Supply chain management, propelled by pressures for responsiveness and cost reductions, is now at the center stage of the business performance of several manufacturing and service organizations. One of the biggest challenges faced by these organizations in the chain is the need to respond to frequent and unpredictable changes in the market. In order to respond to these changes effectively, the organization needs to focus its efforts on design and operation of efficient and effective supply chain networks. In this thesis, a strategic level design model has been developed to determine the configuration of the supply chain network---number, location and capacities of manufacturing plants and distribution centers, expansion of production capacities at manufacturing plants and storage capacity at distribution centers, assignment of distribution centers to customer zones, and amount of finished products to produce, store and ship among plants, distribution centers and customers. The strategic level model interfaces with tactical level planning model by providing input data in the form of aggregate decisions. The tactical planning model in turn determines the raw material suppliers, production level, workforce level, inventory level at the various manufacturing plants, transportations mode between the echelons, and inventory level at the distribution centers in order to minimize the total costs incurred in the system. Sensitivity analysis has been carried out to test the robustness of the models. The model can aid the organization in designing and planning of supply chain network for enabling agile responses. The major contribution of this thesis is the development of a mixed integer programming based decision support tool that uses systems approach to strategic design and tactical planning of supply chain network with stochastic demand considering transshipments of product families.* *This dissertation is a compound document (contains both a paper copy and a CD as part of the dissertation). The CD requires the following system requirements: Adobe Acrobat.Dept. of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses u26 Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis2003 .V53. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 42-03, page: 1049. Adviser: Reza Lashkari. Thesis (M.A.Sc.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 2003.
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