Orchestrating the print supply chain in emerging markets

Print supply chain includes document design, material procurement, document creation, production, warehousing and delivery. Several small and medium scale industry players are involved in this supply chain process. Thus the print supply chain network is a loosely coupled system of spatially dispersed independent companies, working together for delivering value to the customer. This network consists of specialists in printing and complementary players such as packaging companies, logistics providers, IT companies, etc. Our focus in this paper is to design an orchestrator for the governance of end to end print service chain network in consumer oriented sectors such as banking, retail and insurance for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The orchestrator typically does three functions: partner selection, supply chain planning and supply chain execution. In this paper, we concentrate on the second step - the supply chain planning and scheduling and develop a mixed integer programming model, illustrating it with an example.