Title: Supply chain scheduling.

The most active topic in manufacturing research during the last 10 years has been supply chain management. The key idea within supply chain management is that decision makers at different parts of a supply chain should coordinate their decisions in order to improve overall system performance. Much of the research in supply chain management, however, has focused on strategic decision making in stochastic environments. Recent reviews of the supply chain management literature point out this deficiency. The work presented here refocuses supply chain management research on operational problems that take place in deterministic environments. In particular, we describe three manufacturing environments where the principles of supply chain management can be applied to scheduling decisions. In each of these environments, we identify and evaluate opportunities for improving system performance through coordinated decision making, and discuss mechanisms by which those opportunities can be realised. Possible future research directions will also be discussed.

Biosketch: Nicholas G. Hall is Professor of Management Sciences, and of Industrial & Systems Engineering, at The Ohio State University. He holds B.A., M.A. degrees in economics from the University of Cambridge, a professional qualification in accounting, and a Ph.D. (1986) from the University of California at Berkeley. He served as President of Manufacturing and Service Operations Management Society (1999-2000), and is serving as Director at Large of INFORMS (2001-2003), and as Associate Editor of Operations Research, Management Science and Journal of Scheduling. He is a member of a State Industrial Commission (the Ohio Steel Industry Advisory Council). He is the owner and founder of a consulting company, CDOR, that serves the Ohio business and government communities. His research interests are in manufacturing and scheduling, especially in modern manufacturing environments, and in applications of operations research.