Coordinating product, process, and supply chain decisions: A constraint satisfaction approach

The importance of coordinating product, process, and supply chain (PPSC) decisions has received much attention and popularity in academia and industry alike. This paper formulates PPSC coordination as a factory loading allocation problem (FLAP) from a constraint satisfaction perspective. A domain-based FLAP reference model is proposed for the conceptualization of a multi-site manufacturing supply chain, considering multiple domains, network structures, product characteristics, decision variables, along with various constraints. A decision propagation structure (DPS) incorporating with a connectionist approach is developed based on the concept of constraint heuristic search to facilitate the exploration of solution spaces. A case study in a multi-national company is presented to illustrate the FLAP framework, which implies practical insights into PPSC coordination.