Innovative Production Machines and Systems Conference - Supply Chains

Welcome to the Supply Chains session of IPROMS 2006

rodondo4 — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 11:41:12 +0000

Dear participants,

I am Taufiq your co-chairman for this session. I would like to extend my warmest welcome to you to this session as part of the 2006 IPROMS virtual conference. I hope you will gain much from this conference and please do participate in the discussions with your comments, not only in this session but also in the other sessions.

Incorporating delay and feedback in intelligent manufacturing strategy selection

soroka — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 13:23:05 +0000

D.T. Pham, Y. Wang, S. Dimov

The previous paper [1] has discussed a new manufacturing strategy selection method based on simultaneous time stamp and a new algorithm for Dynamic causal Mining (DCM). This paper incorporates delay and feedback concepts into DCM to identify dynamic causal relationships between attributes based on separate time stamps. The incorporation brings the algorithm a step closer to system dynamic modelling. This incorporation also enables the discovery of hidden dynamic structures, which can be applied to predict future behaviour of a dynamic system.

Agents in the supply chain: lessons from the life sciences

Efstathiou — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 07:58:17 +0000

J. Efstathiou, A. Calinescu

Keywords: Supply networks, agent-based systems, networks

Supply chains are complex, dynamic organisations that may have undesirable properties, such as the Bullwhip effect. Attempts to map supply networks have been frustrated by the dynamic nature of these organizations. A multidisciplinary research project at the University of Oxford is integrating researchers from the life and social sciences with engineers, physicists, computer scientists and engineers to address fundamentally the modelling and understanding of complex, agent-based dynamic networks. The goal of the project is to enable the design and management of complex distributed systems, such as supply chains. The case study networks of the project include fungal networks, slime moulds and ant colonies. This paper will introduce the research project and explain the advantages of agent-based modelling of supply networks.

Coordination model in the supply chain

caroberta — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 07:55:21 +0000

R. Affonso, F. Marcotte, B. Grabot

Keywords: Coordination, collaboration, key parameters

In the current economic environment, companies have to be able to adapt themselves to the market changes, while keeping their global efficiency. Therefore, coordination and collaboration between companies become an important point to be considered when considering the overall performance of the supply chain. First of all, the respect of the global objectives of the supply chain requires the companies to change their policies in order to adapt their local behaviour to these global objectives. On the other hand, changes in one of the partner may affect the overall behaviour of the supply chain. Thus, the main objective of this paper is to describe how the parameters of the collaboration of a company in a supply chain can influence the parameters of collaboration of the others. Key elements to model inter- company coordination are proposed, considering the collaboration aspects.

Towards a Reconfigurable Supply Network Model

tk328 — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 15:41:05 +0000

T. Kelepouris, C.Y. Wong, A.M. Farid, A.K. Parlikad, D.C. McFarlane

Keywords: Reconfigurable, Supply Network, Modularity

As organisations increasingly need to cope with planned or unplanned strategic and operational changes, the capability to easily and quickly reconfigure their supply chains is becoming an important criterion. In this paper, we propose a set of characteristics and benefits of a so called Reconfigurable Supply Network that allows rapid adjustment of supply chain entities at all levels of enterprises within the network. We propose the use of a Reconfigurable Manufacturing System design principle as a starting point towards building such a model. We extract the key characteristics of Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems and extend these characteristics to a supply network. We then discuss design principles to enable reconfigurability in a supply network.