Research On Multi-tier Supplier Collaborative Project Management For Compulicated Product Development

During the development of complex product, heavy equipment or big engineering project, multi-tier supplier collaboration combined enterprise resources located in different areas to a unity to coordinate business, knowledge, information and data in a safe, effective way across partners. Multi-tier supplier collaborative project is the general concept of all temporary tasks in finishing the design and development process across enterprises in a unique time, resource, performance and scale restriction situation. The planning, scheduling, controlling activities to achieve collaborative project goals are called multi-tier supplier collaborative project management (MSCPM).In aviation, aerospace, ship, automobile and equipment industries, there are many components and parts designed and developed by large amounts of engineers of different supplier companies. Even for each part, there are still several potential suppliers to select, which are different in strength, credit, security, etc. To enhancing the efficiency of business collaboration, suppliers should combine to a virtual enterprise alliance under the directions of the main manufacturer.This dissertation puts efforts in some key points of MSCPM in multi-tier suppliers, parallel projects, limited resources and distributed scenarios. These technologies include collaborative supplier selection, multi-tier plan scheduling, dynamic planning deviation identification and controlling, and associated system. Detailed research works includes:The multi-tier supplier collaborative project management framework proposed in this research employs a new analysis model to settle the requirements come from complex product development industry. By analyzing the collaboration level, collaboration element, collaborative interaction process, and collaborative information stream, collaborative project management ontology and application scenario have been draw out. This is the theoretical basis in future research.This study presents a new supplier selection criteria and attributes towards collaborative product development between suppliers and customers. Five main aspects are summarized as R&D capacity, information system, willing to collaborate, enterprise background and risk management. Another novel point in this study is the algorithm named TrFN-AHP, which helps to qualify the uncertain linguistic weights made by decision makers and give a more reasonable result to the enterprise. This new approach is based on AHP and fuzzy number.By detailed analysis of multi-tier project scheduling making, this study established a new method to solve the project similarity model based on grey system theory. With the help of reformed generic algorithm, we can get the global best solution for task start time in a multi-restrictions shortest project date making model. Based on critical chain theory, a general process is introduced to set buffers in current schedule.Project schedule controlling includes schedule tracing, deviation identification, dynamic correcting and task rescheduling. Good controlling methods can help project execution process in a close-loop with high robustness. In this study, we analyzed the collaborative process of MSCPM schedule controlling phase. We reformed traditional schedule front line method with resource utility ratio and buffer. By detailed analysis of effecting scopes in delay and rescheduling, we proposed a new deviation correction method based on critical chain buffers.A prototype software system is developed in this research, which aims to verify the research contents above. Research results in this study provided several novel methods and framework to shorten distances between theoretical research and requirements in industries.