Fall 2011 Seminar Series

DATE: October 27th 
LOCATION: E62-550
TIME: 4:15pm
Reception immediately following

SPEAKER:
David Simchi-Levi

TITLE
Flexibility - From Practice to Theory

ABSTRACT
Supply chain managers are facing a growing array of risks. Fluctuating transportation costs, uncertainty in demand volume and mix, commodity price volatility, increase in labor costs in developing countries and the pressure to reduce inventories are just a few of the challenges that companies are struggling to overcome today and will likely face in the future.

 

In such an environment it is important to have an organization flexible enough to adjust quickly to changing market conditions. In this talk, I will discuss specific and practical implementation methods and illustrate the impact through a number of case studies. These case studies motivated the development of a new theory that goes a long way in explaining the power of flexibility.