RESEARCH IN SIMTECH

INTRODUCTION

POMG focuses on operations research and system analysis technologies for effective management of manufacturing and supply chain operations to achieve higher productivity. POMG technologies enable companies to collaboratively manage business activities and seamlessly integrate their manufacturing operations with their partners in the supply chain. These operations research technologies leverage the internet of things and other communication tools to create solutions that specifically meet the needs of today’s complex and dynamic business environment.

The group carries out collaborative research with academic institutions and provides technology transfer and training to the manufacturing industry.

RESEARCH THEMES

• Manufacturing System Analyses (MSA)
  The Manufacturing System Analyses Team works on the development and application of operations analytics and system modelling & optimisation for manufacturing and supply chain applications. 
  
  Companies today compete not individually but as supply chains. Supply chains are becoming increasingly complex as many parallel physical and information flows occur in order to ensure that products are delivered in the right quantity, to the right place in a cost effective manner. The main focus of this team is to conduct research and develop technologies that will enable companies to improve their operational performances in supply chains. These technologies include: RFID and EPCIS-enabled track and trace; system modelling and simulation for manufacturing system design and operations management; multi-objective optimisation for logistics planning and delivery; mobile workflow for business process management; supply chain modelling and simulation for risk management; and cyber-physical production modelling, simulation and optimisation.
  
  The team works closely with industry partners to testbed and transfer developed technologies. On the research side, the team collaborates with universities and research institutes, both locally and internationally, to jointly develop new techniques and methods that can be used to better support manufacturing system analysis. The team also trains both students and industry participants in our relevant areas of expertise.
  
  
• Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM)
  The Manufacturing Operations Management Team has two focus areas: Operations Innovation and Planning & Scheduling.
  
  The Operations Innovation research focuses on: (1) development of tools and techniques to assist companies to achieve operational excellence and discover innovative business models and (2) research on operations management techniques to cater to requirements of new business models. The team provides companies with the Operations MaNagement Innovation (OMNI) and LEAN methodologies for systematic operations analysis and improvement from strategic to operational aspects. Also, the team recently launched the Digital Transformation and Innovation (DTI) methodology to help companies innovate their business models as well as operations towards Industry 4.0 environment.
  
  The Planning & Scheduling research focuses on: (1) production planning and scheduling for high uncertainty and high-mix low-volume manufacturing environment, (2) manpower scheduling for service industry, (3) customer demand forecasting and (4) inventory planning. The team provides companies with various ready-to-go solutions such as Smart Manufacturing Operations Management (S-MOM) System for real-time production planning and scheduling for manufacturing industry, Manpower Scheduling System (MSS) for service industry, iForecaster for high accuracy customer demand forecasting and Inventory Planning System for multi-objective inventory replenishment policy optimisation.
  

CORE COMPETENCIES

• Manufacturing System Analyses (MSA)
  
  • EPCglobal-enabled RFID track and trace
  • Manufacturing Cyber-physical system modelling and simulation for manufacturing operations improvement, plant layout optimisation and production flow design
  • Data analytics in manufacturing and supply chain
  • Eco-friendly vehicle routing for urban last mile logistics
  • Cyber-physical production system
    
    
• Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM)
  
  • Business Model Innovation
  • Operations Management Innovation (OMNI), productivity leadership and process improvement methodology, and tools & techniques
  • Production Planning and Scheduling for High-Mix-Low-Volume (HMLV) manufacturing
  • LEAN best practices and tools
  • Predictive Inventory Planning and Optimisation
  • Intelligent Forecasting
  • Manpower Planning and Scheduling

• Real-time Planning and scheduling
  
  • Adaptive and robust production planning & scheduling
  • Real-time production and manpower scheduling for smart factories
  • Integrated shopfloor, tracking & manpower with rescheduling capabilities
    
    
• Supply & Demand Planning
  
  • Intelligent demand forecasting with uncertainty modelling
  • Irregular and intermittent demand prediction
  • Inventory planning for optimising performance targets including inventory position, inventory turns, and fill rate
    
