Modeling of a Build-to-order supply chain with fuzzy costs

Worldwide organizations are striving to improve their productivity in order to stay competitive in the global market. The process of supply chain has become complicated and uncertainties prevail at every stage in the chain. Effective supply chain has become an imperative in order to increase customer satisfaction, reduce costs and handling of demand supply scenario. The Build-to-order manufacturing system is a demand satisfying strategy of supply chain that is involved in assembling of customized products. Adopting a Build-to-order strategy would allow firms to effectively customize their products to a greater degree towards meeting specific requirements of customers. It is proposed to implement an abstract view of a single product, Build-to-order supply chain system for a computer assembling organization. The uncertainties associated with the estimation of various operational cost parameters of the computer assembly are represented by fuzzy numbers. A fuzzy mathematical programming model is developed and utilized for a case study organization is used to evaluate the uncertainty in operational cost. The model is comprised of three objective functions with various cost parameters. This Multi-objective linear programming problem is then reduced to an equivalent single objective linear programming problem. The method improves possibility of getting imprecise total cost. The above model can be extended to other BTO products such as cars, furniture and electronic appliances.