The Facility Location Decisions In Global Supply Chains For Electronics Industry

With the manner of international trade and FDI, electronics industry has become typical global industry in the context of globalization, and its supply chain transformed from traditional local model to global model gradually in order to exploit different nations'resources, strengths and markets.The manufacturing facility is crucial during the process of MNC's globalization, so its location decision is an important strategic decision problem. The classical facility location problem, which is an optimization problem, usually applies to local warehouse or DC, while few studies were conducted in terms of manufacturing facility location decision in global supply chain. Therefore, this thesis intends to dedicate on this problem with the modeling tool of AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process) for a specific industry—electronics industry.In order to develop alternatives and criteria which are core for constructing a AHP model, this thesis made a depth research on electronics industry and its supply chain, attempt to identify a method of choosing alternatives from the prospective of supply chain strategy. And, the criteria were identified by combining existing available studies and the characteristics of electronics industry.At last, a real case study is conducted to select the best manufacturing location for a US company as an application of the study of this thesis.