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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Products: Value of Demand Information on Supply Chains
In this research, we focus on the production and inventory planning of platform products. We define "platform product" as a group of components (or products) that are separately available to the market, but designed to perform better when assembled and/or used together. Our motivation is the latest trend in the semiconductor industry, that is projected to have over $250B in sales in 2006, to provide platform products that consist of components (i.e. CPU, Chipset, Wireless) that are validated to work together more efficiently in terms of higher performance with lower energy consumption.
An ARENA supply chain simulation model and an ILOG OPL production planning optimization model are integrated together with VBA codes to create a software laboratory to try our scenarios. The current setting is that the supplier of platform products is managing its supply chain on component level. Therefore, the order processing, forecasting, production planning and inventory management are all done separately (with minimal coordination) for each component that are required/ordered at different times in the customer's manufacturing process. We are looking at a scenario where the orders from customers are received as platform orders, therefore having advanced demand information on platform level. We will quantify the value of this information at a supply chain level and explore the dynamics of platform products supply chains.
Pizza and refreshments sponsored by The Logistics Institute.
