If your production schedule is not meeting expectations, this article from Christian Ruf on types of scheduling systems and tools may help. Does your production scheduling fall short of your expectations? You might be using the wrong scheduling system! Production scheduling is the final planning stage before the actual production, and the resulting production schedule suggests to operators and supervisors on the shop floor which tasks should be executed on which machines and in which order. Traditionally, a hierarchical planning…

Christian Ruf shares an informative article on how to improve supply chain network design.  One of the duties I frequently performed as an operations research analyst in consulting projects was optimizing companies’ supply chain network designs. A supply chain is a network that connects suppliers with customers to procure materials, transform them into final products, and deliver these products to customers. Supply chain management is a key function of most companies and one of the most exciting management areas. Its…

Christian D. Ruf shares a detailed article on using prescriptive analytics to design a supply chain network.  One of the duties I frequently performed as an operations research analyst in consulting projects was optimizing companies’ supply chain network designs. A supply chain is a network that connects suppliers with customers to procure materials, transform them into final products, and deliver these products to customers. Supply chain management is a key function of most companies and one of the most exciting…

Christian D. Ruf shares an article that provides tools to improve the efficacy of job shop scheduling. This post is about job shop scheduling (production scheduling in job shops). Job shops are factories that process jobs that require processing at multiple workstations, where the subset and order of workstations vary between jobs. The principle is illustrated in the figure below. Examples are the manufacturing of customized products like computer servers to customer order, or hospitals where each patient is considered…

Christian D. Ruff shares an article that identifies common problems with supply chain network design and explains why it must be an interactive process. One of the duties I frequently performed as an operations research analyst in consulting projects was optimizing companies’ supply chain network designs. A supply chain is a network that connects suppliers with customers to procure materials, transform them into final products, and deliver these products to customers. Supply chain management is a key function of most…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Christian D Ruf as Independent Consultant. Christian grew up at beautiful Bodensee (Lake Constance) in southern Germany. Being a kid, he wanted to become a customs officer to wave the cars through, but he enrolled in a university program in information systems and gradually shifted focus to business analytics, algorithms, machine learning, and operations research. He visited UT Austin for joint research and obtained his PhD from the Technical University of Munich in 2020. He…