The framework for making a coordinated decision for large-scale facilities has become an important issue in supply chain(SC) management research. The competitive business environment requires companies to continuously search for the ways to achieve high efficiency and lower operational costs. In the areas of production/distribution planning, many researchers and practitioners have developedand evaluated the deterministic models to coordinate important and interrelated logistic decisions such as capacity management, inventory allocation, and vehicle routing. They initially have investigated the various process of SC separately and later become more interested in such problems encompassing the whole SC system. The accurate quotation of ATP(Available-To-Promise) plays a very important role in enhancing customer satisfaction and fill rate maximization. The complexity for intelligent manufacturing system, which includes all the linkages among procurement, production, and distribution, makes the accurate quotation of ATP be a quite difficult job. In addition to, many researchers assumed ATP model with integer time. However, in industry practices, integer times are very rare and the model developed using integer times is therefore approximating the real system. Various alternative models for an ATP system with time lags have been developed and evaluated. In most cases, these models have assumed that the time lags are integer multiples of a unit time grid. However, integer time lags are very rare in practices, and therefore models developed using integer time lags only approximate real systems. The differences occurring by this approximation frequently result in significant accuracy degradations. To introduce the ATP model with time lags, we first introduce the dynamic production function. Hackman and Leachman's dynamic production function in initiated research directly related to the topic of this paper. They propose a modeling framework for a system with non-integer time lags and show how to apply the framework to a variety of systems including continues time series, manufacturing resource planning and critical path method. Their formulation requires no additional variables or constraints and is capable of representing real world systems more accurately. Previously, to cope with non-integer time lags, they usually model a concerned system either by rounding lags to the nearest integers or by subdividing the time grid to make the lags become integer multiples of the grid. But each approach has a critical weakness: the first approach underestimates, potentially leading to infeasibilities or overestimates lead times, potentially resulting in excessive work-inprocesses. The second approach drastically inflates the problem size. We consider an optimized ATP system with non-integer time lag in supply chain management. We focus on a worldwide headquarter, distribution centers, and manufacturing facilities are globally networked. We develop a mixed integer programming(MIP) model for ATP process, which has the definition of required data flow. The illustrative ATP module shows the proposed system is largely affected inSCM. The system we are concerned is composed of a multiple production facility with multiple products, multiple distribution centers and multiple customers. For the system, we consider an ATP scheduling and capacity allocationproblem. In this study, we proposed the model for the ATP system in SCM using the dynamic production function considering the non-integer time lags. The model is developed under the framework suitable for the non-integer lags and, therefore, is more accurate than the models we usually encounter. We developed intelligent ATP System for this model using genetic algorithm. We focus on a capacitated production planning and capacity allocation problem, develop a mixed integer programming model, and propose an efficient heuristic procedure using an evolutionary system to solve it efficiently. This method makes it possible for the population to reach the approximate solution easily. Moreover, we designed and utilized a representation scheme that allows the proposed models to represent real variables. The proposed regeneration procedures, which evaluate each infeasible chromosome, makes the solutions converge to the optimum quickly.
