Managing Quality and Delivery Reliability of Suppliers by Using Incentives and Simulation Models

The environment of today`s production enterprises is characterized by shortened product life cycles, a rapidly growing number of products and variants, and fast technological advancements.
The resulting complexity in production has led manufacturing companies of various industries towards a continuous reduction in the amount of in-house value creation . Components, subassembly groups, or even entire products are increasingly provided by suppliers. As a consequence, vendors are seeking identical actions, which has led to complex networks or supply chains. Thus, many researchers emphasize competition between supply chains rather than rivalry among individual firms. This leads to strong interdependencies, as the capabilities of suppliers significantly determine the success of the buyer respectively the procuring production enterprise.