    
• Last Mile Logistics Management
  
  • Vehicle routing engine based on multi-objective optimisation algorithms using AI to manage a fleet of vehicles to serve a number of geographically distributed customers with the lowest operational cost, travel time and fuel consumption
  • Data analytics platform that ingests information from multiple sources with the objective of driving enterprise efficiency and enabling tracking visibility of jobs/goods, personnel and vehicles
  • Integrating vehicle routing engine with mobile app and planner web app
    
    
• Supply Chain Track & Trace
  
  • A plug & play AutoID-based technology for better managing, tracking, audit, stock taking, picking and verifying the inventory items to improve productivity and traceability, as well as minimise human errors
  • A plug & play technology for effective tracking, managing of collection and delivery tasks, as well as resources in real-time, based on cloud, mobile and Auto ID technologies
    
    
• Business Process Automation
  
  • Digitalising manual processes
  • An intelligent workflow engine which allows users to configure various business workflows
  • Offline digitalised forms on android devices

• “What-if” Modelling & Simulation Analysis
  
  • Production modelling and simulation
  • Online simulation
  • Facility layout planning
  • Supply chain disruption risk mitigation

KEY ACHIEVEMENTS 

• A method to efficiently discover really occurred patterns in transactional data (Published: SIM/P/08621/00/SG, 26 February 2015)
• Rough-Cut Capacity Planning with Production Constraints and Dynamic Bottleneck Considerations, US Patent No. 7,925,365, Granted Date: 12 April 2011
  
• Finite Capacity Scheduling Using Job Prioritisation and Machine Selection, US Patent No. US 7,904,192, Granted Date: 8 March 2011
  
• Finite Capacity Scheduling Using Job Prioritisation and Machine Selection, Singapore Patent No. 151266, Granted Date: 28 February 2011
  
• The 2019 IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation Outstanding Paper Award: The paper titled, Multifactorial Evolution: Toward Evolutionary Multitasking, was bestowed the prestigious 2019 IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation Outstanding Paper Award by the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society. The awards ceremony was held at the IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation at Wellington, New Zealand, on 12 June 2019. This paper was a joint effort by SIMTech Scientist Dr Abhishek Gupta, who is currently a member of the Planning and Operations Management (POM) group, Professor Yew-Soon Ong from Nanyang Technological University, and Dr Liang Feng from Chongqing University China.
  
• Best Paper Award, Allan N Zhang, S M Wagner, Mark Goh, M Terhorst, B Ma, Quantifying Supply Chain Disruption Risk Using VaR, IEEE International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management (IEEM 2012), 10-13 December 2012, Hong Kong.
  
• Best Paper Award, F Y Wang, L Xu, R Lim, E W Lee, and M Zarzycki, Simulation-based Operational Decision Analysis at Decoupling Point in MTS-MTO System, IEEE International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management (IEEM 2011), 6-9 December 2011, Singapore.
  
• Outstanding Paper Award, C Withanage, H J Choi, T T H Duc, T Park, Towards Customer Evaluation Based Product Performance Modelling, The IEEE International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management, December 7-10, 2010, Macao, China.
  
• Ministry of Transport Minister's Innovation Award 2010 - Merit Award. An innovative technology "AstorPlan" has been developed that will increase the productivity for shipyards and their marine sub-contractors by allowing better optimisation of the planning and deployment of critical resources. This was developed jointly with Astoria Consulting Pte Ltd in an R&D collaboration project supported by the Maritime Port Authority of Singapore (MPA). The project team has been nominated by MPA for the award, which was given out by the Minister for Transport Mr. Raymond Lim during the MOT Annual Dinner on 2 November 2010
  

LISTING OF SOME MAJOR EQUIPMENT/SOFTWARE

• Manufacturing System Analyses (MSA) 
  • FlexSim
  • Anylogic
  
• Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) 
  • MATLAB