Design and administration of collaborative networked headquarters

Regional headquarters (RHs) lead regionally serving subsidiaries responsible for organising geographically dispersed manufacturing and/or service operations in their respective regional subsidiaries (RSs), with certain levels of autonomy and decision-making authority. RHs have recently attracted greater attention, as a major investment of decentralised manufacturing and service operations. The goal of this work is thus to develop a comprehensive framework to enable optimal design and administration of interconnected, collaborative, and networked manufacturing and service systems. The decisions include optimal design of (1) RH networks based on multiple indicators, and (2) collaboration mechanisms between the RHs. Cyber-supported communication technologies enable the RHs to collaboratively process their electronic tasks (e-Tasks), such that the overall service level, resource utilisation and stability are improved. A bi-objective mixed integer programming model is developed for modelling the RH network design and administration problem. Data envelopment analysis is applied for combining multiple RH network design indicators into unified preference scores. Due to the computational complexity of the problem, a memetic algorithm is developed with a local search mechanism for making task sharing decisions. Several numerical experiments are conducted to illustrate, analyse and highlight the unique features and implications of the developed methodology.