discount, alliance (process and information integration) between opened facilities, and maximum waiting time of customers for deliveries is developed. In addition, in the proposed model, the capacity of facilities is determined as decision variables, which are often assumed to be fixed. Computational results illustrate that the proposed model can be applied as a power tool in agile supply chain network design as well as in the integration of strategic decisions with tactical decisions.
Highlights
In recent years, the design and implementation of agile supply chain strategies have increasingly attracted interest and some companies such as Zara and Gina Tricot have achieved many advantages by employing agile strategy
To overcome literature gaps in agile supply chain network design, we present a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model that is able to consider agility concepts such as response to customers in maximum allowable time, direct shipments besides the traditional shipments, alliance between opened facilities in different tiers, safety stock, different transportation modes, discount, and outsourcing besides the traditional features of the Supply chain network design (SCND) area
In this paper, we proposed a supply chain network design problem for a new market opportunity in an agile manufacturing system
Summary
The design and implementation of agile supply chain strategies have increasingly attracted interest and some companies such as Zara and Gina Tricot have achieved many advantages by employing agile strategy. Agile supply chain includes companies such as suppliers, production centers, and distribution centers, which are legally separate but, in terms of operations, are linked together by forward-flow materials and feedback information. Agile supply chain is focused on improving responsiveness, speed, and flexibility that is able to respond and react quickly and effectively to changing markets (Lin et al 2006). Agility is a term applied to an organization that has created the processes, tools, and training to enable it to respond quickly to customer needs and unforeseen market changes while still controlling costs and quality (Christopher et al 2004). It is concerned with end customers in order to be able to specify customer needs and responds to them as soon as possible
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