Abstract
There is uncertain demand and supply in the notebook computer industry. This research develops a category management decision-making method can solve the problem of dealing with uncertain customer demand and supply. On the other hand, uncertain customer demand can be solved by using a postponement strategy. Manufacturers’ uncertain supply situation includes their failure to satisfy the product type specifications of clients’ orders. Thus, this research develops a postponement strategy of customization to predict the customization degree, in order to solve uncertain customer demand and manufacturers’ supply.This research suggests a supply part management that is suitable for the notebook computer industry, with varied scales and operational environments in Taiwan, and solves the uncertainty of customer demand and supplier supply with the concept of category management. As for definitions of key supply parts, gray correlation sequencing analysis was conducted with unit price of supply parts and the number of suppliers, the gray sequencing correlation analysis was applied to sort the effect factors of key supply parts. Subsequently, with ABC of inventory weight re–allocation algorithm, different membership function constructions, Delphi analysis of defuzzification and exponential regression function method were used to determine the proper setting of category management parameters of supply parts in different categories. The category management decision-making method can be used to estimate the inventory level required to satisfy customer demand, to solve uncertain demand, as well as to estimate the lead time of supply parts from purchase to stock, thereby solving the problem of uncertain supply. By simulating different possible changes of orders, the risk of part shortages and cost of stock part can both be reduced.In addition, postponement strategy in notebook computer industry tends to treat minimum total production cost, maximum product type and minimum assembly time as the objects of quantification. Besides, the kinds of supply part modules of customer demand and inventory amount of supply part module are regarded as the decision variables. Thus, this research constructs a postponement multi-objective planning model. In an uncertain demand function, demand frequency and demand amount are used to meet Poisson distribution and Normal distribution. Since the units of the objectives differ, multi-objective planning can be realized via ε-constraint method. Besides, optimized customization degree can be obtained and the correlation among the factors of profit functions can be analyzed according to the results of multi-objective planning considering the parameters of production cost and the supply part module of basic customer demand. Manufacturers can construct the most proper customization degree according to different types of market demand and the profit objectives in supply uncertainty, with the goal of maximizing profits. Finally, an empirical analysis was conducted on a notebook computer company to function as the reference for category management decision-making method and product customization degree of notebook computer companies. The sensitivity of the parameters was analyzed and related suggestions were provided.