Management of the risk of backorders in a MTO–ATO/MTS context under imperfect requirements

Production systems are often classified according to the way production is released, e.g. make-to-stock (MTS), make-to-order (MTO), assembly-to-order (ATO) or engineer-to-order (ETO). The choice of a type of production depends on the decoupling point between customer and supplier. In some supply chains, like in the aeronautical sector, a customer may work according to a MTO process (since his product is highly specific) while his supplier works with a MTS process (since he delivers variants of standards components). This situation sets specific problems that are seldom considered in the literature, especially when collaboration between actors is required for an efficient management of the supply chain, which is the case when uncertainties are present. In this paper, we propose a method based on fuzzy modelling allowing a customer to choose a plan taking into account the uncertainty on his requirements when he works in MTO–ATO while his supplier is in MTS.