Matching product-supply chain strategy and identifying the decoupling point for hybrid supply chain strategy

Today, enterprises might implement different supply chain strategies for different products in order to survive and to increase their market shares. The use of different supply chain strategies enables the enterprises to deliver mass customized products whenever their customers demand and to adapt to the rapidly changing conditions in the market. This study aims to match the products of a furniture parts manufacturer with different supply chain strategies in order to suggest solutions with a view to maintain its competitive advantage and superiority. For this purpose, all products of the manufacturer were examined and 98,9% of the products was found to be functional or innovative. On the other hand, those products that were not classified as functional or innovative were clustered under product families. The product families that were clustered were also classified. All products and product families classified as functional or innovative were matched with lean and agile supply chain strategies respectively, and material decoupling points were determined in line with those strategies. However, those product families that were not clustered under any classification were matched with the hybrid supply chain strategies. Material decoupling point (DP) approach was preferred in this study. It was determined that a decoupling point for nine different product families could be identified; whereas, the product family that had the highest demand and the widest product diversity was selected for the continuation of the study. In order to identify the DP for this product family that was matched with the hybrid supply chain strategy, three dimensions including market, product and process as well as eleven criteria including demand predictability, delivery reliability, delivery time, size of the orders, frequency of the orders, modular product design, inventory holding cost, cost of delayed order, production time, process and employee flexibility and position of the bottleneck point were identified. The dimensions, criteria under these dimensions and the relationships between the criteria were analysed; relative importance levels of the criteria was determined; the causal relationships between the criteria were found and the network relationship map between the criteria were produced by using the fuzzy Dematel method. The weights of these criteria were calculated using DANP (Dematel with ANP) method. Fuzzy TOPSIS method was used to select the most appropriate DP alternative based on the weights of the criteria and the coating workstation was chosen as the best alternative. It was determined that the lean strategy should be used up to this workstation, while the agile strategy should be used after this workstation where the products were differentiated. Although the alternatives were prioritized using the fuzzy DANP-TOPSIS method, it was aimed to find what the optimal alternative choice of the manufacturer would be under certain constraints. The closeness coefficient of the alternatives obtained by the fuzzy TOPSIS was included in the ZOGP model as weights. With the use of this model, the cutting, coating and packaging workstations were identified as the set of alternative solutions. The basic product type of the manufacturer was found to be innovative and thus, mainly the agile supply chain strategy should be used. In addition to the agile strategy, effective use of lean and hybrid strategies for certain products was also suggested to the manufacturer, which is another finding of this study.