An evolutionary approach for self-organization of contract manufacturing supply chains

Contract manufacturing is one of the most prevalent supply-chain models. The formation of a contract manufacturing supply-chain (CMSC) network tends to be more dynamic as the establishment of a partnership is based on the contracted orders. Optimization of CMSC networks is much more difficult than traditional production networks. This paper proposes a self-organization framework for CMSCs. We define several constraint-satisfaction genetic operators to model key activities such as changing upstream or downstream partners or re-allocation of production capacities among partners in CMSCs. Our results include: (a) a mathematical model for CMSC networks, (b) a self-organization framework based on an evolutionary approach, (c) a comparison on different types of supply-chain alliances, and (d) a constraint satisfaction algorithm