Abstract: To a manufacture company, supplier selection is always a crucial decision problem which directly impacts the final profits of a company. In previous studies, suppliers are selected only from the view of particular components rather than the whole product. In addition, supplier selection is usually conducted in the stage of product production after the stage of product design in traditional process of product development. However, taking into consideration of supplier selection in the early stage of product development can effectively avoid the shortage of appropriate suppliers. In this paper, a new multi-objective approach to preliminary selection of supplier based on products platform is proposed and a multi-objective optimization model with the objectives of minimizing outsourcing cost, supply risk and leading time of product family from the perspective of whole product is established to help decision-makers improve the overall scheme of product design in early time of product development. In addition, the optimization model takes the impact of component-sharing into consideration, which is common in the product platform, on the result of preliminary selection of suppliers. NSGA-II algorithm is adopted to solve the established optimization model, and a case study is provided to illustrate the rationality and effectiveness of the proposed method and algorithm.

Key words: product platform, supplier pre-selection, product family, NSGA-II algorithm, multi-objective optimization