Customer service based design of the supply chain

The purpose of this study is to propose a framework by which service elemen ts and a company's own strategies can be included in the "traditional", cos t-based design of the supply chain. The framework is demonstrated with a nu merical example and it is based on integrating the analytic hierarchy proce ss (AHP) and mixed integer programming (MIP). The target is to optimise a c ompany's supply chain based on customer service requirements within the con straints of the supply chain. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights res erved.