MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics Visual Analytics for Supply Chain Design

MIT CTL Supply Chain Design Initiative Focus

Supply chain design is the foundation of strategic supply chain planning, a key for organizations to create value.

As supply chains become more end-customer-focused and global, their design becomes paramount as a competitive differentiator.

The MIT CTL Supply Chain Design Initiative conducts innovative research to help organizations implement a value-driven, collaborative co-design process.

We employ and develop visual analytics decision-support tools, that enable intuitive interaction with quantitative methods to support data-driven decision-making processes.

The MIT CTL Supply Chain Design Initiative White Paper

The New Competitive Edge | Analytics-Driven Supply Chain Design | An Executive Guide

Learn how to address the growing need to rethink your supply chain design approaches.

Understand the four opportunities to leverage new supply chain design paradigms:

Extend the scope of supply chain design
Incorporate tactical decision making
Account and plan for risk and resilience
Adapt new technologies and business models

Download the White Paper: The New Competitive Edge | Analytics-Driven Supply Chain Design

This white paper is the fruit of a collaboration between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Transportation & Logistics (MIT CTL) and Coupa, the provider of artificial intelligence (AI)-powered supply chain analytics software.

“Empower your teams with robust decision-making processes and technology that can support them, elevating the management of your supply chain’s complexity through the simplicity of scenario building, multi-tier discussions, and probabilistic decision-making paradigms.” - Carlos Valderrama, Vice President, Customer Services & Value Management, Coupa Software.

Professor Yossi Sheffi, Director, MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics, stated;

“Traditional supply chain designs and methodologies have become outdated, creating risk for today’s businesses. To model a new world, you need new thinking and new tools.”

MIT CTL Supply Chain Design Initiative Research

We focus on the development of new quantitative methods for supply chain design and the use of visual analytics to facilitate a cross-functional co-design process.

End-to-end optimization of global supply chain networks | Global supply chains spanning multiple jurisdictions and support channels while serving diverse markets are increasingly complex to manage and design. Our research combines optimization, simulation, and machine learning methods for end-to-end optimization of complex global networks.
Design of customer-centric supply chains | Customer-centricity is a key requirement of supply chains today. We investigate trade-offs between logistics costs and customer performance to design data-driven, customer-centric supply chains with multiple differentiated channel strategies.
Sustainable supply chain design | Sustainability has become a high priority for organizations worldwide, putting supply chains squarely in the spotlight. We use state-of-the-art methodologies for evaluating the economic, social, and environmental costs of supply chains and incorporate them into broad network design models, leading to sustainable designs across all dimensions of the triple bottom line.
Supply chain design incorporating risk and uncertainty | Disruption, and uncertainty have all increased in recent years, requiring new methods for integrating risk and resilience in supply chain designs. We combine scenario planning with enhanced optimization methods to develop supply chain design models that proactively incorporate risk and uncertainty, yield the highest performance across a range of scenarios and achieve the highest returns on investment in resilience.

Visual Analytics for Supply Chain Design Video

Dr. Milena Janjevic, a research scientist at the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics leading the Supply Chain Design initiative during a MicroMasters SCM event discusses a new approach to rethinking network design. As supply chains become more end-customer-focused and global, their design becomes paramount as a competitive differentiator (watch the video, top-right).

Learn more about improving decision-making in supply chain design through the use of data-driven optimization and simulation models and their integration into interactive visual tools.

For more information visit The MIT CTL Supply Chain Design Initiative

Related Resources

Download The New Competitive Edge - Analytics-Driven Supply Chain Design

The New Competitive Edge - Analytics-Driven Supply Chain Design
This executive guide, developed in collaboration between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Transportation & Logistics (MIT CTL) and Coupa, presents a vision for future-proof, analytics-driven supply chain design. Download Now!

Download Threading the Supply Chain Needle

Threading the Supply Chain Needle
Learn how to break down departmental silos and design resilient and sustainable supply chains. Download Now!

Download Continuous Design Outsmarts Disruption: A Blueprint for Supply Chain Resiliency

Continuous Design Outsmarts Disruption: A Blueprint for Supply Chain Resiliency
In this ebook, we discuss how continuous design can reduce risk, improve resilience, and turn supply chain challenges into a competitive advantage. Download Now!

Download Risk, Resiliency, and Supply Chain Modeling

Risk, Resiliency, and Supply Chain Modeling
This paper first examines why existing supply chain management practices do not naturally develop resilient supply chains and why some of the existing supply chain processes are not suitable for addressing such risks and required responses. Download Now!

More Resources from Coupa