engleski

Production Networks and Partner Selection Problem

The process of globalization, and recently global economic crisis, are forcing researchers to seek for new flexible business-organizational structures. It is clear that the classical vision of the enterprise and its activities no longer corresponds to economic realities. New manufacturing paradigm called personalized production is taking place. Personalized production creates a new vision of a modern enterprise which needs to unite the somewhat contradictory requirements: specialization vs. flexibility. There is a need of new production systems, like reconfigurable manufacturing system. Systems that can achieve the ultimate goal: to be “living factory”. However, such a reconfigurable structure as “living factory” can be also achieved by networking small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) into production networks. It is only important that every SME of production network is capable and wiling to be part of special cooperation inside network called virtual enterprise (VE). For each new product a new virtual enterprise is formed from different SMEs. Furthermore, the evaluation of enterprises performances is needed to solve the problem of the selection of enterprises in production network, or partner selection problem. Since, the partner selection problem is multicriteria problem it is necessary to use some multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA) method. However, to completely solve partner selection problem a combination of metaheuristic optimization algorithms and MCDA methods must be used. In this chapter, usage of special multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA) method is presented. General conclusion is that production networks represent future of manufacturing ; especially they represent possible solution for the new production-organizational paradigm “Production as a Service”.

Production networks, Personalized production, MCDM, Partner selection problem

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