A Supply Chain Configuration Tool

The manufacturing of complex products often involves the assembly of other products, or sub-assemblies. Furthermore, these sub-assemblies may be manufactured by different suppliers. As a result, the specification of the assembly process for the final product contains relationships between multiple supply chain components, including business entities, manufacturing processes, products, and parts. This specification, involving the coordination and arrangement of supply chain components to support final product assembly, is referred to as a supply chain configuration. A supply chain configuration tool is used to recognize and modify the relationships between these components. Users of this tool may be engineers, purchasing agents, program managers, or other personnel concerned with the configuration’s dependencies. The focus of this paper is on the development of such a tool and its use from the perspective of a purchasing agent. INTRODUCTION Complex products are typically manufactured by assembling a specific set of subcomponents matching and contributing to the desired specifications of the final overall product. These include such products as automobiles and computers, where the final product is composed of various subassemblies, often made by different manufacturers. To perform assembly of the final product, the creation of subassemblies and the coordination of processes among manufacturers must be arranged. This arrangement, the supply chain, represents a configuration of business entities and the parts and processes they provide in order to produce a final overall product. Among these supply chain components (e.g. parts, manufacturing processes, products, sub-assemblies, vendors in the supply chain, etc.), various relationships exist, representing dependencies between the components. These dependencies are based on factors such as product design and specifications, agreements among business entities, and product fabrication requirements. A collection of components and the relationships between them comprises a supply chain configuration. Figure 1 illustrates relationships found between components in a typical supply chain configuration.