On the development of a case‐based supplier management tool for multi‐national manufacturers

The rapid globalization in markets for manufactured goods and the growth of information technology has led to the demand for delivering superior value to international customers. Knowledge‐based systems, such as the case‐based reasoning (CBR) technique, have the potential to play a significant role in managing customer and supplier relationships under the dispersed network production systems model. The characteristic of the CBR technique in case retrieval, reuse, revision and retaining was used in solving a purchasing problem. However, there is a lack of literature in using a case‐based tool when comparing supplier bidding for the same order on a global basis. Proposes a case‐based supplier management tool (CBSMT) using the CBR technique in the areas of intelligent supplier selection and management that will enhance performance as compared to using the traditional approach. This CBSMT was first proposed as a task allocation tool, it was also used as a tool in a multi‐agent based virtual enterprise architecture. Describes an overview of the foundational issues related to CBR which provides some methodological approaches and exemplifies the current state through supplier management. Then defines a general supplier selection workflow, followed by the application of the case‐based technique to manage the problem of supplier selection. Finally, discusses an application case study of applying this supplier management tool to Honeywell Consumer Products (Hong Kong) Limited to help the selection of suppliers in their daily operations.