PharCo (an assumed name) is a leading global healthcare company with well-recognized brands of both pharmaceutical and consumer healthcare products. As PharCo continues to expand its global presence, product stock-outs in their pharmaceutical business unit have been consistently increasing. PharCo suspected that manufacturing quality defects were a major cause of...
Supply Chain Risk Management (“SCRM”) is often discussed in business and academia but is still underdeveloped as a practical tool. Many studies have examined the effects of supply chain disruptions, and many studies have also produced tools for mitigating risk. However, there is still a need for an integrated, practical...
Less-than-truckload (LTL) is a $32-billion sector of the trucking industry that focuses on moving smaller shipments, typically with weights between 100 and 10,000 pounds, that do not require a full trailer to be moved. Currently, there are no widely accepted methods to estimate carbon emissions from LTL shipments which take...
This thesis aims to quantitatively estimate the potential impact of 3D Printing on global supply chains. Industrial adoption of 3D Printing has been increasing gradually from prototyping to manufacturing of low volume customized parts. The need for customized implants like tooth crowns, hearing aids, and orthopedic-replacement parts has made the...
Forecasting demand for limited-life cycle products is essentially projecting an arc trend of demand growth and decline over a relatively short time horizon. When planning for a new limited-life product, many marketing and production decisions depend on accurately predicting the life cycle effects on product demand. For products with stable...
Without using any order acceptance criteria, retail companies distributing products with private transportation fleets are not able to maximize their profits because they are not adequately utilizing their capacity. The objective of this paper was to create and validate a model to determine if historical demand data can be used...
Given the importance of operational inefficiencies and their negative impact on the bottom line in today’s competitive economy, CVS/pharmacy is very interested in implementing operational improvement initiatives across its inbound supply chain to minimize the number of non-value-added activities. Undertaking such efforts requires collaboration amongst all trade partners and a...
This research aims to characterize and measure hierarchical, functional and geographical alignment within an organization in an effort to understand the individual’s attributes of resilience within the broader organization’s business strategy. In partnership with a multinational chemicals manufacturer, data was collected from product supply organizations through interviews, surveys and case...
The objective of our thesis is to demonstrate a technique to 1) visualize the supply chain and, 2) quantify areas of risk pertaining to natural disasters. By obtaining internal data on suppliers, parts, links, and revenues from our sponsor company, we aim to highlight the areas in the supply chain...
86 posters from students of the MIT Global Supply Chain and Logistics Excellence (SCALE) Network that were presented during Research Expo 2014. PDF Format, 26.5mb
Since the advent of the Internet in the 1990s, there has been a significant increase in online shopping in the United States. As online shopping keeps growing, so does the online retail industry. Multiple players are investing either through pure online retailing or by click and mortar retailing, which also...
This thesis project provides practitioners with a new mathematical model to estimate an appropriate number of production planners required for the supply chain planning department of a company in the consumer packaged goods industry. Using bivariate correlation and multiple regression analyses, we explored whether a relationship exists between the required...
As the recession and global competition threaten profitability, firms are increasingly turning to their procurement function of the supply chain to achieve significant cost reductions and maintain a competitive edge. When procuring unique, highly-engineered components, the price is often negotiated with suppliers. Our project explored ways to estimate a procured...
Scheduling dispatchers in the Rail industry is difficult because of training requirements, unplanned employee absences, and the nature of shift work. This project uses past data on absences to build a model to predict unplanned absences. It also uses Monte Carlo simulation to evaluate the tradeoffs among extra staff, the...
By conducting semi-structured interviews and developing a value chain map, we identified and quantified the business costs of each actor in the distribution chain of pharmaceuticals in Zambia and Zimbabwe. We then estimated how these costs translate into the mark-ups of two essential medicines, M1 and O1. These calculations are...
This project explored what factors affect tender rejection, a frequent and consistent problem in the truckload (TL) transportation industry. We examined geographical pattern, length of haul, and variability of volume as the key factor. We used ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis to quantify the effect of those factors. Author...
This project explores how we can develop a Demand Signal Repository (DSR) to better predict demand. We devised a methodology, collected and cleansed the data, and built more than 240 models before we arrived at models that could improve forecast accuracy. The models explained 85%+ of weekly demand per customer...
This project uses a stochastic linear programming (LP) model to evaluate the capacity of the five United Nations Humanitarian Response Depots (UNHRDs) to respond to a single potential disaster: what expected percentage of people affected may receive emergency relief items and in what period of time? The model also recommends...
This project reviews the characteristics and uses of spot-market rate indexes in the US truckload transportation industry. It examines factors that influences rates and determines that multiple indexes of the spot market are required, each specified to a particular geography and range of tender lead times. Author: Andrew Bignell Advisor...
This project explores the dynamic between experts and users of complicated optimization models that are used in planning global supply chains. After conducting a comprehensive literature review on optimization modeling, communication methods, and data visualization, we surveyed a group of solver application users from our sponsor company to determine where...
This research project analyzes the current state of a typical Aerospace and Defense (A&D) support supply chain, and envisions a desired state with better integration. Finally the research proposes the +Add Model as an easy to understand and deploy roadmap to bridge the gap. The “+Add” Model stands for Aggregate...
This research examines key aspects of ethanol including its material characteristics, supply chain, and government legislation that affect its market demand and availability. In addition, it discusses the social and environmental impacts of the growing biofuel industry stemming from government mandates. The goal of the project was to investigate existing...
This project explores the benefits of establishing and operating Foreign Trade Zones (FTZs) and Bonded Warehouses (BWs) for luxury goods in North America, using the case of Ralph Lauren Corporation’s (RLC) distribution network. With over 3 million square feet of warehousing facilities in the U.S., the company wants to explore...
Through our study we have attempted to address the focal issue of sustainability for chemical supply chains. The meaning of the word sustainability itself is quite subjective and there is both uncertainty and ambiguity related to how this crucial parameter will impact future business decisions. Currently, there is a dearth...
A systematic approach including seven steps to build indicators for scenario monitoring was developed. Factor analysis was used to assign weights to individual indicators. And then individual indicators were aggregated linearly to build composite indicator. Next, the composite indicators were used to assess the changes in the driving forces so...
