CYCLIC PLANNING IN A MULTI ECHELON NETWORK

The overall goal of this project is to extend supply chain expertise to recent evolutions: globalisation, products diversification, and shortening of products life cycles. We consider that any life cycle can be divided into three phases: introduc-tion, maturity and end-of-life. Three main issues are considered: – Improve the prediction at the beginning and at the end of a product life. – Increase the profit during maturity phase by making cyclic the production at all levels of the process. Theoretically, Multi-Echelon Cyclic Planning induces an additional cost. However, simplification of production management and increase of the manufacturing efficiency should counterbalance this cost. – More generally, to improve the whole life cycle management of products in supply chain, including switches between the three phases. In the present work, we are interested in making cyclic the production during the maturity phase at all steps of production.