Title: Optimisation of process audit plan for minimising vehicle launch risk using MILP

Authors: Bharatendra K. Rai; Bimal Nepal; Angappa Gunasekaran; Yuzhu Li

Addresses: Department of Decision and Information Sciences, Charlton College of Business, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, 285 Old Westport Road, North Dartmouth, MA 02747-2300, USA ' Industrial Distribution Program, Dwight Look College of Engineering, Texas A&M University, 3367 TAMU College Station, TX 77843-3367, USA ' Department of Decision and Information Sciences, Charlton College of Business, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, 285 Old Westport Road, North Dartmouth, MA 02747-2300, USA ' Department of Decision and Information Sciences, Charlton College of Business, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, 285 Old Westport Road, North Dartmouth, MA 02747-2300, USA

Abstract: Suppliers play a critical role in the success of any organisation. A complex product such as an automobile often involves a large number of suppliers. The need for high supplier quality especially gets highlighted at the time when automobile manufacturers launch new vehicles. A new vehicle launch involves enormous coordination efforts among the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and suppliers distributed across the globe. In such situations, supplier audits are used for minimising associated launch risk. However, allocating limited qualified engineers to supplier plants for an audit becomes a challenging task. This research proposes a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model to allocate engineers to supplier plant locations and create an optimal audit schedule by incorporating the level of risk involved.

Keywords: supplier quality; vehicle launch; supplier audits; optimal audit schedule; mixed integer linear programming; MILP; audit problems; sensitivity analysis; audit risk; payoff; solver; automobile industry; new vehicles; automotive suppliers.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPM.2013.054742

International Journal of Procurement Management, 2013 Vol.6 No.4, pp.379 - 393

Published online: 30 Jan 2014 *

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