A decision support system for consumer driven supply networks

Abstract

In this thesis, a decision support system is constructed to manage tactical and strategic level decision in a consumer driven supply networks. Decision making process includes many decision makers, multiple objectives, and high complexity most of the time. Therefore, senior and top management seek for a tool to handle these problems. This decision support system should have extended functionality that enable customization, optimization, what- if analysis. Since the investigated problem is multi-objective by nature, Pareto analysis and developing efficient frontiers for different decision measures becomes vital. The motivation of this study is not to develop the best optimization model that solves supply network problems but to design a tool that manages these large scale optimization models for real life applications where the decision-maker has a limited knowledge or time to handle the very much details of the decision making process. In addition to these, synchronizing several functions that define different portions of the entire supply network with their objectives, parameters and constraints is crucial. Our supply network model includes several generic concepts from market planning, promotion planning, rough cut capacity planning, demand planning and material resource planning, Together with these synchronized sub- functions, decision nodes that enable top managers to create their own scenarios at the higher level and to manage the model are constructed.