Manufacturess procurement decision analysis in a supply chain with multiple suppliers

Abstract

Supply chain management issues faced by a manufacturing company are considered in this paper. The supply chain consists of a manufacturing company and its suppliers. The manufacturer produces multiple products with inputs (e.g., raw materials) from the suppliers, but each product needs a different mix of these inputs. The market demand for the products is uncertain. We develop a mathematical model and algorithm, which can help the manufacturer to solve its procurement decision problem: how much of raw material to order from which supplier. The model incorporates such factors as market demand uncertainty, products input requirement, suppliers as well as manufacturers capacity, plus other costs comparable with those in a typical newsboy problem. Numerical examples are presented to see the interacting effects among critical parameters and variables.