A multi agent approach for simultaneous design of a product and its supply chain: Suppliers' selection example

摘要

In recent decades, the simultaneous design of a product and its supply chain has become a trend in the manufacturing industry. This approach, requiring massive data sharing that allows different designers to collaborate in order to choose the best product design along with its corresponding supply chain, taking into account cost, quality, and time. To get a successful collaboration between designers, a model of multi agent system is presented. The model is based on a framework containing two different levels: product design level and Supply chain design level. This architecture aims to have a better cooperation between designers. Since the presented agents are autonomous and have the power to decide about product design choices and supply chain configuration in a simultaneous way, we present an example based on a multi-objective approach to select from several product redesigns and among several suppliers, the best redesign accompanied by the best suppliers that optimize supply, transportation, storage and quality of components. A case study is presented in the end to have a better insight of the proposed model.