Resilience cloud-based global supply chain network design under uncertainty: Resource-based approach

Highlights

• Efficient and resilience network is designed by proposed fuzzy multi-objective optimization model.

• Service-oriented technique for network design is compatible with cloud manufacturing approach.

• Appropriate network resiliency is achieved via considering compromise between robustness, agility, leanness, and flexibility.

• Efficient solution algorithm is developed includes fuzzy MCDM and augmented ε-constraint method.

Abstract

This study presents a fuzzy multi-objective mathematical programming model to design an efficient and resilience global supply chain network structure based on the service-oriented approach. Service composition and transportation within globally scattered resources are considered under the cloud manufacturing paradigm. The proposed comprehensive model is adapted to a global electrical medical device manufacturing system. Key performance measures include robustness, agility, leanness, and flexibility as resiliency pillars are considered in designing the network under uncertainty. To efficiently deal with the computational tractability of this non-linear and multi-objective optimization problem, a new hybrid solution algorithm is developed that incorporates fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making methods and augmented ε-constraint method. Obtained computational results of a real case study present that the proposed service-oriented global supply chain network design can respond to its global customers’ demands in a resilient as well as efficient manner.

Introduction

Over the last three decades, global supply chain (GSC) advances are changing the world business environment (Hasani & Khosrojerdi, 2016). Various drivers such as facilitated liberalization of border transactions, the next revolution in industrial manufacturing and information services, and improvement in logistic operations and performance have provided firms with more motivations to decompose production processes and to geographically delocalize them (Hasani, Mokhtari, & Fattahi, 2020). In the aspect of economic viewpoint, the development of the global supply chain is associated with the comparative advantage theory. Via delocalizing production processes at various levels such as research and development, concept design, engineering design, manufacturing, product packaging, logistics, marketing, product distribution, after-sale services, and more in different countries, transnational corporations can take advantage of the greatest accessible required resources around the world, to preserve their competitiveness by enhancing productivity and reducing costs as leanness concerns (Hasani, Zegordi, & Nikbakhsh, 2012).

With rising vertical specialization, GSCs have become extended and increasingly complex (De Backer & Miroudot, 2013). To attain the desired level of economic efficiency, successful design and implementation of outsourcing as well as offshoring strategies have been noticed in a worldwide production environment (Kim et al., 2018, Schoenherr, 2010). Therefore, GSCs have been converted to the general organizational status of worldwide production systems. But, most of these GCSs are consisted of agents acting indigently with their preferences and without appropriate power of optimizing the SCND. In such circumstances, SCM is currently perceived as a central actor as well as an effective approach to value creation for customers. A service-oriented approach leads to a systematic architecture that supports mission-critical transactions as well as expands SCM integration. The service-oriented approach distributes SCM functions as processing services on the available network. These SCM functions can be individually established and joined into upper-value business processes. This service-oriented approach offers supply chain stakeholders with understandable services that they can combine into business processes as needed. The main objective of the service-oriented approach is agility enhancement of supply chain as an important competitive advantage– appropriate facing with the speed of changes and uncertainty within a supply chain management environment.

Extending supply chain borders lead to more challenges in supply chain management (SCM) affected by more uncontrolled factors. In this complex business environment, a more need to supply chains that could be sustained under variations of business environments is strictly felt. This supply chain ability, namely robustness, reveals the capability of accommodating and deal with unexpected events and yet able to maintain desired results (Durach, Wieland, & Machuca, 2014). On the other hand, in a highly competitive global business environment, the supply chain should have the ability to rapidly modify its tactics and operations within its organization as an agility issue (Mohd Rashid, Loke, & Ooi, 2014). Finally, a flexible global supply chain should appropriately respond to changes in demand and the business environment to either create or preserve a competitive advantage.

To tackle such complexity in global supply chain management, new production strategies can be used to enhance the multi-dimensional performance of the supply chain such as cloud manufacturing. The cloud manufacturing system denotes an integrated service-oriented networked product development and manufacturing system wherein service users are empowered to organize, choose, and use adapted product required resources and services during the various product life cycles to adaptable manufacturing models (Dazhong, David, Wang, & Schaefer, 2014). The considered approach for utilizing cloud manufacturing system could facilitate utilizing distributed resources across the world while supply chain performance under-considered performance measures.

In this paper, a comprehensive multi-objective mathematical model is developed to design of GSC via considering a service-oriented approach include service selection and composition tasks. For this purpose, a new comprehensive structure for service management tasks includes service composition in sequential, loop, parallel, and hybrid manner under the cloud manufacturing paradigm is developed. This service-oriented approach leads to structural changes in the network design of GSC to achieve a higher level of agility, efficiency, and resiliency. The aim of the proposed network design model is to minimize the total cost of the global supply chain, minimize the total demand responding time, and maximize the global supply chain resilience. Uncertainties of model input parameters such as service providing cost, resource capacity, and service product demand are described by fuzzy numbers. The proposed network design model tries to configure a global supply chain in a cost-effective, as well as resilient manner. To handle the proposed multi-objective fuzzy optimization model, a new hybrid solution algorithm incorporated fuzzy multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methods and augmented the ε-constraint method.