System Dynamics Modeling of Humanitarian Relief Operations

Against the backdrop of over two hundred thousand people dead or missing and millions of people homeless after China’s massive earthquake and Myanmar devastating cyclone, forecasts estimate that natural and manmade disasters are likely to increase five-fold both in number and impact over the next 50 years. Hence, the need for disaster relief provided by humanitarian organizations during disasters should continue to increase. At the same time, humanitarian organizations face increased challenges scaling capacity, improving operational efficiency, reducing staff turnover, improving institutional learning, satisfying increasingly demanding donors, and operating in increasingly challenging environments, with poor or inexistent infrastructure, high demand uncertainty and little time to prepare and respond. To address such challenges, managers in humanitarian organizations must understand the complexity that characterizes humanitarian relief efforts to learn how to design and manage complex relief operations. Yet, learning in such complex and ever changing environments is difficult precisely because managers seldom confront many of the consequences of their most important decisions. Effective learning in such environments requires methods and tools that allow managers to capture important feedback processes, accumulations, delays, and nonlinear relationships, visualizing complex systems in terms of the structures and policies that create dynamics and regulate performance. The system dynamics approach provides managers with a set of tools that can help them learn in complex environments. These tools include causal mapping, which enables managers to think systemically and to represent the dynamic complexity in a system of interest, and simulation modeling, which permits managers to assess the consequences of interactions among variables, experience the long-term side effects of decisions, systematically explore new strategies, and develop understanding of complex systems

Hybrid Meta-Heuristics for Robust Scheduling

The production and delivery of rapidly perishable goods in distributed supply networks involves a number of tightly coupled decision and optimization problems regarding the just-in-time production scheduling and the routing of the delivery vehicles in order to satisfy strict customer specified time-windows. Besides dealing with the typical combinatorial complexity related to activity assignment and synchronization, effective methods must also provide robust schedules, coping with the stochastic perturbations (typically transportation delays) affecting the distribution process. In this paper, we propose a novel metaheuristic approach for robust scheduling. Our approach integrates mathematical programming, multi-objective evolutionary computation, and problem-specific constructive heuristics. The optimization algorithm returns a set of solutions with different cost and risk tradeoffs, allowing the analyst to adapt the planning depending on the attitude to risk. The effectiveness of the approach is demonstrated by a real-world case concerning the production and distribution of ready-mixed concrete.Meta-Heuristics;Multi-Objective Genetic Optimization;Robust Scheduling;Supply Networks

Connecting strategy and system dynamics: an example and lessons learned

This article is based on my talk at the 2015 International System Dynamics Conference upon receiving the Jay W. Forrester Award for the article “Impact of growth opportunities and competition on firm-level capability development tradeoffs” (Organization Science 2012; 23(1): 138–154). It summarizes how that research connects strategy concepts with system dynamics (SD) modeling to inform the pressures managers face to focus on the short term as a result of endogenous growth opportunities and competition. Drawing on this example I discuss some potentially useful research tools and assumptions. I close by sharing personal reflections on the process of writing for non-SD academics and why I think making those connections is worthwhile

Outsourcing in high volume electronics manufacturing

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management; and, (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; in conjunction with the Leaders for Manufacturing Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2000.Also available online at the MIT Theses Online homepage .Includes bibliographical references (p. 54-55).Outsourcing and subcontracting of manufacturing is growing at an incredible pace. According to a November 1998 Dataquest survey, the Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS) industry is forecast to grow at a compound annual rate of over 26%. The largest and best known of the EMS providers, Solectron of Milpitas California, has recorded an astonishing compound annual growth rate of more than 53% since 1992 according to Chief Financial Officer Susan Wang. Despite the growing use of contract manufacturers, the decision to use them remains, in many organizations, a tactical one. Decisions to outsource are often undertaken solely within the manufacturing organizations within these firms, and focus primarily on reducing capital expenditures and direct costs such as labor. These decisions rarely take into account the much broader strategic implications of outsourcing a portion of the firm's production. This paper examines outsourcing decisions and their financial, organizational and, most importantly, strategic effects on the organization. It presents an integrated approach to making outsourcing decisions, a set of quantitative tools for assessing outsourcing options, and guidelines for implementation and management of the outsourcing relationship. The goal of the thesis is to enhance the overall quality of manufacturing outsourcing relationships by ensuring coherence with overall company strategy and strong execution. The work in this paper is based on a six-month internship as part of MIT's Leaders for Manufacturing Program in the Consumer Products Division of Qualcomm, Incorporated in San Diego, California. The learning presented in this paper is based upon observations made during the Qualcomm internship and an in-depth review of the literature on outsourcing. Because the work was done for Qualcomm, the findings of this paper are best suited to outsourcing decisions in similar organizations, those producing high volume, high-tech consumer products. However, many, if not all, of the underlying concepts are applicable to outsourcing decisions across a broad range of industries.by Carl Ashley Ryden.S.M