The research objective of this Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program award is the creation of new models to make material supply decisions and project management decisions jointly in project-driven supply chains (PDSCs). Most real world projects require material supplies at various stages. Thus, a PDSC is a combination of project activities and material supply chains where the demand for the latter is driven by the material requirement of the former. Supply chain decisions (e.g., material planning, inventory control) and project management decisions (e.g., resource planning, project scheduling) are intertwined in PDSCs. The research will integrate recent advances in supply chain management and project management to create models and solution algorithms that can help firms coordinate these decisions in PDSCs under uncertainty. The research approach progresses from simple PDSCs to general PDSCs under real-world constraints, from deterministic approximations to stochastic modeling, and from centralized optimization issues to decentralized mechanism design issues.
If successful, the research will bring supply chain planning and project management into an integrated solution that streamlines material supplies with project activity planning, and thus leads to both reduced system-wide cost and reduced project durations. It does so by providing models, structural results, planning tools and managerial insights that can guide firms' actions in coordinating project decisions and material supply chain decisions under uncertainty. The results will be disseminated through Rutgers Center for Supply Chain Management and Rutgers Lerner Center for Pharmaceutical Management Studies to pharmaceutical, manufacturing and healthcare organizations. The outcomes of the research will renovate current standard curricula in operations management by introducing new modules that integrate project management with supply chain management for consumable materials, with applications in manufacturing, construction and product development. Graduate and undergraduate students will also benefit through involvement in case studies and research.
