Performance improvement in supply chains through better partners' selection
Résumé
The increasing product complexity leads supply chains to take more and more account of realization phase expectations. This paper discusses exploratory results about the measurement of collaboration situations between partners of a given product development project. The product architecture is used as a tool to model the supply chain using the gBOMO (generalised Bill Of Materials and Operations). The proposed approach models simultaneously product and supply chain architectures pointing out the sequencing of tasks and intertwined relations between partners. Through the introduction of compatibility, the goal is to help a company's managers to select their most relevant partners not only based on suppliers' selection criteria but also by using the inter-partners compatibility. To do so, it will be necessary to develop compatibility measures which should be assessed for each couple of immediate neighbour partners. We suggest a classification of different collaboration situations allowing performance improvement. This early consideration of partners' compatibility could provide more relevant supply chain avoiding dysfunctions occurring during later phases.