Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
381094 | Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence | 2009 | 13 Pages |
The importance of coordinating product, process, and supply chain (PPSC) decisions has received much attention and popularity in academia and industry alike. This paper formulates PPSC coordination as a factory loading allocation problem (FLAP) from a constraint satisfaction perspective. A domain-based FLAP reference model is proposed for the conceptualization of a multi-site manufacturing supply chain, considering multiple domains, network structures, product characteristics, decision variables, along with various constraints. A decision propagation structure (DPS) incorporating with a connectionist approach is developed based on the concept of constraint heuristic search to facilitate the exploration of solution spaces. A case study in a multi-national company is presented to illustrate the FLAP framework, which implies practical insights into PPSC coordination.