Title: Scheduling to minimise penalties for a non-dedicated supplier in integrated supply chains

Authors: Anurag Agarwal, Vaidyanathan Jayaraman

Addresses: Department of Information Systems and Decision Sciences, College of Business, University of South Florida, Sarasota, FL 34243, USA. ' Department of Management, School of Business Administration, University of Miami, Coral Gables FL 33124, USA

Abstract: We consider a scheduling problem faced by a supplier in an integrated supply-chain relationship simultaneously with two or more customers. Each customer demands multiple lots of products to be delivered each day. Late deliveries are subject to penalties. The supplier|s problem is to schedule the day|s production, given fixed resources, to minimise the penalties. We propose three heuristics – Earliest Delivery Time Next (EDT), Earliest Loading Time Next (ELT) and Penalty-Based Improvement (PBI) heuristic. Empirical results show that PBI heuristic performs significantly better than the other two heuristics, saving as much as 53% compared to EDT heuristic.

Keywords: supplier scheduling; supply chain integration; mathematical modelling; heuristics; supply chain management; SCM.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMTM.2010.029451

International Journal of Manufacturing Technology and Management, 2010 Vol.19 No.1/2, pp.68 - 81

Published online: 30 Nov 2009 *

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