A Study On Multiplant Networks Configuration With Component Commonality

In the development of information technology, global market and economy booming promote the foundation of distributed supply chain and operational system, in which many corporations face various individual demand. Due to fulfill the individual demands from different areas, and consider the factor such as tariff, labor cost and international trade, more and more company have built distributed multiplant networks, which gestate a problem of how to decide the structure of multiplant networks, that is multiplant configuration. On the other hand, Component Commonality, which can be used to produce the diversity of finished products, has become an important mean of Mass Customization productions. Currently, a lot of international company established dispersed productions and operational system, and introduce more common component in their products. In order to exert the benefit of component commonality in a global operational framework, it is necessary to investigate the impact of common component on multiplant configuration.This thesis analyzes a problem on multiplant network configuration in present of component commonality using a tool called Newsvendor Networks Model, by which the strategic capacity decision and operational inventory & production decision can be included in a uniform framework. Different from traditional multiplant network configuration, this thesis employ common component inventory to extend a single period problem to a dynamic multiple periods problem. After making decision about capacity investment, common component inventory decision must be made with the following product demands, which are assumed to be i.i.d in different period. Then production and transportation decisions should be performed once the demands are released. Introducing parameter analysis and linear search technology, model get the optimal capacity, inventory and production decisions, and then educes the impact of unit acquisition cost and transportation cost of common component on multiplant configuration, which gives different managerial insights from the single period problem.