E1 234 SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT : MiniProjects

Following is a description of 17 miniprojects. Each miniproject involves preparing a

comprehensive technical paper and carrying out a substantial programming project both of which
are closely related. About three students can collaborate on each miniproject. Each group should
send me an email, before September 25, indicating the members of the team and a list of 4
projects, one of which will be assigned to the team.
Guidelines for preparing the term paper and a Latex style file for the same are provided in a
separate note. Here is the schedule:

September 27,
Allocation of projects to groups
2000
October 10, Each group will provide a detailed outline of the term paper and also a
2000 detailed specification for the programming assignment
October 20,
Review of final specifications for the programming project
2000
October 31,
Deadline for submitting the term paper
2000
November 10,
Deadline for Programming Project submission
2000
Nov 13-17,
Demos of programming projects
2000
The projects fall into four categories:
Strategic Planning (SP)
Operational Optimization (OO)
Performance Modeling (PM)
Web-enabled Supply Chains (WEB)
(1) It is expected that projects belonging to a category are interoperable. The ultimate objective is
to make projects interoperable across categories.
(2) Many of the miniprojects will involve computational solvers (LP, ILP, MILP, linear
equations, etc.). Public domain software for these will be made accessible from this webpage
soon for this purpose.
(3) What is currently outlined here is a first level description of the problems. You can peruse
the leads provided here and do your own search for relevant material (Journal Papers, web
resources, etc) towards evolving a detailed outline for your term paper on this topic and towards
defining the specifications for the programming project.
(4) If you are unable to download or access the lead papers, contact hari@csa, or biswas@csa,
kameshn@csa, or raju@csa for the material.

Category 1: STRATEGIC
 PLANNING (SP)
Students interested in these projects should have a sound understanding of optimization
fundamentals. The implementation will need good computational skills since the problems can
turn out to be large scale.

SP1: Location of Supply Chain Facilities

Gopal Malakar, Bishal, Prakash Bhandari
The geographic location of production facilities, stocking points, and sourcing points is an
important strategic planning step in supply chain design. Once the size, number, and location of
supply chain facilities are determined, so are the possible paths by which the product flows
through to the final customer. These decisions have great significance since they determine the
way in which customer markets are accessed and they have substantial impact on revenue, cost,
and service levels. The location problem has been formulated by several researchers as a mixed
linear integer programming problem (MILP).
Lead: B.C. Arntzen, G.G. Brown, T.P. Harrison, and L. Trafton. Global supply chain
management at the Digital Equipment Corporation, INTERFACES, Jan-Feb 1995.

SP2: Supply Chain Configuration

The decisions here include what products to produce, which plants to produce them in, allocation
of suppliers to plants, plants to distribution centres, and distribution centres to customer markets.
These decisions assume the existence of supply chain facilities but determine the exact paths
through which a product flows to and from these facilities.
Leads: (1) www.i2.com has details of i2's "Supply Chain Strategist" package.
(2) R.L. Breitman and J.M. Lucas. PLANETS: A modeling system for business planning,
INTERFACES, Jan-Feb 1987, pp. 94-106.

SP3: Procurement Planning

Neeraj, Tejas, Shashikala, Maya
Procurement planning takes an unbiased forecast of expected sales and performs a number of
computations to obtain a corresponding set of part requirements. It is a critical process in the
determination of a company's serviceability and inventory. This function becomes an interesting
optimization problem if there is constrained supply and uncertain demand.
Lead: B. Dietrich et al. Production and Procurement planning under resource constraints and
demand variability. Research Report, IBM Research Laboratory, Yorktown Heights, 1995.

SP4: Distribution Facilities Planning

Madhav Goswami, Amit Nimje, Pankaj Kumar
This involves determining the number, location, capacity, and layout of an optimal distribution
network to maximize customer service levels given the demand distribution and other supply
chain parameters.
Lead: A. Geoffrion and R. Powers. 20 years of strategic distribution system design: An
evolutionary perpspective, INTERFACES, Sept 1995.

