Seminar

Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management
The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Title: Balancing Production, Inventory, and Delivery Costs in Paper Manufacturing

Speaker : Prof. H. Neil Geismar
                  Mays Business School, Texas A&M University

Date: Mar. 16, 2012 (Friday)

Time: 4:30p.m.-5:30p.m.

Venue: Room 513
            William M.W. Mong Engineering Building
            (Engineering Building Complex Phase 2)
            CUHK

Abstract:

Previous studies of production planning in the paper industry have focused on the assignment of orders to different plants and subsequently minimized production costs.  We consider the operations of a single plant that serves multiple clients by producing paper of various basis weights.  A typical customer’s order contains multiple jobs, each of which specifies paper of a certain weight and width.  The plant combines jobs within each weight into sets, with no regard to the job’s customer.  Costs are reduced by minimizing the number of sets produced.  The high cost of transitions between weights encourages long production runs at each weight to minimize the number of transitions.  As jobs are completed, they are released to distribution to schedule their delivery.

Deliveries are made by railcars, each of which is dedicated to one customer.  Long production runs imply that maximizing railcar utilization requires holding the cars over several days or holding completed jobs within the loading facility.  Each of these methods imposes a cost onto the distribution function.  We find how distribution can minimize its cost, given production’s schedule.  We then consider the problem of minimizing the company’s overall cost of both production and distribution.

Biography:

H. Neil Geismar is an Associate Professor in the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University.  He has a Ph.D. degree from the University of Texas at Dallas in Operations Management.  His research addresses production scheduling, especially in the field of robotic cell scheduling; supply chain management, focusing on the coordination of the manufacturing and delivery functions through scheduling; and the currency supply chain in the United States.  He has served as a consultant to industrial clients to improve their productivity and profitability.  His papers have appeared in a number of journals, including INFORMS Journal on Computing, Manufacturing and Services Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, SIAM Review, and IIE Transactions.  He is a member of INFORMS and of POMS.

************************* ALL ARE WELCOME ************************

Host: Prof. Cheng Chun Hung

Tel: (852) 3943-8322

Email: chcheng@se.cuhk.edu.hk

Enquiries: Prof. Nan Chen or Prof. Sean X. Zhou
                 Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management
                 CUHK

Website: http://www.se.cuhk.edu.hk/~seem5201

Email: seem5201@se.cuhk.edu.hk

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