Design of intelligent demand planning and control system - Handling risks and uncertainties within global demand operations

The projects addresses the issue of Demand Planning in industrial companies with particular focus on Hierarchical Demand Planning (HDP). HDP is a corner stone in all large Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System. These systems provide support for decision making and includes automated planning processes. The current approach is fundamentally flawed since it is based on the assumption of perfect aggregation and disaggregation of data and subsequently of plans i.e. all planning items are independent. As a result the current approach does not support the common occurrence of interdependency between planning objects e.g. between the size of orders and the order frequency. This typically means that the current approach fails to deliver plans that are feasible or optimal. The project focuses on the development of a new approach to HDP that remedy some of the shortfalls of the current approach.

The PhD project was defended October 24, 2008 and the degree was awarded November 12 2008.

Supervisor: Kenn Steger-Jensen

Project period: August 15 2005 to August 15 2008.

(Peter Nielsen, Department of Production)