Title: Modeling supply chain decisions and developing solutions
Speaker: Rahul Pandey, IGSA Labs
Time and date: 3:30 p.m., Tuesday, 01/03/2011
Venue: Room 217, Mechanical Engineering
Abstract:
The talk summarizes on attempts at providing Math/OR modeling based products and services to solve real world supply chain decision problems (among others) in Indian industry. The experience has yielded some optimism and a lot of learning about business potential of such modeling skills. A range of supply chain related decisions, especially in large-medium organizations equipped with good IT systems, are in need of analytical modeling. Examples are: network design/expansion/ consolidation; inventory replenishment; integrated production-logistics-procurement planning; transport loading and routing; logistics route selection and consolidation. However, in order to be practically useful, the models need to capture real world constraints of business and operations, integrate with database and UI so as to enable quick runs and 'what-if' analysis, and soft-interface with user's IT system. These require innovative model formulation, efficient IT integration, and good hardware. There are occasions when difficult-to-solve large problems and integer or non-linear features throw up opportunities for research or deeper investigation. These are also opportunities for academic-industry collaboration.
Speaker bio:
Dr. Rahul Pandey is a founder partner with IGSA Labs - an organization that develops math/OR models for decision problems relating to supply chain, transport/logistics, production, energy-environment planning, and offers products and services around such models. IGSA Labs is also an experiment in organization development with an effort to set up a work environment that balances commercial goals with academic goals. Pandey is a former faculty member of SJMSOM, IIT Bombay, and IIM Lucknow. He is currently a visiting faculty on retainership with IIM Lucknow.