Operations and Supply Chain Management and Optimisation
Operations and supply chain management
Today’s global competitive business atmosphere, stringent concerns from environmental, social, risk and uncertainty requirements have affected global supply chain network structures for manufacturing and service industries. As a result, firms have to restructure their supply chain orientation to be more cost-effective, more sustainable, more flexible, more adaptive, more resilient, more robust, and more responsive to customer requirements and changing global markets.
Our research pioneers in applying agent-based technology in modelling, simulating and optimising the configuration of multi-objective global supply chain network designs. Our solution frameworks and methodologies ranges from simulation, exact methods, metaheuristics (i.e., genetic algorithms, ant colony optimisation, bee colony, etc.), hybrid approaches (i.e., matheuristics, artificial intelligent, machine learning, etc.). The goal is to provide sustainable competitive advantages for companies.
Our research focuses on but not limited to
- multi-objective optimisation of supply chain operations to reduce cost, carbon emissions and delivery time;
- a coordination of project-based supply chains with dynamically changing project portfolios;
- model sourcing and inventory decisions in a multi-tier supply chain and the coordination and optimisations of such decisions across supply chain member; and
- design resilient and robust supply chain network design to incorporate uncertainty, risks, and disruptions (i.e., demand, supply, natural events, etc.)
Our research covers a broad range of issues associated with supply chain, which currently focuses on the following sub-areas:
- Discrete Event Simulation of Manufacturing Processes
- Logistics Management
- Operations & maintenance of offshore wind energy
- Project supply chains and dynamic portfolio management
- robust and sustainable resilient supply chain network design
- Sustainable Closed-loop supply chain management
Key Academics
| Academic | Title | Relevant interests |
|---|---|---|
| Professor Voicu Ion Sucala | Professor/ Personal Chair in Engineering Management |
|
| Dr Baris Yuce | Senior Lecturer in Engineering Management |
|
| Dr Martino Luis | Senior Lecturer in Engineering Management |
|
- Luis, M., Irawan, C.A. and Imran, A. (2019). A two-stage method for the capacitated multi-facility location-allocation problem, Int. J. Operational Research, Vol. 35 (3), 366–377.
- Irawan, C. A., Luis, M., Salhi, S., & Imran, A. (2019). The incorporation of fixed cost and multilevel capacities into the discrete and continuous single source capacitated facility location problem. Annals of Operations Research, 275(2), 367-392.
- Zhong, S., Pantelous, A. A., Goh, M., & Zhou, J. (2019). A reliability-and-cost-based fuzzy approach to optimize preventive maintenance scheduling for offshore wind farms. Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, 124, 643-663.
- Zhong, S., Giannikas, V., Merino, J., Lu, W., & McFarlane, D. Evaluating the benefits of picking and packing integration in order fulfilment warehouses. Under review with European Journal of Operational Research.
Projects
KTP with Smart Manufacturing ltd Bideford (Academic supervisor: Prof Voicu Ion Sucala, KTP Associate: Sam John Abraham)
This KTP project is creating and implementing a dual-production business model and a novel modelling and simulation tool to enable the optimisation of multi production manufacturing flows. This is enabling Smart Manufacturing to design and manufacture new and highly specialised equipment for ATEX rated environments in parallel with its traditional bespoke products. The KTP also developed a novel knowledge management tool that helped Smart Manufacturing acquire and formalise the highly specialised knowledge on ATEX regulations and practices. Work is ongoing to extend and generalise this tool so that it can be used by manufacturing SMEs to consolidate compliance knowledge in resource constrained environments.
Impact:
- University of Exeter KTP plays key role in the manufacturing process of the new Covid-19 vaccine
- KTP helps power production of the new Covid-19 vaccine
EPSRC Internet of Food Things Network Plus on "DISTINCT: IoT and big data for productive, safe and sustainable aquaculture" (PI: Dr Miying Yang, Co-I: Dr Martino Luis)
The project seeks to explore digital technologies and new business models to improve aquaculture farming productivity, food safety and sustainability across supply chain. This project captures the challenges across the aquaculture supply chain, uses Internet of Things and big data to help aquaculture farmers monitor the changes of the farming water, so that they can better control water quality, take preventative actions to reduce death and disease, and reduce environmental impact.