Fall 2008 UMASS Amherst Operations Research / Management Science Seminar Series

Date: Friday, October 24, 2008 Time: 11:00 AM Location: Isenberg School of Management, Room 112

Speaker: Professor Ahmed Ghoniem Department of Finance and Operations Management   University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Biography: Dr. Ahmed Ghoniem is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Finance and Operations Management, Isenberg School of Management, UMass, Amherst. He completed his Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech in 2007. He pioneered the dual M.S. degree co-developed by the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department at Virginia Tech and Ecole des Mines de Nantes (EMN, France). In 2002, he received an M.S. in Operations Management in Production and Logistics from EMN, and obtained his M.S. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Virginia Tech in 2003. His research interests include operations research, mathematical programming, and logistics and production management. Dr. Ghoniem is published in OR and management science journals such as Networks and Optimization Letters.

TITLE: Joint Vehicle Assembly-Routing Problems: An Integrated Modeling and Optimization Approach

Abstract: This talk examines logistical systems where it is desirable to appropriately ascertain the joint composition of the sequences of vehicles that are to be physically connected along with determining their delivery routes. Such assembly-routing problems occur in the truck manufacturing industry, for example, where combinations of trucks to be delivered to dealerships are composed and are subsequently dispatched via appropriately optimized delivery routes, which are in turn restricted by the particular sequence in which the trucks are connected. A similar structure is exhibited in the business of shipping goods via boat-towed barges along inland waterways, or via trains through railroad networks. We present a novel unifying model and a column generation-based optimization approach for this challenging class of joint vehicle assembly-routing problems. In addition, we suggest several extensions to accommodate particular industrial settings where assembly sequence-dependent delivery routes are necessary, as well as those where driver- and equipment-based restrictions are imposed. Computational experience is provided using realistic data from a case-study involving a major truck manufacturing company to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed methodology in practice.

This series is organized by the UMASS Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter. Support for this series is provided by the Isenberg School of Management, the Department of Finance and Operations Management, INFORMS, and the John F. Smith Memorial Fund. Dr. Anna Nagurney, the John F. Smith Memorial Professor of Operations Management in the Isenberg School of Management, is the Faculty Advisor of the Speaker Series.