Decision Support Systems

The creation of decision support systems for industry partners in manufacturing and distribution.

The partner company operates a corrugated cardboard box factory; examples of its finished products include the boxes in which multiple packages of grocery items would be shipped from distribution centre to retailer.

Customer orders require first the production of corrugated sheets, and secondly their conversion into finished cartons. The former task is accomplished by fabricating a continuous strip of corrugated board, then cutting it into sheets of customer-specified dimensions. Most previous approaches focused on the minimization of the inevitable trim waste.

WATMIMS researchers teamed with staff of the partner firm. A model was developed that permitted the tradeoff between small, additional scrap boxes in exchange for better performance regarding customer due dates. Through this DSS (decision support system), the production scheduler could view the relationship between various levels of trim waste and customer service.