CAREER: Analysis of Multi-dimensional Coordination Problems in Service Parts Logistics Systems

该学院早期职业发展(CALEAR)奖为开发服务部件物流(SPL)系统中协调问题的模型和算法提供资金。SPL系统中的挑战是同时协调跨业务单位、时间范围和地理位置的决策，以实现高质量的系统范围解决方案。研究首先将为综合物流网络设计和库存管理制定一个统一的框架，并探索以数学模型形式表述的相关问题的基于分解的解决方法。物流网络设计子模型涉及多梯队、多产品和基于时间的服务覆盖限制。库存子模型涉及跨多个设施的库存共享和基于响应时间的服务级别。考虑到实际SPL系统中存在的问题的规模，研究还将调查模型的不同粒度级别，并确定计算和解精度之间的权衡。这项研究将最终解决协调问题中固有的机制设计和激励问题：如何确保决策实体有必要的激励来协调他们的决策？该奖项密切相关的教育计划包括开发一个关于现代SPL系统的教学案例，以及开发一门关于供应链协调问题的数学建模的课程。如果成功，这项研究的结果将导致解决SPL中的问题，无论是规模还是范围，都是工业、政府和军队经常面临的问题。模型及其结果将与SPL的合作伙伴进行验证和验证。这些研究将有助于为具有特殊结构的大规模数学模型寻找可伸缩的求解方法，并将其应用于实际问题。研究结果还将提供使个别决策实体的目标与全系统目标保持一致的见解。在一个统一的框架中同时分析这些问题将提高对这些因素(不同级别的协调和激励问题)在分布式物流系统中如何相互影响的理解。另一个贡献将是揭示协调机制和基于分解的优化技术之间的关系。教育部分应加强应用运筹学、供应链管理和物流课程的教学。

This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award provides funding for the development of models and algorithms for coordination problems in Service Parts Logistics (SPL) systems. The challenge in SPL systems is to coordinate decisions across business units, time horizons, and geographical locations at the same time towards high-quality system-wide solutions. The research first will develop a unified framework for integrated logistics network design and inventory management and explore decomposition-based solution methodologies for the associated problems formulated as mathematical models. The logistics network design submodel involves multiple echelons, multiple products and time-based service coverage restrictions. The inventory submodel involves inventory sharing across multiple facilities and response-time based service levels. Motivated by the scale of the problems existing in real SPL systems, the research will also investigate different levels of granularity of the models, and identify the trade-off between computation and solution accuracy. The research will finally address the mechanism design and incentive issues that inherently exist in coordination problems: How does one make sure that the decision entities have the necessary incentives to coordinate their decisions? The closely related educational plan of the award involves the development of a teaching case on modern SPL systems, and the development of a course on mathematical modeling of supply chain coordination problems.If successful, the results of this research will lead to the solution of problems in SPL, both in size and scope, commonly faced by industry, the government and the military. The models and their results will be validated and verified with partners in SPL. The investigations should contribute in finding scalable solution methodologies for large-scale mathematical models with special structure and their application to real problems. The results will also provide insights in aligning the individual decision entities' goals with the system-wide goals. Analyzing these issues simultaneously in a unified framework will improve the understanding of how these factors (different levels of coordination and incentive issues) affect each other in distributed logistics systems. Another contribution will be to undercover the relationship between coordination mechanisms and decomposition-based optimization techniques. The educational component should enhance teaching in applied operations research, supply chain management, and logistics courses.