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Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advanced Supply Chain Systems Planning and Network Design

Massachusetts Institute of Technology via edX

Overview

Supply Chain Systems Planning and Network Design are essential sources of competitive advantage for organizations. They focus on strategic decisions such as defining the configuration of production and distribution facilities, deciding where to source, and determining how to best serve customers.

Every choice impacts customer satisfaction, operational costs, and environmental performance, making supply chain design essential for long-term success. To address these challenges, this online course from the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics (CTL) will equip you with practical tools and experience using supply chain design models, enabling you to make informed, balanced decisions.

Focusing on real-world applications, the course begins with foundational network models, such as transportation, transshipment, and facility location problems. As you progress, you will delve into more complex networks that involve multiple tiers of facilities and multimodal transportation. Additionally, the course will teach you how to integrate revenue and inventory considerations into supply chain design models, and develop the analytical skills needed to balance competing objectives effectively.

To enhance learning, the course combines video lectures with practical Python exercises, guiding you through the implementation of quantitative models. No prior knowledge of Python is required , as the course provides a comprehensive introduction to all necessary concepts. You will also have the opportunity to explore interactive visualization tools developed by the MIT CTL Computational and Visual Education (CAVE) Lab, allowing you to gain hands-on experience that bridges theoretical knowledge with real-world applications. This approach, aligned with MIT’s "learning by doing" philosophy, ensures that you not only grasp the concepts but can also apply them in practice.

Syllabus

  • Week 1: Introduction to Supply Chain Network Design and Basics of Python for Supply Chain Network Design:
    • Supply Chain Network Design planning decisions
    • Key objectives in Supply Chain Network Design
    • Key trade-offs in Supply Chain Network Design
    • Analytical approaches to Supply Chain Network Design
    • Basics of Python for Supply Chain Network Design
  • Week 2: Basics of Supply Chain Network Design
    • Network models in Supply Chain Network Design
    • Transportation Problem
    • Transshipment Problem
    • Intermodal transportation problem
    • Facility location problems
  • Week 3: Generalized Supply Chain Network Design problem and incorporating revenue
    • Considering Multiple products
    • Generalizing costs and capacities
    • General Network Structures
    • Incorporating revenue in SCND
    • Demand as a decision variable
    • Price as a decision variable
    • Incorporating service level decisions
    • Distance-dependent demand
  • Week 4: Inventory considerations in Supply Chain Network Design:
    • Introduction on Inventory Policies
    • Inventory-Related Costs
    • Incorporating inventory in SCND
    • Impact of lead times
    • Square Root Law
    • Generalizing the inventory pooling effect
  • Multiple objectives in Supply Chain Network Design
    • Multiple criteria evaluation problems
    • Multiple criteria design problems – conversion into a single unit
    • Multi-objective optimization
    • Dominance and Pareto front
    • Weighted sum method
    • Normalization
    • Epsion-constraint method

Taught by

Milena Janjevic and Matthias Winkenbach

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