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Towards a Reconfigurable Supply Network Model

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.

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‹ Welcome to the Supply Chains session of IPROMS 2006Coordination model in the supply chain ›
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Submitted by tk328 on Thu, 29/06/2006 - 3:41pm.
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Frequency and the effects of reconfiguring Supply Network Model
Submitted by kwng on Mon, 03/07/2006 - 11:46pm.

Thank you for a very interesting paper. I was just wondering about RSN threshold in deciding when is the time to reconfigure. In reality, supply network faces many challenges which will lead to changes in performances and these changes maybe due to many reasons including their own supply network (sub-tier). If RSN model perform frequent reconfiguration due to changes based on incompatibility and performance problems instead finding out the source of problem and attempting to improve it, it can cause problems to the production line, the quality assurance dept., logistic dept. and the inventory system. I believe, the time required to discover and solve deficiencies in the newly established relationship can sometimes be much longer than fixing poor performance or incompatibility of the current supplier. Is there any study on the effects of rapid changes in supply chain network to other departments?
I believe, if RSN allows rapid change which improve the supply chain network but causes great confusion and disruption to other departments, it would not be beneficial to a company.

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Re: Frequency and the effects of RSN
Submitted by tk328 on Tue, 11/07/2006 - 3:46pm.

Thank you for your felicitous comment. Indeed, a rapid change in the RSN would probably cause some disturbance to other supply network components. However, this disturbance should be minimal if the characteristics of the RSN that we suggest, such as modularity and convertibility, hold. Moreover, diagnosability should contribute towards identifying problems in the newly established relationship and deal with them. We believe that you have made a good point and we intend to include in our future research the idea of having a “threshold” of reconfiguration and studying the impact of it on other supply network components.

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Thank you
Submitted by rodondo4 on Wed, 12/07/2006 - 2:17am.

Thank you for your reply.

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Thank you for your reply
Submitted by kwng on Fri, 14/07/2006 - 9:35pm.

Thank you for your reply. I think diagnosing and identifying problems in the newly established relationship
is very critical and agreed that it will play a vital role in deciding the optimum configuration of RSN.

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