Books in Production/Operations Management

Inventory-Management in Supply Networks - Problems, Models, Solutions

by Horst Tempelmeier, Norderstedt, 2006

The book discusses single-stage and multi-stage inventory models and provides readily implementable numerical algorithms to solve practical problems. Spreadsheet implementations are given.

Introduction to Computational Optimization Models for Production Planning in a Supply Chain

by Stefan Voss and David L. Woodruff, Springer, 2003

The book provides an introduction to symbolic modeling of optimization for production planning. The familiar paradigms mrp and MRP II are used as a jumping off point. The book begins with a gentle introduction to the concepts associated with the creation of optimization models for production planning. These concepts are then applied to well-known planning models, namely mrp and MRP II. These simple models are extended in a number of ways to produce fairly sophisticated models in supply chain management. Another unique feature is that models are developed with an eye toward implementation. In fact, there is a chapter that provides explicit examples of imple-mentation of the basic models using a variety of popular, commercially available modeling languages.

For further information see: Springer Online

Design and Analysis of Lean Production Systems

by Ronald G. Askin and Jeffrey B. Goldberg, John Wiley & Sons, 2001

This book covers the design and operation of discrete parts production systems. The text begins with an overview of the key functions and components of production systems and the fundamental underlying principles. It then flows through the standard decision hierarchy with separate chapters devoted to forecasting, strategic planning and supply chain design, aggregate planning, inventory control, pull control systems, push control systems, hierarchical coordination, lean manufacturing, shop scheduling and shop floor control. Typical objectives and constraints are presented at each level along with the inputs and outputs that link the levels in the decision hierarchy. In each case one or more decision models is discussed in detail. The assumptions behind each approach are included as well as the mathematical details of the model and corresponding solution. Models emphasize objectives such as minimizing lead times as well as cost. Examples are used to provide both motivation and to illustrate the models. Additional topics include modern system concepts such as flexible manufacturing and reentrant flow systems. Engineering methods for creating lean production systems are also described.

Further information about this book is available from Wiley Publishers.

Arc Routing: Theory, Solutions and Applications

Edited by Moshe Dror, Kluwer Academic Publishing, 2000

Arc Routing: Theory, Solutions and Applications is about arc traversal and the wide variety of arc routing problems, which has had its foundations in the modern graph theory work of Leonhard Euler. Arc routing methods and computation has become a fundamental optimization concept in operations research and has numerous applications in transportation, telecommunications, manufacturing, the Internet, and many other areas of modern life. The book draws from a variety of sources including the traveling salesman problem (TSP) and graph theory, which are used and studied by operations research, engineers, computer scientists, and mathematicians. In the last ten years or so, there has been extensive coverage of arc routing problems in the research literature, especially from a graph theory perspective; however, the field has not had the benefit of a uniform, systematic treatment. With this book, there is now a single volume that focuses on state-of-the-art exposition of arc routing problems, that explores its graph theoretical foundations, and that presents a number of solution methodologies in a variety of application settings. Moshe Dror has succeeded in working with an elite group of arc routing scholars to develop the highest quality treatment of the current state-of-the-art in arc routing.

Further information about this book is available from Kluwer Academic Publishing.

Optimal Control Theory: Applications to Management Science and Economics

by Suresh P. Sethi and Gerald L. Thompson, Second Edition, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000

Sethi and Thompson have provided management science and economics communities with a thoroughly revised edition of their classic text on Optimal Control Theory. Central to the book is its extraordinarily wide range of optimal control theory applications. Chapter 5 covers finance; Chapter 6 considers production and inventory problems; Chapter 7 covers marketing problems; Chapter 9 treats machine maintenance and replacement; Chapter 10 deals with problems of optimal consumption of natural resources (renewable or exhaustible); and Chapter 11 discusses a number of applications of control theory to economics. The book has been successfully used as a professional reference tool and as a graduate course book. Its usefulness lies in its emphasis on building applied models of realistic problems faced in a variety of business management situations.

The new edition has been completely refined with careful attention to the text and graphic material presentation. In Chapter 3, models have been added that use mixed (control and state) constraints, current value formulations, and terminal conditions. Chapter 4 now covers more advanced material on pure state constraints as they relate to mixed constraints. Each of these chapters contains new results that were not available when the first edition was published.

Another important change is the expansion of the material on stochastic optimal control theory, which has become the new Chapter 13. This new chapter provides a brief introduction to stochastic optimal control problems, and it contains formulations of simple stochastic models in production, marketing and finance, and their solutions.

Optimal control methods are used to determine optimal ways to control a dynamic system. The theoretical work in this field serves as a foundation for the book, which the authors have applied to business management problems developed from their research and classroom instruction.

