A multi-level method of support for management of product flow through supply chains

The paper presents a three-level method used to support the management of product flow through supply chain links (e.g. production lines) and between these links: suppliers and recipients of products of various types.The supply chain includes both producers of components (suppliers) and recipients of these components, which are used for the production of complex goods. The method is dedicated to the development of schedules of product flows through particular production plants (links in supply chains) and between individual plants. Each module of the developed system refers to a separate production plant. The organization of product flow through production lines covers different types of production routes and different configurations of production systems. At the first level of the method, preliminary production schedules are developed for each plant within the supply chain. The second level of the method is dedicated to the development of delivery schedules of components and semi-finished products to these plants. The determined delivery times of components to the individual production plants constitute data for the third level of the method. At this lowest level, detailed schedules of product flow through production lines with the producers of complex goods are developed. Linear mathematical models have been built for each level of the method. In the developed method, optimization take place in the developed method in the scale of the entire supply chain (cost reduction), as well as in the scale of its links (production lines for which manufacturing schedules are built with various criteria taken into consideration). The computational experiments used for verification of the method have been included.