An Integrated Design Problem of A Supply Chain

공급능력 및 재고의 통합적 설계에 관한 연구

Consider a supply chain where products are produced at a manufacturing system, shipped to a distribution center, and then supplied to customers. The distribution center controls inventory based on a base-stock policy, and whenever a unit of product is demanded by a customer, an order is released to the production system. Unsatisfied demand is backordered, and the inventory and backordered units are a function of the base-stock level. The manufacturing system is modeled as an M/M/s/c queueing system, and orders exceeding the limited buffer capacity are blocked and lost. The throughput of the manufacturing system and the steady state distribution of the outstanding orders are functions of number of servers and buffers of the manufacturing system. There is a profit obtained from throughput and costs due to servers and buffers of the manufacturing system, and also costs due to inventory positions of the distribution center, and we want to maximize the total production profit minus the total cost of the supply chain by simultaneously determining the optimal number of servers and buffers of the manufacturing system and the optimal base-stock level of the distribution center. We develope two algorithms, one analytical but without guarantee of the optimal solution and one optimal but without complete analytical proofs. The problem integrates strategic problem of the manufacturing system with tactical problem of the distribution center in a supply chain.