**4. Methodology of designing the product and its supply chain**

We will exploit the PLM approach in our methodology by:


• Establish the state of the links, as well as their nature.

• Supplier: cost of supply and optimal quantity to supply

**Figure 3.** The three modules that make up our decision support tool.

als, and semifinished products.

• Ensure an iterative process.

proposed in the previous section (**Figure 3**).

• Check the relevance of each decision (objective cost respected).

• Visualize the product and the supply chain and use mathematical optimization results.

PLM for Supply Chain Optimization

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The tool consists essentially of three modules that represent the main methodological steps

Product design module: An interface must be implemented between the tool and computeraided design (CAD) software. The designer imports a CAD file to retrieve data relating to the digital model (product nomenclature, component characteristics (physical, geometrical, etc.)).

• Supply chain design module: This module is used to represent the data relating to the various links in the supply chain. It includes fields relating to each link (supplier, manufacturer, transport, warehouse, and customer). This module allows adding or removing a link in the supply chain. It also makes it possible to visualize the succession of the links. • Supply chain optimization module: This module is linked to an optimization software; in our case, we use CPLEX optimization software; it allows to visualize the different results of the mathematical model optimization. It will calculate the optimal product cost throughout

its supply chain. This module generates the fields including the following results:

• Production site: cost of production, optimal quantity to produce, stock level of raw materi-

**Figure 2.** Flowchart of the proposed methodology.

We present in **Figure 2**, the flowchart of our methodology. As the digital mockup is the heart of PLM, it is the center of our proposed methodology flowchart, and all the operations are made around it. First, the designer receives constraints from the existing elements of the supply chain and from the customer specifications. The designer must also anticipate the constraints of the nonexisting elements (e.g., the designer should think about the transportability of the product by optimizing volume, shape, etc. even if the transporter is not yet determined). The purpose of the proposed methodology is to better adapt the product to the existing elements of the supply chain and design the rest of the supply chain optimally.
