Supply Chain / Logistics / Material Flow - Mizzou Engineering

Industrial engineers design and analyze the flow of goods and services in order to optimize overall supply chain performance.

Faculty

Suchi Rajendran, Sharan Srinivas, Jim Noble
  • Optimizing Forecasting and Inventory Policies in a Make-to-Order Production Environment
Jim Noble
  • Integrated Inventory Segmentation Strategies for Management of Service Parts
Jim Noble
  • Relation-based Item Slotting with Space Constraints
  • Integrated Material Flow Analysis
Omid Shahvari
  • Sustainable Design of an On-demand Supply Chain Network
Sharan Srinivas
  • Improving Inbound Logistics Operations to Reduce CO2 Emissions

Projects

Optimizing Forecasting and Inventory Policies in a Make-to-Order Production Environment

optimizing forecasting and inventory policies in a make-to-order production environment


Integrated Inventory Segmentation and Optimization for Fill Rate Service Parts
integrated inventory segmentation and optimization for fill rate service partsProblem Motivation

Fill-rate based inventory optimization models typically short high-dollar critical parts necessary for sustaining fleet operations. Need to determine how to segment consumables and repairable service parts to achieve satisfactory fleet service targets while minimizing inventory investment.

Important/Expected Results
  • A prototype inventory segmentation model that creates purposeful groupings of parts and optimizes within each group to form a balanced and satisfactory solution.
  • Supply chain simulation analysis to compare performance across multiple programs.
  • A financial business case to justify segmentation techniques over current methods

Relation-based Item Slotting with Space Constraints
Relation-based item slotting with space constraintsProblem Motivation
  • Correlation between items based on order history should be considered to make order picking more efficient.
  • Replenishment scenarios based on demand prediction can be generated to provide more flexibility for slotting items.
Important Results
  • Algorithm developed works better than previous popularity index.
  • Total picking cost is reduced on average by 25% .
  • Total replenishment cost is reduced on average by 41%.

Integrated Material Flow Analysis
Business and project objectives
  • Analyze current state-of-the-art material flow models.
  • Analyze the current material flow/inventory situation.
  • Develop a set of material flow improvement alternatives.
  • Evaluate the material flow improvement alternatives with respect to the trade-offs between performance and cost.
Important Results
  • Estimated annual transportation, material handling and space savings of $2.8M over 3 years

Sustainable Design of an On-demand Supply Chain Network
Sustainable design of an on-demand supply chain networkResearch objectives
  • Quantify the impact of product Layer Thickness on product quality and to the overall supply chain network -> Optimal Layer Thickness
  • Determine Long-term Investment Decisions (e.g., facility construction, capacity selection decisions)
  • Determine Short-term Operational Decisions (e.g., procurement, transportation, storage, production, postprocessing decisions)
Important Results
  • Impact of layer thickness on production and post-processing cost
  • Impact of customer demand variability on AM supply chain network design decisions
  • Impact of the safety stock level on the storage and transportation cost
  • Impact of raw material wastage rate on the procurement and transportation cost

Improving Inbound Logistics Operations to reduce CO2 Emissions
improving inbound logistics operations to reduce c02 emissionsProject Objectives and Approach
  • Motivated by real-life case of multinational consumer goods company
  • Objectives are to minimize the detention fee paid to 3PL and reduce emission of CO2 into the atmosphere.
  • Integrated simulation and DMAIC framework to understand current process and evaluate improvement opportunities
Important Results
  • Proposed single attribute dispatching rule achieves over 55% cost savings and 7% reduction in CO2 emission
  • Proposed multi-attribute dispatching rule achieves over 33% cost savings and 20% reduction in CO2 emission