Supply chain engineering and management

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Supply chains are networks of logistic and manufacturing activities starting with raw material sourcing and ending with the distribution of finished goods to markets. A complete supply chain usually involves several companies and several production/warehousing facilities. The performance of a supply chain for a given product-market critically depends on two interdependent strategic issues: 1) the network structure, i.e. the number, location, mission, technology and capacity of the facilities of the firms involved; 2) the material flow planning and control processes used, i.e. the methods used to prepare aggregate plans, to compute requirements, lot-sizes, safety-buffers, etc., and to schedule operations for the various production/distribution stages in the network. My research is dealing: 1) at a global level, with the development of methodologies and tools to evaluate potential structural and procedural supply chain strategies; 2) at a more detailed level, with the formulation and solution of mathematical models which can be used to optimize the supply chain network structure or to plan material flows in specific contexts. In both cases, an effort is made to formulate models which can be integrated in distributed planning systems for specific industrial sectors.