Hierarchical Operations and Supply Chain Planning

by Tan Miller, Springer-Verlag, 2000

This book describes the application of hierarchical planning techniques to all the major functional areas of supply chain planning including production, distribution, warehousing, transportation, inventory management, forecasting, and performance management. In particular, the book provides a comprehensive review and understanding of how hierarchical planning techniques and principles can contribute to the effective and efficient management and planning of supply chain activities.

The book begins with a review of well-known hierarchical production planning techniques and implementations, before moving on to examine current hierarchical planning methods and applications covering a wide array of supply chain activities. Additionally the book offers a number of new and original hierarchical planning techniques and algorithms relating to different components of supply chain planning. These algorithms range from simple algebraic calculations to mathematical optimization models. The book demonstrates an original approach to integrating supply chain measurements into performance measurement systems, such as the balanced scorecard, which evaluate total firm performance.

The book is written to cover the interests of a wide variety of audiences ranging from private industry practitioners, to academic researchers, to students of operations, logistics and supply chain management and planning. It features numerous graphical illustrations highlighting both methods and requirements for integrated hierarchical supply chain planning.

Further information about this book is available from Springer Science Online.

Quantitative Models for Supply Chain Management

Edited by Sridhar Tayur, Ram Ganeshan and Michael Magazine , Kluwer Academic Publishing, 1998

There is no doubt of the importance of quantitative models and computer based tools in decision making in today's business environment. This is especially true in the rapidly growing area of supply chain management. Anticipating this, a small group of researchers began working on some fundamental models in the early part of this decade, and have now been joined by a larger group of academics and industry researchers thus creating, in a very small time, a large body of research motivated by industry practices, current challenges and future expected needs.

We thought this may be an appropriate time to edit a book that would, in an unified manner, provide a systematic summary of the large variety of new issues being considered, the new set of models being developed, the new techniques for analysis, and the computational methods that have become available recently. 47 authors have contributed 27 chapters in all.

Further information about this book is available from Kluwer Academic Publishing.

Inventory Management and Production Planning and Scheduling

by E. A. Silver, D. F. Pyke and R. Peterson, Third Edition, John Wiley & Sons, 1998

This is a significant revision and update of the classic Silver and Peterson Inventory book. Here is a selection from the Preface:

Our primary objective in the first two editions of the book was to bridge this gap through the development of operational inventory management and production planning decision systems that would allow management to capitalize on readily implementable improvements to current practices. Extensive feedback from both academicians and practitioners has been very gratifying in this regard. Our primary objective is unchanged in this revised edition. Because of the development of widely used computing tools, such as spreadsheets, the possibilities for implementing rigorous theoretical research in practice have never been greater. This substantial revision incorporates these developments, as well as new knowledge from our teaching and consulting experiences. We have drawn on the writings of literally hundreds of scholars who have extended theory and who have implemented theory in practice. We have also incorporated many helpful suggestions from our colleagues.

Managing Business Process Flows

by R. Anupindi, S. Chopra, S. D. Deshmukh, J. A. Van Mieghem and E. Zemel, Addison-Wesley, 1998

Managing Business Process Flows (MBPF) is a novel approach to studying the core concepts in operations, together with finance and marketing one of the three major functional fields in business. MBPF views operations management as the design and management of business processes and uses this process view as the unifying paradigm to study operations. MBPF uses a logically rigorous approach to discuss core concepts in three steps: first model and understand the process and its flows. Then study causal relationships between process structure and certain performance metrics. Finally, formulate implications for managerial actions by filtering out managerial levers ("process drivers") and their impact on process performance. Thus, the overall objective of the book is to show how managers can control process structure and process drivers to achieve desired business process performance. This framework is applied to understand which levers managers have to control cycle time, capacity, inventory and quality.

For more information, visit the author's web page for Managing Business Process Flows.

Manufacturing Automation

by Morris A. Cohen and Uday Apte, McGraw Hill, 1997

MANUFACTURING AUTOMATION provides a modern overview of the real what's, why's, and how's of managing manufacturing technology. The book concisely presents concrete examples of automation in all stages of manufacturing including CAD/CAM infrastructure hardware and software, costing and forecasting systems, EDI links to suppliers and customers, and managerial aspects, including human resource effects. The text provides an overview and classification system for evaluating technology opportunities in manufacturing.

FEATURES

Includes constant consideration of other strategic issues in manufacturing, namely quality, time-based competition, and performance issues. Because technology changes so quickly, Cohen provides a listing of resources for further future research and updating. Contains thorough glossary of terms for student reference. Instructor's Manual contains detailed teaching suggestions, including suggested video segments and suggested case assignments.

