Optimisation of process audit plan for minimising vehicle launch risk using MILP

Suppliers play a critical role in the success of any organisation. A complex product such as an automobile often involves a large number of suppliers. The need for high supplier quality especially gets highlighted at the time when automobile manufacturers launch new vehicles. A new vehicle launch involves enormous coordination efforts among the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and suppliers distributed across the globe. In such situations, supplier audits are used for minimising associated launch risk. However, allocating limited qualified engineers to supplier plants for an audit becomes a challenging task. This research proposes a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model to allocate engineers to supplier plant locations and create an optimal audit schedule by incorporating the level of risk involved.