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...
Ongoing humanitarian operations can suffer from the lack of medical item availability. The central problem thus becomes how to ensure the right item in the right place at the right time while maintaining appropriate costs. By means of a case study, this research grouped items by various item characteristics and...
According to a report by A. T. Kearney, in 2016 the US business spent $1,392.64B on logistics costs. 90% of transportation spending is procured in the form of Long Term Contracts. A Long Term Contract drives long procurement cycles that can last over 6 months, which results in significant financial...
Excess inventory is prevalent in both the armed forces and defense companies; it takes up space and resources that could be used elsewhere. This thesis proposes a method to reduce the excess inventory and associated costs, while maintaining instant part availability, despite design changes which alter the number of parts...
This document supports companies that are interested in setting science-based targets for transport greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions according to the new, refined pathways in the Sector Decarbonization Approach (SDA) Transport tool. It builds on the existing manual and guidance of the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) for setting science-based targets...
The electronic newsletter of the MIT Global SCALE Network Issue #66 Subscribe to Frontiers THE LEADING EDGE Narrowing the Self-Drive Trust Divide Professor Yossi Sheffi, Director, MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics, argues that while trust in autonomous vehicles appears to be slowly building, the technology still has some difficult...
Are we learning to trust self-drive vehicle technology? In January 2018 the AAA released the findings of its latest annual survey of driver attitudes in the US. Sixty-three percent of American drivers report feeling afraid to ride in a fully self-driving vehicle. This is a significant portion of the country’s...
