Abstract (eng)
Globalization is in force and changes the image of today’s world economy. World-wide opportunities for production and sourcing deliver huge potential for growth and should be exploited to stay competitive in the long-run. However, these opportunities might be strongly constricted by non-tariff based trade barriers, like Local Content regulations which come with Free Trade Agreements (FTA’s). Additionally, global supply chains are confronted with a substantial increase in the variety of risks. Especially currency fluctuations, demonstrate a significant risk and have to be considered for the design of well-performing global supply chains. As a result, this thesis is dedicated to the development of a two-stage stochastic program which considers exchange rate risk and the constraints regarding Local Content (LC) implied by FTA’s. Under the assumption, that future exchange rate realizations can be described by stochastic diffusion processes (Geometric Brownian Motion), a binomial tree model is proposed to deliver a solvable approach for the stochastic model in connection with the Sample Average Approximation (SAA). Several case studies, based on a network which operates in the territory of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) are presented. The studies highlight general effects of exchange rate risk on a global operating company. However of special interest is the influence of exchange rate fluctuations on sourcing decisions in relation to LC compliance and resulting implications on the network design.