Muzaffar A Shaikh
Florida Institute of Technology, USA
Title: A fast plant-location heuristic using influencing factors
Biography
Biography: Muzaffar A Shaikh
Abstract
Globalization today has made the problem of locating a new plant extremely difficult due to a myriad of extra factors that did not possess high priority in the past. First, multinational corporations are engaged more than before in manufacturing parts of the same end product in different countries to minimize the cost of production. This contributes to considering additional factors (e.g., local culture, political stability, economic stability, safety and security, etc.) while evaluating plant location. Second, complexities arise when it comes to assembling parts together into the end product due to differing manufacturing standards of various countries. This abstract presents a numerical heuristic that uses pertinent influencing factors, computes their ratings to square grids formed by dividing the given area of interest (AoI). The heuristic starts with first evaluating larger grids (e.g., 100x100 miles) against influencing factors. Next, it utilizes initial results and reduces the larger AoI into smaller focused areas with a smaller set of grids. Grid sizes are reduced at the discretion of the industrial engineer to perform more focused analysis ofthe new AoI. This iterative process of grid evaluation continues until the engineer is satisfied with the most acceptable overall grid score. A key advantage of the heuristic is the ability to tweak input parameters to both determine the sensitivity of grid score to critical environmental factors and to attempt ‘what if’ scenarios.