The supply chain management (SCM) systems have emerged as strong managerial tools for manufacturing firms in enhancing competitive strength. Despite of large investments in the SCM systems, many companies are not fully realizing the promised benefits from the systems. A review of literature on adoption, implementation and success factor of IOS (inter-organization systems), EDI (electronic data interchange) systems, shows that this issue has been examined from multiple theoretic perspectives. And many researchers have attempted to identify the factors which influence the success of system implementation. However, the existing studies have two drawbacks in revealing the determinants of systems implementation success. First, previous researches raise questions as to the appropriateness of research subjects selected. Most SCM systems are operating in the form of private industrial networks, where the participants of the systems consist of two distinct groups: focus companies and vendors. The focus companies are the primary actors in developing and operating the systems, while vendors are passive participants which are connected to the system in order to supply raw materials and parts to the focus companies. Under the circumstance, there are three ways in selecting the research subjects; focus companies only, vendors only, or two parties grouped together. It is hard to find researches that use the focus companies exclusively as the subjects probably due to the insufficient sample size for statistic analysis. Most researches have been conducted using the data collected from both groups. We argue that the SCM success factors cannot be correctly indentified in this case. The focus companies and the vendors are in different positions in many areas regarding the system implementation: firm size, managerial resources, bargaining power, organizational maturity, and etc. There are no obvious reasons to believe that the success factors of the two groups are identical. Grouping the two groups also raises questions on measuring the system success. The benefits from utilizing the systems may not be commonly distributed to the two groups. One group's benefits might be realized at the expenses of the other group considering the situation where vendors participating in SCM systems are under continuous pressures from the focus companies with respect to prices, quality, and delivery time. Therefore, by combining the system outcomes of both groups we cannot measure the system benefits obtained by each group correctly. Second, the measures of system success adopted in the previous researches have shortcoming in measuring the SCM success. User satisfaction, system utilization, and user attitudes toward the systems are most commonly used success measures in the existing studies. These measures have been developed as proxy variables in the studies of decision support systems (DSS) where the contribution of the systems to the organization performance is very difficult to measure. Unlike the DSS, the SCM systems have more specific goals, such as cost saving, inventory reduction, quality improvement, rapid time, and higher customer service. We maintain that more specific measures can be developed instead of proxy variables in order to measure the system benefits correctly. The purpose of this study is to find the determinants of SCM systems success in the perspective of vendor companies. In developing the research model, we have focused on selecting the success factors appropriate for the vendors through reviewing past researches and on developing more accurate success measures. The variables can be classified into following: technological, organizational, and environmental factors on the basis of TOE (Technology-Organization-Environment) framework. The model consists of three independent variables (competition intensity, top management support, and information system maturity), one mediating variable (collaboration), one moderating variable (government support), and a dependent variable (system success). The systems success measures have been developed to reflect the operational benefits of the SCM systems; improvement in planning and analysis capabilities, faster throughput, cost reduction, task integration, and improved product and customer service. The model has been validated using the survey data collected from 122 vendors participating in the SCM systems in Korea. To test for mediation, one should estimate the hierarchical regression analysis on the collaboration. And moderating effect analysis should estimate the moderated multiple regression, examines the effect of the government support. The result shows that information system maturity and top management support are the most important determinants of SCM system success. Supply chain technologies that standardize data formats and enhance information sharing may be adopted by supply chain leader organization because of the influence of focal company in the private industrial networks in order to streamline transactions and improve inter-organization communication. Specially, the need to develop and sustain an information system maturity will provide the focus and purpose to successfully overcome information system obstacles and resistance to innovation diffusion within the supply chain network organization. The support of top management will help focus efforts toward the realization of inter-organizational benefits and lend credibility to functional managers responsible for its implementation. The active involvement, vision, and direction of high level executives provide the impetus needed to sustain the implementation of SCM. The quality of collaboration relationships also is positively related to outcome variable. Collaboration variable is found to have a mediation effect between on influencing factors and implementation success. Higher levels of inter-organizational collaboration behaviors such as shared planning and flexibility in coordinating activities were found to be strongly linked to the vendors trust in the supply chain network. Government support moderates the effect of the IS maturity, competitive intensity, top management support on collaboration and implementation success of SCM. In general, the vendor companies face substantially greater risks in SCM implementation than the larger companies do because of severe constraints on financial and human resources and limited education on SCM systems. Besides resources, Vendors generally lack computer experience and do not have sufficient internal SCM expertise. For these reasons, government supports may establish requirements for firms doing business with the government or provide incentives to adopt, implementation SCM or practices. Government support provides significant improvements in implementation success of SCM when IS maturity, competitive intensity, top management support and collaboration are low. The environmental characteristic of competition intensity has no direct effect on vendor perspective of SCM system success. But, vendors facing above average competition intensity will have a greater need for changing technology. This suggests that companies trying to implement SCM systems should set up compatible supply chain networks and a high-quality collaboration relationship for implementation and performance.