MSc logistics program Molde University College

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MSc logistics program – Molde University College

Potential topics for master’s theses in logistics 2013. Updated July 4

th

2012.

In cases where the project description is shaded it means that the topic/project is

already assigned to one or two students. However, there

may be potential for

several theses within one topic in some cases. Most of the topics are only very

briefly described here; the precise project description will be developed in

cooperation between supervisors and students.

Note that we have the option for two students to go together on writing a thesis.

If you have own ideas for a topic, or none of the listed and available projects

seem suitable, you can get in touch with some of the potential supervisors on the

supervisor list.

Additional projects will be added to the list when they appear.

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Project 1

In perpetual inventory it is very common to minimize costs. This will in many situation lead to closed formulas that can be analyzed and used as guidelines for replenishment politics for an inventory. Most inventories contain a lot of different items. An often used approach is to try to coordinate the replenishments for subsets of the articles. This master topic will deal with two related topics. The first one is fairly traditional and will treat coordinated replenishments for a family of items under a restriction of capital tied up in the inventory. An alternative approach to perpetual inventory is to change the objective from cost minimization to maximizing THE RETURN ON INVESTMENT. The second part of the master topic will be to find closed formulas for the order sizes for a family of items replenished in a coordinated fashion – as in the first part – but now the objective will be to maximize the return on investments. The topic will be suitable for a student with a good background in mathematics, especially in calculus. The topic will be for a single student.

Contact: Associate Professor Øyvind Halskau E-mail: [email protected]

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Project 2

In perpetual inventory it is very common to minimize costs. This will in many situation lead to closed formulas that can be analyzed and used as guidelines for replenishment politics for

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an inventory. The cost elements in such models will in many cases be comprised of order costs, cyclic inventory holding costs, cost of safety stocks and stock-out costs. Traditionally, one would like to avoid stock-out situation, but certain situations can occur, where it will be rational to plan for stock-out situations. There will be two parts in this master thesis. The first topic of this master thesis will be to find optimal order quantities for a family of items when these are ordered under a policy of planned stock-outs under a restriction on the applied capital tied up in the inventory. An alternative approach to perpetual inventory is to change the objective from cost minimization to maximizing THE RETURN ON INVESTMENT. The second part of the master topic will be to find closed formulas for the order sizes for a family of items replenished under a policy of planned stock outs – as in the first part – but now the objective will be to maximize the return on investments. The topic will be suitable for a student with a good background in mathematics, especially in calculus. The topic will be for a single student.

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Project 3

Logistic challenges for home-party company Perfect Home

The company prefers a student with good knowledge of Norwegian.

Perfect Home er et home-party firma som ble etablert i 1995 og selger produkter i Norge, Sverige og Finland. Firmaet knytter til seg konsulenter som holder et eller flere party med salg i løpet av en uke. Ved slutten av hver uke summerer de salget sitt og sender en samleordre inn til hovedkontoret via en egen web-shop. Ordrene blir kontrollert og godkjent før de blir videresendt elektronisk til sentrallageret for plukking og pakking. Hver uke er en avsluttet prosess.

Produktene kjøpes fortrinnsvis fra Østen og skipes til Norge i fulle containere. Innskipningshavn og lagersted er Larvik, og der har firmaet avtale med et logistikkselskap som losser containerne og plasserer varene på lager. Firmaet ønsker en oppgave der studenten kan sette sammen aktuelle nøkkeltall slik at dette danner grunnlag for et anbudsdokument som kan brukes ved innhenting av anbud på de samlede logistikktjenestene. I tillegg ønskes en gjennomgang av hele logistikksystemet med forslag til forbedringer og effektiviseringer. En del tid hos firmaets hovedkontor i Oslo må påregnes.

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Project 4

Master thesis problems in logistics for TOOLS

Tools is an international wholesaler company operating in the Nordic and Baltic countries. They provide equipment within a broad range like electric saws, drills, hammers etc. as well as items needed by small to large building companies as well as factories like for instance Brunvoll AS here in Molde. Tools has also an office here in Molde and is responsible for the firm's activity from Førde to Kirkenes up north. Tools is offering potential master thesis in logistics. The main topics will be to analyze the present supply chain and try to improve this. Both problems can be suitable for one or two students, but at least one of the students on each topic should be able to communicate in Norwegian. At least one employee in the firm will be appointed as a main contact person for the students.

