Question

2. What decisions can be made by a supply chain network design application?

• Inventory level and procurement

• The number of facilities to build

• Production quantity at each facility

• Distribution and service links in the network

1. What data is needed for a typical supply chain network design?

• Transportation cost rate
• Demand of customers or service locations
• Fixed cost of building a facility
• Geographical information of locations

There ca be several answers

Answer 1

2.

These below mentioned all decisions can be made by a supply chain network design application, inventory level and procurement, the number of facilities to build, production quantity at each facility, distribution and service links in the network. Key decisions are made on the number, locations, and size of manufacturing plants and warehouses, the assignment of retail outlets to warehouses, etc. Designing Supply Chain Network involves arriving at a satisfactory design framework taking into all elements like product, market, process, technology, costs, external environment and factors and their impact besides evaluating alternate scenarios suiting business requirements. Supply Chain Network designs not only provide an operating framework of the entire business to guide the managements. Network design aims to define best fit Procurement model production, manufacturing Facility, finished Goods Supply Chain, sales and Marketing decisions.

1.

Transportation cost rate, demand of customers or service locations, fixed cost of building a facility, geographical information of locations all data are needed for a typical supply chain network design. Typical data requirements for supply chain network design include demand by customer for each particular product group, supply of manufacturing capabilities and capacities, facility capacity per day basis maximum units of production, costs includes both fixed and variable manufacturing, material handling and transportation costs. Order patterns by frequency, size, season, content, order processing costs, customer service goals data are also important. The greater the amount of data collected, the greater will be the accuracy of the supply chain network design.