Design of a case based intelligent supplier relationship management system - the integration of supplier rating system and product coding system

The design of supplier relationship management to facilitate supplier selection using an integrative case based supplier selection and help desk approach to select the most appropriate suppliers together with their past performance records from a case base warehouse has become a promising solution for manufacturers to identify preferred suppliers and trading partners to form a supply network on which they depend for products, services and distribution. In this paper, an intelligent supplier relationship management system (ISRMS) integrating a company's customer relationship management system, supplier rating system and product coding system by the case based reasoning technique to select preferred suppliers during new product development process is discussed. By using ISRMS in Honeywell Consumer Product (Hong Kong) Limited, it is found that the outsource cycle time from the searching of potential suppliers to the allocation of order, as well as the delay in delivery of goods of suppliers after order allocation, are greatly reduced. In addition, performance of suppliers can be monitored effectively. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.