Healthcare cost are on the rise and becoming a major concern in the US economy. In fact, healthcare spending is the largest individual contributor to US gross domestic product. Various stakeholders such as government, insurance and payors are now looking at the healthcare providers and manufacturers to come up with...
Services, more specifically laboratory testing services, that await arrival of customer inputs prior to commencing suffer from long lead times. Can performing the steps in a group of services concurrently with the transportation lead time of customer input reduce service lead times? This research clustered services according to their co-occurrence...
This capstone project studies route deviations in the last-mile deliveries of a large soft drink company. Last-mile delivery is a critical problem due to its substantial economic impact on operational cost, and deviations from the planned routes can potentially prevent companies from minimizing these costs. We study whether delivery crews...
The demand for Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) has continued to grow globally over the past decade with increasing numbers of disruptions and plant outages. Considering these dynamics, oil and gas companies will have to prepare their operations to meet increasing demand with agile response to disruptions. This is particularly true...
Logistics efficiency impacts the profitability of manufacturing companies to a large extent. According to IDC Manufacturing Insights Report of 2014, logistics cost makes up 7.87% of sales of the business. Statistics reveal that the carrying cost in China has been increased to over 3.5 trillion RMB in 2016 accounting for...
Changing regulatory requirements continues to be an increasingly complex issue in the medical device industry. Regulations place stress on regional supply chains across the world. Most recently, the European Parliament issued the Medical Device Regulation (EU) 2017/745 instituting new compliance framework for all devices manufactured, sold, and/or distributed in the...
The Mid-day Meal program is an initiative taken by the Government of India to improve the nutritional status of school-age children nationwide. It involves many agencies and NGOs. Akshaya Patra is the most popular and largest NGO among them which in India is currently serving meals to 1.6 million children...
A small chain of gas stations in Brazil intends to expand to new retail locations. Which factors should it consider when locating new stations, in order to better leverage a combination of product prices and transportation costs? This work develops a Linear Optimization network design model in order to identify...
The traditional way to reach customers in e-commerce is home delivery. Retailers have expanded fulfillment options to include picking up from a store, locker, 3rd-party collection point, and more. This study focuses on two channels: pick-up from the store and home delivery. Groceries present a unique category for eCommerce due...
An operations strategy is a method or plan of action that corporations employ to reach their goals. A good strategy enables a company to operate efficiently and use its resources effectively. The purpose of this capstone project is to formulate optimal supply chain operating strategies for demand, sourcing, and distribution...
In the world of consumer packaged goods (“CPGs”), not all demand is created equal. While Base Demand typically comprises anywhere from 50 – 80% of day-to-day volume, other demand profiles, or replenishment streams, make up the delta. For the purpose of this project, demand patterns for five replenishment streams (Base...
Piece picking is an integral operation in distribution centres (DCs). The partner company has it as the largest part cost item of DC operations. The current product slotting and assignment planning needs to be improved to improve space utilization and reduce labour expenses. The team approached the problem by using...
There is a current lack of visibility in the transfer of goods from farmers to oil mills, to manufacturers, to retail outlets and finally to the consumer in the palm oil industry. While leading brands have pledged to commit to a 100% sustainable certification, only 19% of global palm oil...
The speed at which a manufacturing company analyzes big data and reacts to the market trends can be key to its success. In consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, a delay in analyzing the huge amounts of data produced could result in missing opportunities to identify patterns that indicate problems, and...
The project sponsor is a reverse logistics company that provides Returnable Transport Items (RTIs) to large manufacturing companies, distributors and retailers. Its business model is characterized by a unique closed-loop supply chain. The seasonal peak demand for RTIs from June to September negatively impacts service levels and costs. The sponsor...
Truckload cancellations by carriers are causing disruptions in the trucking industry operations. By extrapolating the findings from the 3PL’s data studied in this research to the whole trucking industry, it is estimated that 32 million cancellations occur every year. These cancellations result in around $4.6 billion extra cost. If these...
Industrial digitalization concepts such as Industry 4.0 or Smart Manufacturing are currently of great interest in academia and among industrial players. These concepts are expected to boost companies’ manufacturing supply chain performance factors such as availability and productivity. For instance, greater availability of assets on the shop floor makes the...
Climate catastrophes (i.e. tornadoes, hail, hurricanes, etc.) have a significant economic and operational impact on the operation of call centers. It was found that catastrophe events such as hurricanes critically impact the operation of the affected location for a period of two months after the hurricane has occurred. A sudden...
The transportation sector is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions; hence, it is desirable to lower carbon emissions from this sector, especially with the expected growth in transportation needs from e-commerce. Since a particular vehicle type may exhibit different emissions characteristics when operating in different regions, determining which vehicle...
In today's world, the e-commerce market is growing rapidly and becoming more competitive. While any players in the industry are attempting to get their share of pie, consumers are demanding faster deliveries and free shipping. This market growth and change in consumer behavior provides an exciting opportunity for companies to...
Companies trading cementitious materials face an increasingly volatile economic environment and continuous challenges to ensure the availability of strategic raw materials. In this context, the ability to globally source slag represents a competitive advantage for cement companies because of the limited availability of the material, its importance in the cement...
A large majority of companies in Latin America are micro or small firms, making them an important part of the region’s economy. These firms are a relevant source of jobs, but a lack of managerial skills and resources threatens their survival. In this study, we analyze a set of supply...
Supply chain network optimization is presently performed by solving a cost minimization problem, without regard for potential revenue generation through endogenous demand. This capstone report analyzes several incarnations of endogenous demand expression and factors these incarnations in network design optimization by modelling the problem with a profit maximization objective. Under...
Millions of mom-and-pop stores represent 40-70% of the market share of Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies. Many of these stores are located in megacities in developing countries, cities over 10 million people, where characteristics such as traffic congestion and a dense population make the last-mile delivery process very complex. Therefore...
With the increasingly competitive landscape of e-commerce and omni-channel delivery execution, the last mile has emerged as a critical source of opportunity for cost efficiency. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have historically been utilized for military applications, but they are quickly gaining traction as a viable option for driving improvements in...
