SUPPLY CHAIN DESIGN: AN APPLICATION OF AXIOMATIC DESIGN

There are ever increasing pressures on companies to improve the quality of their products whilst reducing both costs and the time it takes to deliver products to customers. Traditional Concurrent Engineering approaches have been widely used by organisations to improve their business processes – resulting in reduced costs and shortened lead times. More recently, the idea of Three Dimensional Concurrent Engineering has been proposed: arguing for the parallel consideration of supply chain issues as well as those related to product and process. Three Dimensional Concurrent Engineering leads to a need for a supply chain design process which, in turn, requires tools to support the process. The research reported here was an early investigation into the feasibility of using axiomatic design theory to support a supply chain design process. This paper reports an application of axiomatic design theory to the evaluation of a supply chain with respect to the costs and lead times of the parts of a product. A case study considering the materials and parts used in the manufacture of a small single seater sports car is described. Matrices of Functional Requirements and Design Parameters, influenced by Constraints, were captured using the Acclaro software. Design matrices were then created to relate the functional and physical supply chain domains. The research has demonstrated that supply chain design processes can benefit from an axiomatic design approach. In particular, we conclude that it is feasible to consider both functional and physical domains of a supply chain. Further, these domains can be captured in axiomatic design matrices and a design matrix can be realised. The paper concludes with a discussion of some axiomatic supply chain design issues that arose during the research.