Cooperator selection and industry assignment in supply chain network with line balancing technology

Losses from cooperator delivery delay may greatly undermine the supply chain network performance leading to losses in the increased business cost. This paper mainly discusses and explores how to create the optimized cooperators and industry sets intelligently in the supply chain network. A mathematical model and a genetic algorithm solving model for cooperator selection and industry assignment in supply chain network are presented to minimize the total delivery delay loss. The mathematical model based on the line balancing technology since the supply chain network can be treated as the extension of assembly production line can be used as a foundation for further practical development in the design of supply chain network. The genetic algorithm solving model is adopted to get a satisfactory near-optimal solution with great speed. The application results in real cases show that the solving model presented by this research can quickly and effectively plan the most suitable type of the cooperators and industry sets in supply chain network. 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.