Supply Chain Network Design

In today's demanding marketplace, companies must create and maintain the most efficient supply chain possible. When defining the structure and network of your supply chain one must consider a wide range of alternatives, including site locations and capacities, product mix, transportation, inventory deployment, suppliers, customer demand and service level. The objective of supply chain network design is to improve the performance of the whole supply chain. Companies do not want to improve one element of the supply chain at the expense of overall effectiveness and efficiency. For instance, we may want to streamline the production processes at a plant, but savings must not be made at the expense of increased inventory or logistics costs, which drive the overall cost upwards instead of down. Supply chain network design must consider all elements of the supply chain. This means we can also focus on a particular element and investigate it in the context of the whole supply chain, thereby ensuring any improvements that have a positive impact on the whole supply chain.