Design of an intelligent supplier relationship management system for new product development

Since the 1990s, the business environment has changed greatly because of global integration and the lifecycles of products are becoming shorter. The drive to continually cut costs and focus on core competencies has driven many to outsource some or all of their production. It is found that the integration of customer relationship management (CRM) and supplier relationship management (SRM), to facilitate supply chain management in the areas of supplier selection using an artificial intelligence approach, has become a promising solution for manufacturers to identify appropriate 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) using hybrid case based reasoning (CBR) and artificial neural networks (ANNs) techniques to select and benchmark potential suppliers is discussed. By using ISRMS in Honeywell Consumer Product (Hong Kong) Limited, the outsource cycle time from searching for potential suppliers to the allocation of order during new product development is greatly reduced.