Design of synchronised supply chain: a genetic algorithm based six sigma constrained approach

Managing and optimising a supply chain requires an important link in the channel and synchronisation between its business partners. This paper suggests a methodology leading to the synchronisation of the business processes in a supply chain with the objective of minimising the total cost involved. The solution is constrained by a six sigma approach to ensure very high delivery probability within the customer specified delivery window. A mathematical formulation of the problem, inspired by its resemblance to the mechanical assembly tolerancing issues, is developed to relate the costs involved and the tolerances gained. A six sigma constrained Genetic Algorithm (GA) based heuristic is proposed to achieve the optimal solution of the problem. Computational experiments performed on ten randomly generated problems representing real life supply chains, reveal that the proposed GA based heuristic performs well with respect to solution accuracy and efficiency. Towards the end, a detailed analysis of the proposed approach to comprehend its usefulness as a decision-making tool is provided to aid the supply chain experts.