Using data mining to improve supplier release stability

Communications of material requirements between a manufacturer and its supply base is fraught with inefficiencies. Suppliers complain that variation in material quantity requires them to keep extra capacity on hand, as well as preventing optimization of their labor and equipment. The manufacturer experiences issues with instability, also preventing optimization of labor and equipment. This paper proposes using data mining, a series of statistical and artificial intelligence techniques for extracting knowledge from large databases, to identify opportunities for reducing material requirement variation.