Further information about this book is available at from the publisher.

The Planning and Scheduling of Production Systems

edited by A. Artiba and S.E. Elmaghraby, Chapman & Hall, 1997

This book presents the latest developments in theory, methdology and technique in the field of planning and scheduling of production systems. It aims to promote understanding of the fundamental precepts and their application in practice, providing the reader with the ability to answer the following questions:

Which are the appropriate approaches to use in a particular situation? How are they used and what are the pitfalls?

What does the future hold in the field and what do I need to know to cope with it?

The book explains "what" the different approaches are, and "how" and "when" they are applied. It is an ideal source of information for practitioners in planning and scheduling, to whom it is primarily addressed, and to students studying industrial engineering, management science and manufacturing.

Apart from the Introduction, the book contains 10 chapters, each is original and written by an authority in the topic discussed. The range of topics spans logistics, integrated manufacturing planning, scheduling, compu-search procedures, and simulation.

Further information about this book is available from the publisher.

Facilities Design

by Sunderesh S. Heragu, PWS Publishing, 1997

This new text strikes a successful balance between quantitative modeling of facilities designs, and practical discussion of "real-world" facilities design, material handling, and warehousing problems. Distinguishing this book is its excellent treatment (in Chapter 7) of general-purpose solution techniques, including simulated annealing, genetic algorithms, and tabu search; its up-to-date presentation of group technology and cellular manufacturing systems; and its in-depth coverage of facilities location (in Chapters 13 and 14). Detailed case studies (in Chapters 11 and 12) describe material handling and automated storage and retrieval (AS/RS) systems in action, with copious illustrations of modern systems at work. A bound-in disk includes FORTRAN computer programs for solving two types of ABSMODELs (Models M3 and M4 in Chapter5), 2-opt, greedy 2-opt and simulated annealing algorithms as well as BLOCPLAN software for demonstrating layout problem-solving concepts and problems.

Further information about this book is available from the publisher.

Production: Planning, Control and Integration

by Daniel Sipper and Robert L. Bulfin, Jr. McGraw-Hill, 1997.

Production: Planning, Control, and Integration (ISBN 0-07-057682-3) offers a comprehensive, up-to-date look at production systems, the dynamic backbone of modern manufacturing and service. Based upon their experience as teachers, engineers in industry, and consultants, the authors provide a problem-driven approach to planning, controlling, and integrating production in a changing global environment. Example scenarios, models, solution algorithms, homework, minicases, evolution, and available software are given for each specific area. The book allows a flexible approach to both breadth and depth of topic, making it a valuable resource for practitioners in addition to students and instructors. Topics covered include the evolution of production systems, problem solving, forecasting, aggregate planning, inventory, materials requirements planning, scheduling, project management, and integrated production planning and control.

Get more information from The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Industrial Assembly

by S. Nof, A.W. Wilhelm, and H. Warnecke, Chapman & Hall, 1997

Industrial Assembly is a rapidly changing field with significent importance in production. This book is the first of its kind to combine technology, design, method, and planning and control models of assemblyi operations and systems. With the increasing importance of assembly in industry and of simultaneous engineering approaches, this timely publication provides:comprehensive coverage of technological, engineering and management aspects of this field; multi-disciplinary approaches to rationalization of assembly operations and systems; explanation of quantitative models, information technologies and design techniques, which have been practiced effectively in industrial assembly; theoretical foundations and emerging trends that shape its future. This book is suitable for graduates asnd senior undergraduates in industrial, mechanical and manufacturing engineering, and industrial management. It is also of interest to managers, engineers and consultants working in industry.

Further information about this book is available from Chapman & Hall.

Factory Physics: Foundations of Manufacturing Management

by Wallace J. Hopp, Mark L. Spearman, Irwin, 1996

This innovative new book appoaches manufacturing management from a three-fold perspective. (1) First, it reviews major historical trends in manufacturing, with an eye toward identifying both key insights and unresolved problems. (2) Then, it examines the underlying behavior common to broad classes of manufacturing systems by means of a series of descriptive models. This leads to a collection of "manufacturing laws" that underly the science of factory physics. (3) Finally, the historical and factory physics insights are used to examine the types of management system that are effective in various manufacturing environments. Planning and control problems ranging from low level shop floor control and scheduling, to high-level inventory and capacity management are examined in some detail.

Written at an elementary mathematical level, with all technical derivations relegated to "Technical Notes", which can be skipped without loss of continuity, this book is well-suited to undergraduate industrial engineering courses and to manufacturing-oriented MBA courses. It was developed as the basis for a popular course sequence in Northwestern's Master of Management in Manufacturing program, which is a full-time two-year joint management/engineering program dedicated to educating future manufacturing managers.

