Supply Chain Scheduling
Nicholas G. Hall
The
The
most active topic in manufacturing research during the last 10 years has been
supply chain management. The key idea within supply chain management is that
decision makers at different parts of a supply chain should coordinate their
decisions in order to improve overall system performance. Much of the research
in supply chain management, however, has focused on strategic decision making
in stochastic environments. Recent reviews of the supply chain management
literature point out this deficiency. The work presented here refocuses supply
chain management research towards operational problems, in particular
scheduling problems, that take place in deterministic environments. We model
several manufacturing environments where the principles of supply chain
management can be applied to scheduling decisions. The decisions which require
coordination in these environments include batching, sequencing and delivery.
In each of these environments, we identify and evaluate opportunities for
improving system performance through coordinated decision making, and discuss
mechanisms by which those opportunities can be realized. A variety of future
research directions will also be discussed. This is a tutorial style talk with
the use of minimal technical notation, and is accessible without a detailed
knowledge of scheduling research. The 2004-06 NSF-sponsored research project
(joint with Zhi-Long Chen) is supported by a global
aerospace manufacturer and a leading supply chain solutions provider.