SP5: Logistics Planning

This involves selecting the best mode of logistics by trading off cost of using a particular mode
with inventory costs. Geographic locations play an important role in the problem. Other
decisions include designing a logistics network for optimizing product flows from plants to
distribution centres to final customers.
Lead: CAPS LOGISTICS specializes in this kind of solutions.

OPERATIONS
Category 2:

OPTIMIZATION (OO)
Students interested in these projects should have a sound understanding of optimization
fundamentals. The implementation will need good computational skills since the problems can
turn out to be large scale. Some familiarity with stochastics will be a bonus.

OO1: Supply Chain Inventory Optimization

Krishnakumar, Shankar Ganigi
Inventories exist in every stage of supply chains, as raw materials, work in process, finished
goods inventory, etc. The primary purpose of inventory is to buffer against uncertainties and to
maintain acceptable customer service levels. Since inventory is expensive, maintaining optimal
inventory levels in supply chain stocking points is an important problem. Economic order
quantity models, statistical inventory control policies, and Multiechelon inventory management
have been used in this context.
Leads: (1) M. Ettl, G.E. Feigin, G.Y. Lin, and D.D. Yao. A supply chain network model with
base stock control and service requirements. IBM Research Report, 1996. Available from:
www.ibm.watson.com
(2) M.A. Cohen et al. OPTIMIZER: IBM's muti-echelon inventory system for managing service
logistics, INTERFACES, Volume 20, Jan-Feb 1990, pp. 65-82.

OO2: Advanced Scheduling

AP Mohanty, Rajasekhar, Tripathi
i2's RHYTHM suite of products includes an Advanced Scheduler which performs the detailed
synchronization of all production operations to meet customer goals and optimize resources. It
determines the optimal sequence of jobs, taking into account a variety of realistic and detailed
constraints. It uses tools such as genetic algorithms and constraint optimization for this purpose.
The objective of this project is to develop a scaled down , but high-utility version of this
Advanced Scheduler.

OO3: Logistics Resources Scheduling

Vehicle routing and scheduling, and fleet management are important tactical and operational
decisions in supply chain networks. CAPS LOGISTICS is a best practice company specializing
in this important problem. The goal of this project will be to survey the best practices in the area
and create a tool that can be deployed in decision support for fleet management and routing and
scheduling of vehicles.

PERFORMANCE
Category 3:

MODELING (PM)
PM1: An Object Oriented Modeling System
Sanjay Linda, Ramesh Kumar, Bharat Biswal
The goal of this project is to design and develop a library of supply chain objects (structural,
policy, and informatio-related) and provide a versatile tool for rapidly creating object oriented
models of specified supply chain networks. It should be possible to use the models so created in
the other tools that will be created through miniprojects. For example, it should be possible to
use the OO-model to formulate the inventory optimization problem, to set up a simulation
model of a supply chain, to provide the information for an order tracking system, etc.
Prerequisites: Sound familiarity with objects, UML, Java
Leads: (1) S. Biswas and Y. Narahari. Object oriented modeling for decision support in supply
chain networks, Research Report, 1999.
(2) IBM Supply Chain Simulator

PM2: Dynamic Simulation of Supply Chains

KV Sriram and Atul Malik
The objective here is to create an object oriented discrete event simulation environment for
supply chain networks. The vision is to design and develop an environment as powerful and
versatile as that of IBM supply Chain simulator.
Prerequisites: Queueing, Markov chains, simulation, data structures, Java
Leads: Literature on IBM supply chain simulator

PM3: A Queueing Network Based Supply Chain Planner

DN Pawar, MS Hari, Behera
Queueing networks are appropriate for many situations in supply chain planning, analysis, and
design. The idea is to create a queueing network model from the object oriented description of a
supply chain and use queueing results to provide what-if type of decision support in supply chain
planning and design. The vision is to develop a package for supply chains on the same lines as
MANUPLAN and MPX (University of Wisconsin, Madison).
Prerequisites: Queueing, Markov chains, simulation, data structures, Java

