Title: Designing supply chain by coordinating manufacturing process and product development process

Authors: Yohanes Kristianto, Petri Helo

Addresses: Department of Production, Logistics Research Group, University of Vaasa, P.O. Box 700, Yliopistonranta 10, Vaasa, FIN 65101, Finland. ' Department of Production, Logistics Research Group, University of Vaasa, P.O. Box 700, Yliopistonranta 10, Vaasa, FIN 65101, Finland

Abstract: Segregation of product development and manufacturing process creates an engineering problem in concurrent engineering application. Commonality analysis has never been used for solving this problem, but rather solely as a product development tool. This paper focuses on coordinating the manufacturing and product development process to produce supply chain agility. The purpose of this paper is to present a novel approach to managing the product development process by considering strategic safety stock allocation to decide on the customer order decoupling point. The new approach to commonality analysis by multi criteria decision making and vector analysis is developed by optimising the safety stock allocation. The results show that the safety stock allocation increases product commonality. Furthermore, it increases the whole product family profitability by lowering total costs. Product reconfiguration should be carried out in the future in considering safety stock placement. In terms of managerial implication, coordination between the manufacturing process and product development department facilitates supply chain design.

Keywords: mass customisation; SCM; supply chain management; manufacturing processes; manufacturing strategy; coordination; segregation; concurrent engineering; simultaneous engineering; commonality analysis; agility; safety stock allocation; customer orders; decoupling points; multicriteria decision making; office furniture; MCDM; vector analysis; profitability; total costs; product families; new product development; NPD; supply chain design.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2010.035017

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2010 Vol.6 No.3, pp.360 - 380

Published online: 01 Sep 2010 *

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