AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF LOGISTIC NETWORK MODELING FOR A TAIWANESE NOTEBOOK COMPUTER MANUFACTURER

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes the interactive relationship among manufacturers, suppliers, distribution centers and customers. We evaluate different logistic issues when the notebook (NB) computer manufacturers implement BTO or CTO operation, then build up various BTO/CTO mathematical models. Finally, we use LINDO to solve these network models and evaluate the logistic cost while adopting different BTO or CTO logistic models for the notebook computer manufacturer. The results show that the custom duty affects little on the logistic cost. If key parts are imported from Japan or Korea, under current tax law, the duty rate will be 0.06% business duty, and 0.045% trade promotion duty, in case they are sold to the domestic market. Under the BTO/CTO models, we can see the operation cost of CTO is higher than BTO. It appears in shortening the maximum allowed lead time, but we don't see any merit of CTO from cost viewpoint.