436-414 Optimisation for Productive Systems

200-level Mathematics and 620-370 Statistics for Mechanical Engineers or equivalent

Upon completion, students should be able to model and solve a wide range of decision-making problems for productive systems such as facility location and layout, transportation and storage and retrieval, service facility configuration, inventory reorder points, lot-sizing, equipment replacement and production planning by applying the techniques of mathematical programming, network analysis and heuristic problem solving, using a range of optimisation software tools.

Topics covered include networks, goal programming and facility location, facility layouts using quadratic programming, heuristic solutions to machine sequencing and storage and retrieval problems, decision theory and production planning under risk, queuing models for service facilities, simulation of productive systems, inventory management, equipment replacement and Markov processes.

One 3-hour examination (70%), assignments not exceeding 15 pages including computations, diagrams, tables and computer output (30%). Students will be notified of the weighting of the non-examination assessment components at the beginning of semester.