Supply chain dynamics

The strong bargaining power of major retailers and the higher requirements for speed, service excellence and customization have significantly contributed to transform the Supply Chain Management. These increasing challenges call for an integrated and dynamic Supply Chain Management and for a better integration and alignment with key customers, in order to reduce the firm's time-to-market and build competitive advantage. The thesis aims at providing the partner company, a major player in the consumer goods industry, with a more robust and efficient vendor managed inventory practice, so that the partner can determine the optimum inventory level to satisfy turnover, service level and lead time requirements, whereas minimizing lost sales and total costs in the system. The team developed a Supply Chain Dynamics framework to help the partner to establish new service level strategies, strongly oriented to the strategic importance of its products and customers, and to map the key system-wide drivers that impact the overall number of inventory turns, service level and total costs. Additionally, in order to run simulations and estimate the outcomes of the proposed recommendations, the team developed a "Multi-Echelon" simulator and used a commercial "Supply Chain Dynamics" simulator.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering Systems Division.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2003

Authors dc:creator

• Barbosa, Ricardo Wagner Lopes, 1976-
• Fan, Edward, 1973-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• James Masters and James B. Rice, Jr.

• Engineering Systems Division.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/29533

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/29533