Haskayne School of Business Research & Publications

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Browsing Haskayne School of Business Research & Publications by Department "Operations and Supply Chain Management"

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    Critical Chain Analysis Using Project Management Software
    (APICS, 2009) Balakrishnan, Jaydeep
    Previously in this journal, Umble and Umble (2000) discussed Goldratt’s “critical chain” (Goldratt 1997) for project scheduling. In this article, we show that explicitly defining the critical chain in a resource constrained project schedule will help avoid errors in slack calculation. Because these slacks can help identify the feeding buffers in critical chain analysis and prepare the backward schedules for the activities, it is important to identify them correctly.
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    Delegation of Stocking Decisions under Asymmetric Demand Information
    (2017-11-22) Sen, Alper; Alp, Osman
    Headquarters of a retailer delegates stocking decisions to store managers at its various stores. Store managers have complete information of the local demand process, whereas headquarters has partial information. The problem is how to incentivize the managers to make stocking decisions that minimizes headquarters' expected overage and underage costs. We investigate performance measurement schemes in which headquarters incite store managers make stocking decisions in headquarters' best interests using their private information. Adopting such schemes helps retailers reduce stock-outs and attain desired service levels across their stores. Headquarters knows that the underlying demand process at a store for a product over a replenishment cycle is one of J possible Wiener demand processes, whereas store manager knows the specific process with certainty. Store manager creates a single order before the cycle. Headquarters use an incentive scheme which is based on the end-of-period leftover inventory and on a stock-out occasion at a pre-specified inspection time {\it before} the end of a period. Headquarters' problem to determine the inspection time and relative importance of stock-outs to leftover stock is formulated as a constrained non-linear optimization problem in a single period setting and a dynamic program in a multi-period setting. The proposed ``early inspection'' scheme leads to perfect alignment under certain conditions. Under more general conditions, it provides a near-perfect alignment and performs strictly better than stock-out inspection at the end. Using historical sales data of a retailer, we show that this scheme can lead to considerable cost reduction. Even though attaining high on-shelf availability is crucial in retail, stock-out related measures are not reflected in store managers' performance scorecards. We prescribe a novel, easy and practical method for headquarters with which they can increase on-shelf-availability by relying on their store managers' private demand information. The proposed method decidedly outperforms the computer aided ordering systems that are commonly used in practice.
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    An Interactive VBA Tool for teaching Statistical Process Control (SPC) issues (Lab Manual Instructor version)
    (INFORMS PubsOnLine, 2005-05) Balakrishnan, Jaydeep; Oh, Sherry
    With a global emphasis on improved quality, Statistical Process Control (SPC) is an important process management tool with renewed significance. In order to address this issue, we have developed an interactive VBA Tool for teaching SPC and process management issues. Students can experiment with the tool to interactively examine the various issues that affect SPC and gain insight into the important issues in managing a process. The graphical nature of the interface should allow students to visually see the effect of changes in process parameters. A detailed Instructor's Manual and a Student Lab Manual accompany the software.
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    Modelling Rearrangement Constraints in Dynamic Layout
    (InderScience Publishers, 2013) Balakrishnan, Jaydeep; Cheng, Chun Hung; Lau, Chun Ming
    The dynamic plant layout problem (DPLP) deals with multi-period layout plans. Genetic algorithms have proved to be effective in solving DPLPs. In this research we consider a constraint on rearrangement. Such constraints may have to be considered not only in multi-period plant layout, but also in multi-period plant location and multi-period cellular manufacturing. We suggest proactive and reactive heuristic methods that can be used to modify existing genetic algorithms for the constrained situation. An extensive computational study is carried out to compare the proposed heuristics.
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    A Spreadsheet Decision Support Optimization Model for Railcar Storage at Canadian Pacific Railway
    (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012-02) Balakrishnan, Jaydeep; Espey, Renae Lorelei
    Canadian railway companies operate in a capital intensive segment of the transportation industry. In most railway companies, the covered hopper railcar fleet is one of the larger fleets due to its use in moving grain and potash, commodities that move large volumes of product. This railcar fleet is also difficult to manage due to demand seasonality and joint commodity use. This paper demonstrates how an aggregate planning model can be used to support decision-making related to optimization of covered hopper railcar storage. Exploratory research prior to model development involved interviews with company personnel. The model was developed through quantitative research and implemented using spreadsheet optimization. The results indicate that using this model can reduce the total cost of storage through effective planning. The model also provided insight to improve railcar storage such as the elimination of excess storage locations and the need to do further investigation. The company is in the process of implementing suggestions from this paper.