The use of strategic inventory and packaging postponement to address daily demand variability and seasonal demand patterns in a demand flow environment

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management; and, (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Chemical Engineering, 2000.Includes bibliographical references (p. 105-106).This LFM thesis describes how Eastman Kodak Company (Kodak) used a strategic buffer of in process inventory and delayed final packaging of end-items to address two issues that surfaced after a recent implementation of a demand-driven process in their film finishing operation. By select placement of inventory and a judicious prebuild of spools upstream of the packaging operation, Kodak has reduced manufacturing costs, maximized their ability to respond to consumer demand patterns, and minimized end-item delivery concerns associated with both daily demand variability and seasonal demand patterns. This research work was conducted during a six and a half-month internship at the manufacturing site, Kodak Park in Rochester, New York. The internship was affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Leaders for Manufacturing program. This thesis describes the technical analysis and justification for the decision to pursue this manufacturing strategy at Kodak. The concepts of strategic inventory placement and packaging postponement ( delayed differentiation) are discussed in the context of this particular application and are generalized for other manufacturing processes. In the interest of protecting company confidentiality, the numbers presented in this thesis have all been disguised. The justifications for pursuing this particular strategy within Kodak as well as generic guidelines for when these strategies may be applicable are discussed in the context of this thesis.by Scott M. Pagendarm.S.M

Detecting Vortical Phenomena in Vector Data by Medium-Scale Correlation

The detection of vortical phenomena in vector data is one of the key issues in many technical applications, in particular in flow visualization. Many existing approaches rely on purely local evaluation of the vector data. In order to overcome the limits of a local approach we choose to combine a local method with a correlation of a pre-defined generic vortex with the data in a medium-scale region. Two different concepts of a generic vortices were tested on various sets of flow velocity vector data. The approach is not limited to the two generic patterns suggested here. The method was found to successfully detect vortices in cases were other methods fail

Flash nanoprecipitation for the production of endosomolytic polymersomes for cytosolic drug delivery

The delivery of biomacromolecular drugs to cytosolic targets has been a long-standing engineering challenge due to the presence of multiple biological barriers including cellular and endosomal membranes. Although many promising carriers designed to facilitate endosomal escape have been developed, the clinical translation of these carriers is often limited by complex production processes that are not amenable to scaled-up manufacturing. In this study, we employed flash nanoprecipitation (FNP) for the rapid, scalable, and reproducible assembly of nanocarriers composed of the pH-responsive, endosomolytic diblock copolymer poly[(ethylene glycol)x-block-[((2-diethylamino) ethyl methacrylate)0.6-co-(butyl methacrylate)0.4]y (PEG-b-DEAEMA-co-BMA). We found that varying the second block molecular weight, while holding the first block molecular weight constant, significantly influenced nanoparticle self-assembly and hence nanocarrier properties and function – including drug encapsulation, endosomolytic capacity, cytotoxicity, and in vitro activity of a cytosolically-active drug cargo, a cyclic dinucleotide (CDN) stimulator of interferon genes (STING) agonist. We found that while increasing second block molecular weight enhanced the capacity of nanocarriers to induce endosomal destabilization, larger second block molecular weights also lead to increased cytotoxicity, increased particle size and heterogeneity, increased the encapsulation efficiency of small (<0.5 kDa) hydrophilic drugs, decreased the encapsulation efficiency of large (10 kDa) hydrophilic biomacromolecules, and decreased long-term particle stability. Collectively, these results demonstrate the utility of FNP for the rapid and scalable production of uniform PEG-b-DEAEMA-co-BMA nanocarriers and implicate an optimal hydrophilic mass fraction for balancing desirable nanoparticle properties with cytosolic cargo delivery efficiency