Improving customer service level through centralized supply flexibility

This thesis explores a combined application of Supply Chain Management theory for centralized and decentralized distribution systems and Customer Relationship Management techniques in data mining to solve the challenges of supply allocations to individual customer entities at Intel Corporation. The relatively long manufacturing lead time compared to order lead time restricts Intel's supply flexibility from responding to rapid order changes by each customer. As a result, the individual customer service level is sacrificed. Therefore, the objective of the research project is to improve customer service level by global optimization for all customers as opposed to the local optimization that each customer currently operates on. Over-ordering occurs in the local optimization system. The proposed solution is to use a scientific and systematic methodology of data mining to guide operational strategies that will provide incentives to encourage customers to order more accurately with Intel. Through this exercise, the supplies can be virtually centralized at Intel instead of being committed out to each customer in a decentralized fashion. The hypothesis is that the new system with more accurate ordering from customers will result in increased supply flexibility and higher effective service level.

Department dc:contributor.department

Leaders for Manufacturing Program at MIT

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Hsu, Mindy H. (Mindy Hsin-Min)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Donald B. Rosenfield and Roy E. Welsch.

• Sloan School of Management.
• Engineering Systems Division.
• Leaders for Manufacturing Program.

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/1721.1/37127

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/37127