The steel bars account for a high percentage of material costs for the current construction projects. At the present time, most of the construction projects for the factories of thin‐film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT‐LCD) complete the transactions of steel bars when the suppliers ship the steel bars to the temporary storage/processing sites. This paper applies the buy‐in concept in the Theory of Constraint (TOC) on the supply chain of steel bars. In this study, suppliers are required to establish warehouses at the construction sites and complete the transactions when the formed and processed steel bars are shipped into the factory sites. The aim is to find a win‐win solution to meet with the expectations from constructors as they hope that there is no need to build up inventories but supply is ready at any time. Also, this paper compares and analyzes the traditional supply/inventory model of steel bars and the Demand‐Pull (D‐P) model under the TOC framework. It is proved that Vendor Management Inventory (VMI) in the D‐P model is able to more effectively manage steel bars as a material.
As the flourish of today’s supply chain, the traditional model of replenishment will cause accumulation of excessive inventory to the retailers and customers, or cause shortages and inability to meet the demands. To solve this problem, Theory of Constraints (TOC) proposed the replenishment model of demand‐pull, combined with the establishment of factory‐warehouse to achieve performance improvement. In the absence of empirical research, this study applied the Bean Game developed by Dr. Goldratt to design a supply chain system for different scenarios, in order to allow players and managers better understanding and supporting the TOC replenishment method through the operations of the game.
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