The Research Of The Evaluation Of The Automobile Manufacturing Enterprise Supply Chain Flexibility

The automobile manufacturing industry is the pillar industry of China's economy. It plays an important role in increasing revenue, boosting employment and promoting the development of the economy. The automobile manufacturing enterprise as a cornerbone of the automobile manufacturing industry can not complete the whole process which contains the parts and components production, the vehicle assembly and the final product selling to customers independently. It should join the upper and lower enterprises to implement the supply chain management, coordinating completing the whole process. However, with the rapid development of the scientific technology, the acceleration of the global economy integration and the outbreak of the global financial crisis, the uncertain factors the supply chain faces increase gradually. The uncertainty will have an important influence on the supply chain management, so the automobile manufacturing enterprise supply chain is no exception. The flexibility as the medicine to the uncertainty becomes particularly important during the days of which the uncertainty increases gradually. The automobile enterprise supply chain can make the external change an action guide when implementing the supply chain flexibility management so that it can improve the response ability, improve the customers'satisfaction to products, enhancing the competitiveness of the supply chain whose core is the automobile manufacturing enterprise. Also, the evaluation of the automobile manufacturing enterprise flexibility not only provides a tool to diagnose and evaluate the supply chain flexibility, but also helps the automobile manufacturing enterprise supply chain pay attention to the importance of the supply chain flexibility.In the light of the above factors, this research analyses the flexibility of the whole supply chain from the external and internal angle on the basis of the supply chain management theory and the flexibility definition. Also, on the basis of that, it establishes the evaluation index system of the automobile manufacturing enterprise supply chain flexibility. And at the same time, it uses the index system to evaluate the flexibility of the automobile manufacturing enterprise supply chain. In the end, it elicits the flexibility of the automobile manufacturing enterprise supply chain.In this research, the content of the framework includes seven parts:Chapter I: Preface. It clarifies the background, the subject, the significance, the method, the technology route and the innovation point of the research.Chapter II: Research review. It summarizes the status quo of the flexibility, the supply chain flexibility and the automobile flexibility, laying the solid theoretical basis for the research.Chapter III: Theoretical analysis of the automobile manufacturing enterprise supply chain flexibility. On the basis of the analysis of the structure of the supply chain, the definition of the automobile manufacturing enterprise supply chain flexibility and the source of the uncertainty,it analyses that the external flexibility of the automobile manufacturing enterprise supply chain can be divided into the external flexibility of the automobile manufacturing enterprise and the parts and components suppliers, the external flexibility of the automobile manufacturing enterprise and dealers, the external flexibility of the automobile manufacturing enterprise and customers. Also, the internal flexibility of the automobile manufacturing enterprise can be divided into the internal flexibility of the parts and components suppliers and the internal flexibility of the automobile manufacturing enterprise. Furthermore, it analyses that the external flexibility of the automobile manufacturing enterprise and the parts and components suppliers can be divided into the time flexibility, the product flexibility, the number flexibility and the associate flexibility. It analyses that the external flexibility of the automobile manufacturing enterprise and dealers can be divided into the capital support flexibility and the selling task flexibility. It analyses the external flexibility of the automobile manufacturing enterprise and customers can be divided into the time flexibility, the product flexibility and the number flexibility. It analyses that the internal flexibility of the parts and components suppliers and automobile manufacturing enterprise can be divided into research and development flexibility and the production flexibility.Chapter IV: Establishment of the index system of the automobile manufacturing enterprise supply chain flexibility and the quantitative method of the index. The index is divided into quantitative indexes and qualitative indexes. Also, it analyses the quantitative method of the quantitative index and elicits the relationship between each quantitative index data and the flexibility.Chapter V: Evaluation method of the automobile manufacturing enterprise supply chain flexibility. On the basis of the analysis of the character of the automobile manufacturing enterprise supply chain flexibility, it chooses the FCE as the method of the research. Meanwhile, it introduces the evaluation method.Chapter VI: Empirical evaluation. Putting an automobile manufacturing enterprise supply chain as an evaluation object, it evaluates the automobile manufacturing enterprise supply chain flexibility using FCE. It concludes that B = (0 .0240,0.4004,0.4460,0.1216,0.0081).Choosing 0.4460 which is the max number of the vector as the result of the evaluation according to the max subjection principle. And, it elicits the flexibility of the automobile manufacturing enterprise supply chain is common. Also, it finds out the bottle-neck affecting the flexibility of the automobile manufacturing enterprise supply chain. That is the external flexibility of the automobile manufacturing enterprise and customers, the external flexibility of the automobile manufacturing enterprise and dealers. Meanwhile, it gives some advice to improve the flexibility, such as, the automobile manufacturing enterprise should improve the attention to the market, implement the delay strategy of delaying assembling of the automobile until the customers make orders, set up reasonable stock, adjust the selling task that is given to dealers timely.Chapter VII: The conclusion and the further recommendation of research. The chapter sums up the research and gives some advice to do the further research. For example, evaluating the culture flexibility of respective member of the automobile manufacturing enterprise supply chain and analyzing the performance of the automobile manufacturing enterprise supply chain affecting by the flexibility.