Thesis 1

Tools have many retailers around in the said countries. These retailers serve a set of customers by being responsible for refilling the customers’ inventories. This is done in many different ways to day depending on the relationship between a customer and Tools’ retailers. Among other things, they use different variations of VMI. The problem can be looked upon from a customer perspective digging into to the productivity and costs for the customers or one can take Tools as a starting point, looking into different economical aspects in the supply chain as well as customer satisfaction.

Thesis 2

This problem will be to look into the SC from the company’s perspective. Tools is in a highly competitive environment as a supplier to many different industries. This problem will be to look into the value chain for supplies of goods to the shipyard industry. The problem will involve cost analysis as well as managerial issues concerning the SC for the company.

Contact: Associate Professor Berit Irene Helgheim E-mail: [email protected]

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Project 5

Combined Scheduling and Transportation Problem

This MSc thesis projects is based on an MSc thesis from 2012, where a mathematical model for a combined scheduling-transportation problem is developed. The application is planning of asphalt spreading, in terms of both planning how to supply the different sites with materials and how to schedule the different projects during the time horizon. The candidate(s) should develop solution methods for the problem, both for the separate scheduling and transportation problem, preferably also for the combined problem. Programming skills will be useful.

Contact: Associate Professor Johan Oppen E-mail: [email protected]

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Project 6

Asak Miljøstein AS is a sales organization for three producers (who own five factories) of concrete products, mainly pavement blocks and facing stone. Asak is also involved in planning of transportation between five factories, four warehouses and a large number of retailers and end customers within Norway. Most products are very heavy with a low price per ton, so the logistic costs are high. Asak Miljøstein has specified three topics for possible MSc theses that represent areas where they face logistic challenges:

1. Transportation of products to Bergen and the surrounding area. The company currently supplies this area from factories in Fetsund and Hønefoss; there is also a warehouse in Bergen with port access. The company tries to ship directly to retailers and end customers to avoid extra costs by going through the warehouse. It is important to send full truckloads, as the transportation cost to Bergen is high, and it is important to utilize capacity. The company normally succeeds in organizing this transport in a good way, but it is obviously a challenging task to do the planning, they also have a longer lead time to this area than other parts of Norway. The student(s) should analyze the current situation and suggest possible adjustments and changes in order to improve the situation in terms of costs (transportation, planning etc.) and lead times.

2. Transport between factories and between factories and warehouses. The policy of the company is that all factories should be self-sufficient with all products. Both the production and demand differs between factories, so some internal transportation is needed. The student(s) should analyze the current situation/practice and look for improvements.

3. Issues with NOBB. NOBB is a register for building materials, where data about pallet size, weight, width, length, number per pallet, price, etc., is registered. The five factories Asak represent do not have exactly the same production equipment for identical products, which leads to a situation where identical products have different

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NOBB numbers due to e.g. different number of products per pallet. This represents a challenge for Asak's customers, who have to view Asak as multiple suppliers for some products, which again makes Asak lose some of the benefits from being one single supplier for the whole country. The student(s) should look into this issue and try to find out what it would take to standardize products in order to get only one NOBB number, and if there are other ways to solve some of the challenges outlined here.

Contact: Associate Professor Johan Oppen E-mail: [email protected]

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Project 7

Master’s theses from

The Group for Planning, Optimization and Decision Support

a. Plan Visualization and Simulation of Robustness

Many of our research projects and Master Theses end up with making a plan. This could be for a vehicle routing problem (VRP), a production planning problem, or something else again. These plans are usually based on deterministic models, even though the real world contains a lot of uncertainties. In addition is the presentation of the plan often just a number (the optimal or best found value) or some tables.

The aim of this master thesis project is two-fold. First; to implement a simulation model for the underlying problem, so that a solution to this problem (i.e. a plan) can be read in and tested for robustness. This means generating natural stochastic variations for selected entities in the plan (e.g. travel times), and running many simulations to see how robust it is. The second aspect is to visualize plans, especially those with a time component. One of the first tasks would be to find out if Arena is suitable for the simulations, or if another tool might be better.

Some Programming skills might be required. (Or maybe the selected tools are sufficient).

