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Professional

Executive

Track: Supply Chain

Supply Chain Synchronization for Assembly Systems under Long and Highly Variable Supplier Lead Times

Monday, April 12, 3:35-4:15pm EDT

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed and exposed supply chain vulnerabilities in every industry. Particularly, OEMs sourcing components from around the world experience not only shifts in demand but also long and highly variable supply lead times. Without successful supply chain synchronization, this results in an assembly process for which (i) on-time customer delivery performance of the final product is chronically low and hard to predict, and (ii) high quantities of inventory accumulate as late deliveries delay final assembly. We discuss tools and strategies that can help to orchestrate variable supplier lead times for assembly systems. We discuss an industrial case study of an OEM in the aerospace industry for which the resulting supply chain synchronization leads to a win-win situation: It significantly improves delivery performance, while drastically reducing component inventories. Our industrial case study shows that a simple strategy using risk-averse safety lead times is close to optimal and fairly robust to changes in the underlying behavior on the supply side.

Michael Prokle image

Michael Prokle

Michael Prokle

Senior Data Scientist at Fortune Brands GPG

Michael Prokle leads Supply Chain Data Science at Fortune Brands GPG. He is responsible for developing and implementing a clear vision and strategy to employ supply chain data science to improve customer experience, costs, and inventory productivity for GPG Brands. In his role, he solves difficult non-routine problems and develops end-to-end data science solutions to elevate Supply Chain’s advanced analytics capabilities.

Prior to joining to Fortune Brands GPG, Mr. Prokle worked as data scientist at Philips Research in Cambridge, MA. In this role, he developed innovative systems, tools and applications that tackle the most pressing challenges in clinical operations and population health management. In addition, Mr. Prokle taught at Northeastern University in the Analytics and Enterprise Intelligence program.

Mr. Prokle graduated with a BS and MS in Business Engineering from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany, and holds an MS and a PhD in Industrial Engineering & Operations Research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He also studied Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.