IRSPAS 2017
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://repository.kln.ac.lk/handle/123456789/18078
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Item A simulation modelling approach for vehicle routing problem in cluster-based pharmaceutical supply chains.(International Research Symposium on Pure and Applied Sciences, 2017 Faculty of Science, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka., 2017) Niwunhella, D. H. H.; Rupasinghe, T. D.Pharmaceuticals directly affect the health conditions of millions of people. It is important to find the most effective and optimized methods for pharmaceutical supply chains to provide a better quality product from manufacturers to the end-consumer. The supply chain process of the pharmaceutical products, when compared with the other commercial goods and services, is given higher priority since it costs high amount of money and time to produce and deliver pharmaceutical products, since the process is not well-managed. Furthermore, all the contributors in the pharmaceutical domain go through specific rules and regulations, uncertainty in demand, constraints such as biological factors in the process. In recent years, with the continuous improvement of the medical service level and technical level, people’s demand for drugs significantly improved year by year. Therefore, it is vital that the delivery of pharmaceutical products is conducted effectively and efficiently. In addition to quality, the routing and scheduling of vehicles represent an important component of many distribution and transportation systems’ costs. With the computational constraints of solving Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) which is NP-hard, a few optimization and approximation approaches have been introduced to successfully solve VRPs in the recent past. Thus, this study depicts a vehicle routing optimization with the objective of minimizing the cost based on the pharmaceutical product clusters using a simulation-based solution approach using SupplyChainGuru® modelling and simulation tool. Vehicle routing models are developed to simulate the pre-identified clusters (product families) using test cases from the literature and the benchmark instances listed on the repository of CVRPLib. Then the behavior and the nature of vehicle routing in pre-defined product clusters are identified and modelled via varying wide variety of variables. The baseline model is compared with the scenarios of each product cluster and the most optimized vehicle routing model will be identified and validated through simulation. The study concluded that the overall cost is minimized, when the pharmaceuticals are routed to better suit their product characteristics, rather than distributing the products without considering the inherent product characteristics, which are dynamically modelled and evaluated to provide better quality products to the patients. This product clustering-based simulation of VRP will indeed optimize the VRP in Pharmaceutical Supply Chains and will provide the platform to extend the cluster based optimization to related industries as well.Item Optimizing the allocation of employees for training programmes.(International Research Symposium on Pure and Applied Sciences, 2017 Faculty of Science, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka., 2017) Wickramarachchi, B.; Wijayanayake, A.The Human Resource (HR) department of any organization plays a vital role in decision making. All HR managers commit for dedicated corporate trainings to ensure that their employees have a better understanding of their assigned work and be able to achieve the organizational goals. If the human resource practices are conducted in an effective and optimized manner, it will leverage extra benefit to the organization. Since the resources are scarce in every situation, any company could offer a limited number of training opportunities based on the allocated training budget. The main problem that is encountered is the current system’s inability to identify the most value adding training programmes which are aligned to the company goals. However, when the demand for a training programme exceeds the available capacity, the best decision must be taken to optimise the allocation of right people to the right training programs to fill the competency gap. Decision making in HR Management tends to be more subjective, if multiple aspects are not considered when making decisions. Unless the trainings are not aligned with the organizational goals, the organization may not be able to achieve the expected company goals in short term, and also competencies will be stagnated in the long run. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to optimize the most beneficial and value adding training programmes which align with each departmental goals of the organisation and to assign the optimal number of employees for each training programme . In the first phase of the study, Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used to prioritize the training programmes under different criteria in order to achieve the company goals. An Integer Linear Programming model has been developed to maximize the priority values of training programmes, and to find the number of programmes that should be conducted. In the second phase, using the AHP, each department compute the priority values for training programme based on the existing competency gaps. If the demand is higher than the capacity of the training programmes, then an optimization method, similar to LP transportation method is used to assign employees for each programme. This proposed model facilitates requirements of each department to identify the most value adding and strategically aligned training programmes. The results of the study show the training manager was able to map the employees of each department to the most value adding training programme while satisfying the demand of each department. Significantly, this model can also facilitate the training manager to allocate employees for training programmes when the demand for the particular training programme surpasses the capacity or the resources available for the training programme.