Bridging planning silos: A cross-functional decision support system for capacity, order, and supplier decisions in global production networks

The complexity and dynamism of global production networks require interlocked decision-making processes, including planning production capacity and capabilities, allocating orders, and selecting supplier options. In large companies, these planning processes are spread over several functions, leading to inefficient global decisions and increased coordination costs. This work proposes an integrated planning process for multi-echelon production networks that includes all three decision types mentioned. A systematic design process is developed and implemented as an optimisation problem. The results from an automotive supplier use case demonstrate significant advantages over the existing fragmented planning approach, as well as improvements in decision-making time.