SGER: Worker Assignment for Cellular Manufacturing Considering Human Issues

这项探索性研究小额赠款（SGER）为开发生产规划中预测稳健的产能收购和分包决策的方法提供资金。 在有限的规划范围内获取能力，持有库存和分包订单给第三方供应商之间的战略权衡将被检查的生产规划问题。 本研究项目有三个主要目标：（1）调查能力获取和分包问题的最佳解决方案的结构，（2）研究需求预测误差下的最佳和近似解决方案的鲁棒性，以及（3）开发有效的方法，产生对需求预测误差相对不敏感的解决方案。 不同类型的成本结构，是适合能力收购，生产，分包和库存持有的决定将被描绘。 所开发的方法的计算复杂性将被调查的各种子类。 将进行大量的计算实验，以测试分析结果在改善产能获取和分包决策方面的有效性。 从这项研究中获得的见解，预测稳健的能力收购和分包决策的下游影响将在多级供应商-客户供应链进行调查。 由于一个公司提供最终产品的能力和分包决定有涓滴效应的需求，其供应商，在整个供应链的产品协调决策的研究是必不可少的，在降低总的制造成本的产品。这项研究有可能提供分析见解的战略权衡预测强大的能力收购和分包决策，特别是在服务业和高科技行业的产品寿命短。

This Small Grant for Exploratory Research (SGER) provides funding for the development of methodologies for making forecast-robust capacity acquisition and subcontracting decisions in production planning. The strategic tradeoffs between acquiring capacity over a finite planning horizon, holding inventories and subcontracting orders to third party vendors will be examined for production planning problems. The research project has three main objectives: (1) investigating the structure of optimal solutions for capacity acquisition and subcontracting problems, (2) studying the robustness of the optimal and approximate solutions under demand forecast errors, and (3) developing efficient methods that will produce solutions that are relatively insensitive to errors in the demand forecasts. Different types of cost structures that are appropriate for capacity acquisition, production, subcontracting and inventory holding decisions will be delineated. The computational complexity of the developed methods will be investigated for various subclasses. Extensive computational experiments will be conducted to test the effectiveness of the analytical results in improving the capacity acquisition and subcontracting decisions. With the insights gained from this research, the downstream impacts of forecast-robust capacity acquisition and subcontracting decisions will be investigated in multi-echelon vendor-customer supply chains. Since the capacity and subcontracting decisions of a firm delivering a final product have a trickling effect on the demand of its vendors, research in coordinated decision making throughout the supply chain of the product is essential in reducing the total manufacturing cost of the product. This research has the potential of providing analytical insights to the strategic tradeoffs in forecast-robust capacity acquisition and subcontracting decisions, especially in service industry and high-tech industries with short product life span.