SIE Seminar: Rajan Batta
November 9, 2023 - 2:00 p.m. (MST)
Rajan Batta
SUNY Distinguished Professor
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
University at Buffalo
"Supply Chain Design: Humanitarian Last-Mile Deliveries, Distribution Network Design with Congested Facilities, and Translation of Results While Engaging with Industry Partners"
ENGR 301
Abstract: There will be three parts to this talk, all related to supply chain design. The first part of the talk will describe supply chain design issues that I have tackled in humanitarian last-mile deliveries with three examples presented: mobile pharmacy for drug distribution, gas supply management during a Hurricane evacuation event, and delivery of items to stranded people after an earthquake in a mountainous area. The second part of the talk will describe the design of a distribution network, via selection and sizing of congested locations. The applications for this are in warehouse location and sizing, facilitated by viewing warehouses as queuing systems. The third part of the talk will also describe supply chain problems that I worked on while engaging with industry partners. This will highlight experiences in attempting to translate results from academic settings to industry settings and will detail challenges that exist and how to overcome these. The industry partner described will be a paper product manufacturer, which involves movement of bulky, non-compressible, yet relatively light weight items.
Bio: Rajan Batta is a SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University at Buffalo. He works on supply chain design problems both in the context of humanitarian logistics and manufacturing systems. He also works on search and reconnaissance problems. He is a Fellow of IISE and INFORMS. He has been the recipient of several research awards. He has received IISE’s highest award, the Frank and Lillian Gilbreth Industrial Engineering Award. He has also received the Koopman Prize from the INFORMS Military and Security Society. Another recent award from INFORMS is the Lifetime Achievement Award in Location Analysis.