ABSTRACT

This research is motivated by the arbitrary nature of demand and capacity patterns in manufacturing enterprises and the ability to overcome such uncertainties by forming a collaborative network of enterprises. The objective is to develop knowledge on how to collaborate with distributed decision makers and how to coordinate their decisions to maximize the performance of collaborating enterprises. Three dimensions of enterprise collaboration relative to demand and capacity sharing have been studied;
1) local enterprise integration and cooperation
2) multi-enterprise collaboration and coordination
3) Join/Leave/Remain decisions in the collaborative network.

To enhance the benefits of demand and capacity sharing by enterprise collaboration, Cooperative Production Switchover Coordination (CPSC) and Demand and Capacity Sharing Protocols (DCSP) have been designed and analyzed. The main purpose of these protocols is to optimize demand management and capacity utilization by switching production priority rules of the committed orders, or sharing possibly unfulfilled demands with collaborating enterprises which have excess capacities. This research also addresses Join/Leave/Remain (JLR) decisions when an enterprise or a set of enterprises needs to evaluate the benefits of enterprise collaboration. The Affiliation (A) decision is considered as the Join or Remain decisions, and the Dissociation (D) decision is considered as the Leave decision. The A/D decisions are determined by the enterprise service level and profitability. Experimental results and analyses indicate that the proposed protocols can improve demand fulfillment rate and total profit of collaborating enterprises by 5-30% at variable order quantities, production capacities, and coordination costs under different collaboration modes. The results also indicate that a single enterprise always prefers to affiliate with the collaborative network to increase its service level and total profit. The collaborative network should, however, dissociate from certain members of the collaborative network when their demand or capacity is over 10% greater (or smaller) than the mean demand or capacity of the collaborating enterprises. Another significant finding is that a calculated level of enterprise collaboration is required to maximize the performance of the collaborative network: While complete collaboration protocol maximizes the utilization of collaborating capacities, partial collaboration protocol maximizes collaborative network profitability.