A mathematical planning model for vertical integration

수직통합 의사결정을 위한 계량분석모형

This paper presents a mathematical model for a class of vertical integration decisions. The problem structure of interest consists of raw material vendors, components suppliers, components processing plants, final product (assembly) plants and external components buyers. Economic feasibility of operating components plants instead of keeping outside suppliers is our major concern. The model also determines assignment of product lines and production volumes to each open plant considering the cost impacts of economies of scale and plant complexity. The problem formulation leads to a concave, mixed integer mathematical program. Given the state of the art of nonlinear programming techniques, it is often not possible to find global optima for reasonably sized such problems. We developed an optimization solution algorithm within the framework of Benders decomposition for the case of a piecewise linear concave cost function. It is shown that our algorithm generates optimal solutions efficiently.