A continuous model for supply planning of assembly systems with stochastic component procurement times

This paper studies a customized product assembly scenario where some components cannot be stocked due to high component cost and risk. We consider the case where these key components are ordered after a demand has been registered with a promised delivery date. Component lead-times are stochastic and associated distribution function is known in advance. The objective is to determine the ordering time for each component such as to minimize the sum of expected holding and backlogging costs. An approach to solve this problem is proposed and the algorithm is tested on a randomly generated data set. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.