Enterprise Modeling of Supply Chains Involving Multiple Entity Flows: Role of Flexibility in Enhanging Lead Time Performance

Subhash Wadhwa, K.S. Rao

Abstract

There is a growing need for developing effective enterprise models tor supply chain systems to help improve the time­ based performance measures. Developing of these models becomes challenging when multiple entity flows need to be simultaneously modeled over a time horizon. For instance most research efforts on supply chains do not explicitly model the multiple entity flows of a manufacturing system that may be an explicit and important part of the supply chain. Often some important facets of modem enterprises such as its flexibility are ignored. In our experience there is a crucial need to develop and study enterprise models of supply chains with a key focus on judicious deployment and exploitation of flexibility. This implies modeling of both manufacturing flexibility and supply chain flexibility. The effective use of flexibility requires a good decision­-information synchronization to dynamically control the multiple entity flows through the enterprise subsystems. However, such studies involving the combined effect of flexibility at more than one level have received less attention of the researchers. One possible reason could be the complexity involved in such studies. But, it is important to understand the interactions between flexibility at various levels of the supply chain to understand their trade-offs and to ensure that they reinforce each other in a useful manner. It is also possible that some flexibility types may substitute each other in a more cost effective manner. Keeping this in view, this paper presents the results of a conceptual study complemented by simulation models aimed at understanding the individual as well as combined impact of manufacturing flexibility and supply chain flexilbility on the lead-time performance of a supply chain enterprise. The studies indicate that both types of flexibility are equally important and to some extent they can substitute for each other. However, the combined effect of these two flexibility types appears to be more beneficial than their individual effects. Further, this benefit is observed to be much higher at lower levels of flexibility. These observations are important for the designers and managers of the flexible supply chain systems to arrive at appropriate types and judicious levels of flexibility to attain significant imovements in lead-time performance. Enterprise modeling of supply chains with a focus on flexibility offers an enormous potential. This paper addresses this interesting and challenging domain

Keywords

Flexibility, Enterprise Modeling, Manufacturing Flexibility, Supply Chain Flexibility, Control, Lead Time Performance.

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