PM4: A Six Sigma Framework for Analysis and Design of Supply Chain Networks
Dinesh Garg, Sandeep, Anand Prasanna
Assuming normal distributions for business process lead times and using the notions of Cp and
Cpk, this tool will be fashioned as (1) an analysis tool to determine the delivery performance of
any complex supply chain
and as (2) a synthesis tool for designing supply chains to achieve specified levels of delivery
performance.
Prerequisites: Probability and statistics, Java
Leads: There are two excellent reports on the Motorola six sigma program.

WEB ENABLED
Category 4:

SUPPLY CHAINS (WEB)

For all the projects in this category, familiarity with Internet technologies, Java technologies,
and database technology will be required.
General Reading:
Establishing an E-commerce Business Model
Going, Going, Gone! A Survey of Auction Types
EcomWorld: Automating the Supply Chain

WEB1: A Web-enabled Procurement System

Sivaramakrishna, Praveen Kumar, Kaushik
Procurement involves multiple suppliers and a single buyer and the goal of this system is to
design and develop a web-enabled procurement system using interesting web-based mechanisms.
Sealed bids (single round and multiple round), etc. can be implemented here.
Leads: Numerous web sites, e.g:
www.vsource.net
EcomWorld: Procurement
Priceline.com: An Inside Look at the Reverse Auction Master

WEB2: A Web-enabled B2B Exchange for Supply Chain Management

Vasudeva Rao, Murlimohan, Hariharan
An exchange involves multiple sellers and multiple buyers and effects efficient matching using
web-based mechanisms. Exchanges can be either horizontal or vertical. B2B exchanges are now
an integral part of major supply chains. The project can focus on creating the web infrastructure
for a scaled down vertical exchange.
Leads:

Digital Exchanges: Value or hype?

MetalSite
ChemConnect
Inventa

WEB3: A Web-enabled order tracking system

Balvinder Singh, Himanshu
The objective is to design a monitoring and tracking system that continuously tracks the flow of
material, information, and customer orders through supply chain stages and provides real-time,
up-to-date information to external and internal customers. The order tracking system will
monitor the supply chain through a database that is dynamically and continuously updated by
simulating an underlying model of a supply chain network. The vision is to create a replica of
amazon.com's tracking system.
Leads: Numerous web sites
Elbee: Logistics Provider of FirstandSecond.com
FedEx Tracking System, India
UPS ECommerce

WEB4: Warehouse Management System

Abhijit, Satyendra, Srivalli
Consider an arborescent, multiechelon warehouse network (Plant warehouse, Ditribution centres,
retailers, etc.). Warehouse management involves keeping track of levels of inventory of multiple
product types at each warehouse, placing replenishment orders, handling backorders, managing
and tracking customer orders on the web. This project will involve not only web enabling of the
system but also incorporating specified inventory control policies at individual warehouses. The
system should be able to trigger a procurement activity or participating in a B2B exchange for
doing replenishment if the source warehouses do not have adequate stock.
Requirements: Good understanding of EOQ models, (Q, r) policies, etc.
Leads:
RadioBeacon
Softsol
Softsol: eWarehouse Management (Cached)
Logistics.About.com: Warehouse Management

WEB5: Customer Relationship Management

Subhash Das, Sridhar Reddy, Srimanta Mohanty

Which visits lead to Purchases? Dynamic Conversion behaviour at EComm Sites (Thanks to
Sriram ofIbhar. A good lead for CRM in EComm)
eControlCustomer
Ibhar

Syllabus
Problems
Course Orgainzation &
Term Papers
Overview
Mini Projects
Course Schedule
Useful Web Resources
Books and References

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