A comparison of production control mechanisms in integrated supply chain networks

Keywords : Integrated Supply Chain Network, Push, Pull and Hybrid Control, Stochastic modelling Supply chain management is a managerial philosophy and its application has been considered in an integrated framework to address to the organizational functions. Since, receipt of raw materials from the manufacturing processes to the distribution and delivery of products to customers includes organizational functions. Also, this idea enables manufacturing organizations to achieve higher quality products, lower inventory quantities, and better customer services. Effective production control mechanisms are important for any manufacturing organisations. In operations management literature, several different production control mechanisms have been proposed in order to obtain effective production control in a manufacturing environment. Push, pull, and hybrid control are the most common and crucial ones in manufacturing area. In this thesis, an integrated supply chain network was modelled. The designed supply chain network has four control mechanisms that were formulated by making use of stochastic modelling tools. Thus, production control mechanisms were analysed and compared in respect of three performance criteria with a developed simulation model. Second, some lot sizing methods were adopted to the suitable production control mechanisms in order to enhance better system performance. Finally, production lead times, transportation times, and lot sizing effects were numerically investigated in multi stage supply chain systems under capacity constraints. Simulation results have showed that the recommended hybrid control mechanism (hybrid2) is the best one in all of the control mechanisms for serial production systems. By the means of this study in addition to the developed solution approaches, new insights for integrated supply chain networks have been provided by achieving satisfactory results.