A decision support system for materials management

Abstract The paper describes a project which has been jointly carried out by the Universities of Trieste and Udine (the first author was at the University of Udine during the project) and a large multiplant factory. The project aims at re-designing the materials management process in order to improve some crucial performance measures. The policy of the company leads to decentralizing the nonstrategic part of the production to many external suppliers, thus giving rise to a logistic system which covers a large geographic area and requires an efficient management. The paper presents the general approach followed in the analysis phase of the project and discusses the main “opportunity areas” which were identif adequate tool to provide solution methods, and not just plain solutions. The DSS involves several phases of the materials management process such as transportation, storage, production supply. The motivations for this approach are described and the general features of the DSS are presented.