Pinch Analysis as a Knowledge Management Tool for Optimization in Supply Chain

Abstract

Supply chain managers are trying to maximize the profitable operation of their manufacturing and distribution supply chain, but due to global competition in process industries and complexities of the supply chain processes together with large computational times, it has made optimization of supply chain management (SCM) quite difficult. Recently, Knowledge management (KM) is a new important information technology-based business paradigm for achieving competitive advantage, and it is no surprise that it has received so much attention from researchers. This paper therefore deploys Pinch Analysis, a practicable tool that entails less complex mathematics compared to many other optimization tools, to manage critical knowledge generated in supply chains. In this study, demand and supply explicit knowledge from the organization was represented as composites for the pinch analysis. The developed system gave supply chain managers new insights into SCM and thus aiding quick decision-making and on the overall helped to achieve the much needed competitive advantage.

Material pinch analysis: a pilot study on global steel flows

“…Instead of temperature and energy on the axes of the pinch diagram, they plotted the energy demand and CO2 limit. Singvhi et al (2003) and Folorunso et al (2011) demonstrated how pinch analysis can be applied to virtually any product in supply chain management. Instead of heat sources at different temperatures, the pinch analysis includes a curve that represents the production or supply of the product at different points in time.…”

Optimization and Analysis of Raw Material Supply Chain Based on Computational Intelligence

“…In this study, explicit knowledge of demand and supply from an organization is represented as a composite of pinch analysis. e developed system provides supply chain managers with new insights into SCM, which, in turn, facilitates quick decisionmaking and, in general, contributes to the much-needed competitive advantage [7]. A system is proposed to help define optimization models by regression analysis.…”