In recent decades, provision-chain management has been one of the major concepts. The main reason that attracts attention to the concept is the increase in competition and struggle for the survival. There are different ways to increase the competition in organizations such as increasing productivity by acquiring information technology.
In this paper, we present an integrated model with the balanced score card framework for supplier selection strategy. The proposed model of this paper gathers 161 important factors suggested in the literature and selects the six most important ones using different multi criteria techniques. We also propose a goal programming techniques with some hard constraints and implement the mathematical model for real-world case study of auto industry. The proposed model is solved in four different forms using TOPSIS, VIKOR and the combination of these 2 factors with factor analysis. The preliminary results indicate that a combination of VIKOR and factor analysis presented better results with 9% reduction in costs, 38% increase of quality, and 3.2% increase in acceptability.

The purpose of the present study is to introduce a model for competitiveness of suppliers in supply chain through game theory approach in one of the automobile companies of Iran. In this study, the game is based on price and non-price factors and this company is going to estimate the real profit obtained from collaboration with each of supply chain members. This happens by considering the governing competitive condition based on game theory before entering a bit for purchase of ? piece as spare part among 8 companies supplying this piece as the supply chain members. According to experts in this industry, the quality is the main non-price competitiveness factor after price. In the current research models, the model introduced by Lu and Tsao (2011) [Lu, J.C., Tsao, Y.C., & Charoensiriwath, C. (2011). Competition Under manufacturer Service and retail price. Economic Modeling, 28,1256-1264.] with two manufacturers- one distributer, being appropriate for the research data, has been considered as the basis and implemented for case study and then it has been extended to n-manufacturers-one common retailer. Following price elasticity of demand, potential size of market or maximum product demand, retailer price, production price, wholesale price, demand amount, manufacturer and retailer profit are estimated under three scenario of manufacturer Stackelberg, Retailer Sackelberg and Vertical Nash. Therefore, by comparing them, price balance points and optimum level of services are specified and the better optimum scenario can be determined. Sensitivity analysis is performed for new model and manufacturers are ranked based on manufacture profit, Retailer profit and customer satisfaction. Finally, in this research in addition to introducing-person game model, customer satisfaction, which has been presented in the previous models as a missed circle are analyzed.

In this paper, we address the optimization of an integrated line balancing process with workstation inventory management. While doing so, we have studied the interconnection between line balancing and its conversion process. Almost each and every moderate to large manufacturing industry depends on a long and integrated supply chain, consisting of inbound logistic, conversion process and outbound logistic. In this sense an approach addresses a very general problem of integrated line balancing. Research works reported in the literature so far mainly deals with minimization of cost for inbound and outbound logistic subsystems. In most of the cases conversion process has been ignored. We suggest a generic approach for linking the balancing of the line of production in the conversion area with the customers’ rate of demand in the market and for configuring the related stock chambers. Thus, the main aim of this paper is to translate the underlying problem in the form of mixed nonlinear programming problem and design the optimum supply chain so that the total inventory cost and the cost of balancing loss of the conversion process is jointly minimized and ideal cycle time of the production process is determined along with ideal sizes of the stock chambers. A numerical example has been added to demonstrate the suitability of our approach.

With an ongoing progress in industries and technologies, most firms and businesses highly depend on cooperation and collaborations within a supply chain. In today’s competitive business environment, customer satisfaction plays an important role for the business survival. These matters can be secured by “supply chain”, a chain consists of various companies working together to maintain customers’ satisfaction. If various stages of different chains cooperate with each other, “supply chain network” (SCN) will be the outcome. In order to have a supply chain network or just a supply chain-operation in its best possible way, some optimization techniques are needed. In this paper, we present a close look at previous studies in the field of SCN optimization techniques and classify them based on the relative important characteristics.