TY - JOUR
T1 - A specialty steel bar company uses analytics to determine available-to-promise dates
AU - Pajouh, Foad Mahdavi
AU - Xing, Dahai
AU - Zhou, Yingjue
AU - Hariharan, Sharethram
AU - Balasundaram, Balabhaskar
AU - Liu, Tieming
AU - Sharda, Ramesh
PY - 2013/11
Y1 - 2013/11
N2 - In this paper, we describe an application of prescriptive analytics to enhance data-driven decision making at a specialty steel bar products supplier and manufacturer in North America. As part of the company's daily business, it must make available-to-promise (ATP) decisions, which determine in real time the dates by which it can promise delivery of products that customers requested during the quotation stage. Previously, a salesperson had to make such decisions by analyzing reports on available inventory. To support these ATP decisions, we developed a real-time decision support system (DSS) to find an optimal assignment of the available inventory and to support additional what-if analysis. The DSS uses a suite of mixed-integer programming models and commercial software to solve the models. The company has incorporated the DSS into its enterprise resource planning system to seamlessly facilitate its use of business analytics.
AB - In this paper, we describe an application of prescriptive analytics to enhance data-driven decision making at a specialty steel bar products supplier and manufacturer in North America. As part of the company's daily business, it must make available-to-promise (ATP) decisions, which determine in real time the dates by which it can promise delivery of products that customers requested during the quotation stage. Previously, a salesperson had to make such decisions by analyzing reports on available inventory. To support these ATP decisions, we developed a real-time decision support system (DSS) to find an optimal assignment of the available inventory and to support additional what-if analysis. The DSS uses a suite of mixed-integer programming models and commercial software to solve the models. The company has incorporated the DSS into its enterprise resource planning system to seamlessly facilitate its use of business analytics.
KW - Available-to-promise
KW - Optimization-based decision support
KW - Prescriptive analytics
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U2 - 10.1287/inte.2013.0693
DO - 10.1287/inte.2013.0693
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:84892562046
SN - 0092-2102
VL - 43
SP - 503
EP - 517
JO - Interfaces
JF - Interfaces
IS - 6
ER -