Further information about this book is available at the Factory Physics page.

Elements of Sequencing and Scheduling

by Kenneth R. Baker, 1995

This is an updated version of the classic scheduling textbook that was originally published in 1973. The update was completed in the early 1990's, and a revised edition has been available since 1995.

The text provides an introductory treatment of deterministic scheduling theory, enabling the student to read and appreciate the research literature on this topic. The revised edition includes chapters on earliness/tardiness criteria, lot streaming, and group scheduling models, as well as coverage of traditional models and techniques.

The book is self-published and available in paperback. Further information can be found on Ken Baker's home page.

Manufacturing Systems Engineering

by Stanley B. Gershwin, Prentice-Hall, 1994

This book provides quantitative methods for the capacity analysis and real-time scheduling of manufacturing systems. It treats these issues as engineering problems, without slogans, and it faces technical details in an appropriate, useful way.

This book provides a fundamental description of some of the most important phenomena affecting material flow in manufacturing systems: machine failures, starvations, blockages, and set-ups. It has a point of view: that disruptions, while undesirable, are a fact of life in a factory. While effort should be expended to reduce them, or even to eliminate them, some amount of disruption is inevitable, and we should develop ways of predicting and limiting their negative effects. The book describes some potentially disruptive events that affect production, the control actions that managers can take in anticipation of or in response to the disruptions, and the consequences of the control actions. The goal is to contribute to the development of a rigorous, and useful, manufacturing systems science.

The emphasis in the early chapters is a capacity analysis of flow systems. The later chapters deal with the real-time control of manufacturing systems. Mathematical background in Markov processes, linear programming, and dynamic programming is provided.

Further information about this book is available from the author's web page.

Hierarchical Decision Making in Stochastic Manufacturing Systems

by Suresh P. Sethi and Qing Zhang, Birkhauser Boston, 1994

Most manufacturing systems are large, complex, and subject to uncertainty. The problem of the efficient management of such systems is of critical importance to a nation's economic competitiveness. But obtaining optimal feedback policies to run these systems is usually impossible. Hierarchical feedback control policies, on the other hand, offer the promise of being able to handle realistically complex manufacturing systems in a tractable fashion to make their management more efficient. This book articulates a profound new theory that shows that hierarchical decision making in the context of a goal-seeking manufacturing system can lead to near optimizatio= n of its objective.

The approach in the book considers manufacturing systems in which events occur at different time scales. For example, changes in demand may occur far more slowly than breakdowns and repairs of production machines. This suggests that capital expansion decisions that respond to demand are relatively longer term decisions than decisions regarding production. Thus, longer term decisions such as those dealing with capital expansion can be based on the average existing production capacity, and can be expected to b= e nearly optimal even though the short term capacity fluctuations are ignored.

Having the longer term decisions in hand, one can then solve the simpler problem of obtaining production rates. Multilevel decisions constructed in this manner are shown to be asymptotically optimal as the average time betw= een successive short term events becomes much smaller than that between success= ive long term events. Much attention is given to establish that the order of deviation of the cost of the hierarchical solution from the optimal cost is small. The striking novelty of the approach is that this is done without solving for the optimal solution.

The approach represents a new paradigm in convex production planning and a new research direction in control theory. The research presented cuts across the disciplines of Operations Management, Operations Research, Economics, System and Control Theory, Industrial Engineering, Probability and Statistics, and Applied Mathematics. It is anticipated that the book would encourage development of new models and techniques in these disciplines.

Further information about this book is available from Birkhauser.

Modeling and Analysis of Manufacturing Systems

by Ronald G. Askin and Charles R. Standridge, John Wiley & Sons, 1993

This text covers modern design and performance evaluation techniques for discrete part manufacturing. The text concentrates on the flow of material through a manufacturing facility. Various strategies for organizing physical resources are described and operations research techniques for evaluating the performance of these configurations are discussed. Manufacturing systems such as assembly lines, transfer lines, group technology, flexible manufacturing systems, warehousing, and material handling are described in detail. Specific models for analyzing each of these systems are discussed. General techniques for scheduling and facility layout are also covered.

The book is intended for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students in engineering or business. A basic understanding of deterministic and stochastic operations research is assumed. The application of analytical and simulation methods to manufacturing system design and evaluation is covered in detail. Detailed examples are provided to illustrate the techniques. A final chapter presents case studies illustrating how these modeling techniques can be used and complement each other in practice.

Further information about this book is available at the Wiley page.

Design by Joern Meissner.