Control-oriented Approaches to
Supply Chain Management and Enterprise Systems:

Enterprise systems management in general, and supply chain integration in particular, has become a strategic imperative for most manufacturers. A "supply chain" (also known as a demand network) consists of interconnected components required to transform ideas into delivered products and services. Supply chain integration applies a total systems approach to managing the entire flow of information and materials, from the raw materials suppliers through the factory and distribution centers to the customer. Traditionally, supply chain strategies have focused on integrating functions within a single company to provide a context for more effective decisions. Today, industry leaders recognize that the success of their business strategies also depends on closer integration with their core suppliers, distributors, and other business partners.
Our research in this area (funded by an NSF GOALI grant (DMI - 0432439)and the Intel Research Council) has been to develop control-oriented approaches to managing supply chains using decision policies based on Model Predictive Control. More recently, we have been collaborating with colleagues in the Departments of Mathematics (Professors Armbruster, Kawski, and Ringhofer) and researchers from Intel Corporation (Dr. Karl G. Kempf and Kirk D. Smith) on formulations meaningful to tactical inventory planning in semiconductor manufacturing. Our solutions are evaluated on a series of benchmark problems developed by Intel Corporation which involve multiple wafer fabs, assembly and test facilities, distribution warehouses, and customer locations.