Stochastic make-to-stock inventory deployment problem: an endosymbiotic psychoclonal algorithm based approach

Integrated steel manufacturers (ISMs) have no specific product, they just produce finished product from the ore. This enhances the uncertainty prevailing in the ISM regarding the nature of the finished product and significant demand by customers. At present low cost mini-mills are giving firm competition to ISMs in terms of cost, and this has compelled the ISM industry to target customers who want exotic products and faster reliable deliveries. To meet this objective, ISMs are exploring the option of satisfying part of their demand by converting strategically placed products, this helps in increasing the variability of product produced by the ISM in a short lead time. In this paper the authors have proposed a new hybrid evolutionary algorithm named endosymbiotic-psychoclonal (ESPC) to decide what and how much to stock as a semi-product in inventory. In the proposed theory, the ability of previously proposed psychoclonal algorithms to exploit the search space has been increased by making antibodies and antigen more co-operative interacting species. The efficacy of the proposed algorithm has been tested on randomly generated datasets and the results compared with other evolutionary algorithms such as genetic algorithms (GA) and simulated annealing (SA). The comparison of ESPC with GA and SA proves the superiority of the proposed algorithm both in terms of quality of the solution obtained and convergence time required to reach the optimal/near optimal value of the solution

Essays in Operations Management: Applications in Health Care and the Operations-Finance Interface

I present three essays pertaining to the management of supply chain risks in this dissertation. The first essay and the second essay analyze supply chain risks from a financial perspective, while the third essay analyzes supply chain risk with the objective of maximizing societal benefits in health care. In my first essay, I consider a firm facing inventory decisions under the influence of the financial market. With stochastic analytical methods, the purpose of this essay is to examine the optimal inventory decisions under a variety of conditions. I have identified the relevant factors impacting such decisions and the firm's value. Moreover, I have studied the benefits brought by efforts to improve the random capacity of the firm. I conclude that the financial market can significantly impact both a firm's inventory decisions and process improvement incentives. In my second essay, I model a stylized supply chain managed by a base-stock inventory policy where the decision maker holds concerns about the down-side risk of the supply chain cost. With stochastic analytical methods, the purpose of this essay is to obtain solutions of the problem of minimizing Conditional Value-at-Risk under various supply chain scenarios. I find that various supply chain parameters may influence the optimal solution and the optimality of a stock-less operation. I conclude that operating characteristics of a supply chain can shape its inventory policy when down-side risks are taken into account. For my third essay, the purpose of this essay is to investigate the operational decisions of a medical center specializing in bone marrow transplants. Using the queuing system method, I formulate the medical center as a queuing system with random patient arrivals and departures. I find optimal decisions and efficient frontiers regarding waiting room size and the number of transplant rooms with the objective of maximizing patient health benefits. I conclude that the design of a health care delivery system is crucial for health care institutions to sustain and improve their social impacts. In each of the three essays, I use analytical and numerical approaches to optimize managers' decisions with respect to various sources of risk

Supply Chain

Traditionally supply chain management has meant factories, assembly lines, warehouses, transportation vehicles, and time sheets. Modern supply chain management is a highly complex, multidimensional problem set with virtually endless number of variables for optimization. An Internet enabled supply chain may have just-in-time delivery, precise inventory visibility, and up-to-the-minute distribution-tracking capabilities. Technology advances have enabled supply chains to become strategic weapons that can help avoid disasters, lower costs, and make money. From internal enterprise processes to external business transactions with suppliers, transporters, channels and end-users marks the wide range of challenges researchers have to handle. The aim of this book is at revealing and illustrating this diversity in terms of scientific and theoretical fundamentals, prevailing concepts as well as current practical applications

The boomerang returns? Accounting for the impact of uncertainties on the dynamics of remanufacturing systems

Recent years have witnessed companies abandon traditional open-loop supply chain structures in favour of closed-loop variants, in a bid to mitigate environmental impacts and exploit economic opportunities. Central to the closed-loop paradigm is remanufacturing: the restoration of used products to useful life. While this operational model has huge potential to extend product life-cycles, the collection and recovery processes diminish the effectiveness of existing control mechanisms for open-loop systems. We systematically review the literature in the field of closed-loop supply chain dynamics, which explores the time-varying interactions of material and information flows in the different elements of remanufacturing supply chains. We supplement this with further reviews of what we call the three ‘pillars’ of such systems, i.e. forecasting, collection, and inventory and production control. This provides us with an interdisciplinary lens to investigate how a ‘boomerang’ effect (i.e. sale, consumption, and return processes) impacts on the behaviour of the closed-loop system and to understand how it can be controlled. To facilitate this, we contrast closed-loop supply chain dynamics research to the well-developed research in each pillar; explore how different disciplines have accommodated the supply, process, demand, and control uncertainties; and provide insights for future research on the dynamics of remanufacturing systems

Application of Optimization in Production, Logistics, Inventory, Supply Chain Management and Block Chain

The evolution of industrial development since the 18th century is now experiencing the fourth industrial revolution. The effect of the development has propagated into almost every sector of the industry. From inventory to the circular economy, the effectiveness of technology has been fruitful for industry. The recent trends in research, with new ideas and methodologies, are included in this book. Several new ideas and business strategies are developed in the area of the supply chain management, logistics, optimization, and forecasting for the improvement of the economy of the society and the environment. The proposed technologies and ideas are either novel or help modify several other new ideas. Different real life problems with different dimensions are discussed in the book so that readers may connect with the recent issues in society and industry. The collection of the articles provides a glimpse into the new research trends in technology, business, and the environment

A Novel Method for Optimal Solution of Fuzzy Chance Constraint Single-Period Inventory Model

A method is proposed for solving single-period inventory fuzzy probabilistic model (SPIFPM) with fuzzy demand and fuzzy storage space under a chance constraint. Our objective is to maximize the total profit for both overstock and understock situations, where the demand D~j for each product j in the objective function is considered as a fuzzy random variable (FRV) and with the available storage space area W~, which is also a FRV under normal distribution and exponential distribution. Initially we used the weighted sum method to consider both overstock and understock situations. Then the fuzziness of the model is removed by ranking function method and the randomness of the model is removed by chance constrained programming problem, which is a deterministic nonlinear programming problem (NLPP) model. Finally this NLPP is solved by using LINGO software. To validate and to demonstrate the results of the proposed model, numerical examples are given