Tactical management for coordinated supply chains

• A model which allows considering the SC echelons to be flexibly linked together is presented.
• SC network limits may be adjusted according to the capacity to coordinate the resultant structure.
• The objectives of all echelons SC's can be easily integrated.
• The resulting model is flexible enough to allow a coordinated management at the tactical level.

Current supply chain (SC) optimization models deal with material and information flows along few echelons of the SC (“own SC”), minimizing the role of the complex behavior of third parties (raw materials and utilities suppliers, clients, waste and recovery systems, etc.) in the decision-making process of this SC of interest. Third parties are just represented by simplified parameters (capacity, cost, etc.) usually considered constant, but the decisions based on this picture are not adequate when the third parties’ behavior is significantly affected by these decisions or other circumstances, especially when global coordination is attained. In this work, the role of these third parties, which might face different objectives, has been integrated and a solution based on the full SC management problem is proposed. This results on a generic model which may be used to optimize the planning decisions of the multi-product multi-site SC of interest (production/distribution echelons), taking into account the production vs. demand coherence among this SC and the third parties. The features of the proposed model are illustrated using a case study which considers the coordination of a series of resource (energy) generation SCs linked to a production/distribution SC (“SC of interest”). The results show how the behavior of the considered SCs determines the best planning decisions of each organization, which will depend on the way used to coordinated them (e.g. toward less total or individual costs), adding to the PSE science a new point of view which allows all involved organizations to share responsibilities in the system.