Contact: Professor Arne Løkketangen E-mail: [email protected]

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b. FSMVRP - continued work

The Fleet Size and Mix variant of the VRP has not gotten as much attention as its importance might indicate, mainly due to the difficulties involved in solving these types of problems. Molde University College (HiM) has been actively involved in two projects, DOMinant and DOMinant II, where the FSMVRP was a central topic. Associate Professor Arild Hoff and PhD student Urooj Pasha is also working on this project, which is joint with NTNU and

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SINTEF Applied Mathematics. The aim of this master thesis project is to develop new, state-of-the-art meta-heuristic solvers for finding better solutions to these types of problems. Some Programming skills are required

Contact: Professor Arne Løkketangen or Associate Professor Arild Hoff E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected]

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c. Timetabling HiMolde

Timetabling is the task of allocating resources (like rooms, teachers) to tasks (like students, and classes). The problem is NP-hard, and can become very difficult if resources are scarce. The problem comes in different variants, depending on the actual planning situation. We will look at the three variants that were used for the last timetabling competition, as well as looking at HiMolde's similar problems in this light. The goal would be to make a solver that would rival the best entries in one of the three timetabling competition divisions.

Some Programming skills are required

Contact: Professor Arne Løkketangen or Associate Professor Halvard Arntzen E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected]

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d. There are two other ways to get a master thesis project with this group.

The first is if you have contact with a company that might need to have something done along the line of work done in the group. If so, please contact the group to see if something can be worked out.

The second is if you want to do some work along the line of some of the other work done in the group. If so, please contact the group to see if something can be worked out.

The group’s web pages are found here:

http://kursinfo.himolde.no/forskningsgrupper/optimering/

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Project 8

Error and variation order handling at the Norwegian offshore shipbuilder STX

OSV

The Norwegian shipbuilding industry is characterized by late changes in the outfitting processes. Error and variation order handling is a prerequisite for implementing lean construction principles. Estimated tasks in the thesis:

• Error and variation order mapping in a chosen shipbuilding project • Costs of error handling (in terms of time used to correct the error) • Corrective actions to handle/prevent errors

The focus is to be on understanding the challenges.

Some understanding of decision making under uncertainty and statistics will be necessary.

Contact: Associate Professor Hajnalka Vaagen

Professor Glenn Ballard from Univ. of California (Berkeley) will be involved to some extent.

E-mail: [email protected]

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Project 9

Three topics with Ulstein Shipyard

1. Make-or-buy decisions regarding standard components at Ulstein Verft AS – Mapping current practices and evaluating impact of possible changes.

2. Analysis of workflow in prefabrication departments at Ulstein Verft AS: Issues regarding production synchronization.

3. Work-time utilization at the shipyard facility: Who does what and why? Scope, reasons and impact of non-value-adding activities at Ulstein Verft AS.

Contact: Researcher Karolis Dugnas, Møreforskning E-mail: [email protected]

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Project 10

Potential MSc Logistics theses projects with support from CEPAL / UN

About CEPAL: (from their web-page: http://www.eclac.org/default.asp?idioma=IN)

The Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) -the Spanish acronym is CEPAL- was established by Economic and Social Council resolution 106(VI) of 25 February 1948 and began to function that same year. The scope of the Commission's work was later broadened to include the countries of the Caribbean, and by resolution 1984/67 of 27 July 1984, the Economic Council decided to change its name to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC); the Spanish acronym, CEPAL, remains unchanged. ECLAC, which is headquartered in Santiago, Chile, is one of the five regional commissions of the United Nations. It was founded with the purpose of contributing to the economic development of Latin America, coordinating actions directed towards this end, and reinforcing economic ties among countries and with other nations of the world. The promotion of the region's social development was later included among its primary objectives. In June 1951, the Commission established the ECLAC subregional headquarters in Mexico City, which serves the needs of the Central American subregion, and in December 1966, the ECLAC subregional headquarters for the Caribbean was founded in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. In addition, ECLAC maintains country offices in Buenos Aires, Brasilia, Montevideo and Bogotá, as well as a liaison office in Washington, D.C.

Potential MSc Logistics projects

CEPAL has proposed one or more of the following projects to be carried out in the academic year 2012/2013 by a HiMolde MSc Logistics student:

1) Does logistics performance drive economic development or vice versa? What is the role of logistics performance to reach economic development goals?

2) Energy efficiency and carbon footprint in international supply chains - Best practices and potential policy measures in developing countries.

3) Analysis of bulk shipping markets in Latin America - commodity exports, the return of the Dutch disease?

4) Transport cost analysis of international air freight transport to Latin America.

If you are interested in any of these projects, you should write a short e-mail to Economic Affairs Officer Gordon Wilmsmeier – e-mail address: [email protected] with copy to [email protected] expressing your interest, a few thoughts on why you think this would be a good project for you and your background for writing this thesis.

Contact: Associate Professor Harald Hjelle E-mail: [email protected]