Essays on the interface of supply chain and project management

Abstract

OF THE DISSERTATION Essays on the Interface of Supply Chain and Project Management by Xin Xu Dissertation Director: Yao Zhao This thesis focuses on the interface of project and supply Chain Management. Supply chain decisions (e.g., material planning, network design, supply management) and project management decisions (e.g., resource planning, expediting, and project scheduling) are intertwined in many firms. The objective of this thesis is to construct and analyze new models and methods that can help firms integrate supply chain and project management. Specifically, we addressed the following issues: (1) Joint optimization of inventory and project planning decisions for recurrent projects subject to random material delays (Chapter 2), often found in construction industries. (2) Designing and managing the development chain for one-of-a-kind R&D projects with an extensive workload outsourced (Chapters 3-4), representing the recent trend in the aerospace and defense industries. In Chapter 2, we study a new class of problems – recurrent projects with random