Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology
School of Engineering
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Selected Highlights from Research Findings
An operational scheduling model was developed for a large coal handling facility with the objective to optimise daily operations. The model, based on a unit-specific, event-based continuous time formulation, was solved using a Mixed Integer Non-Linear Programming approach. Initially it was too slow (>72 hours for a solution). Improvements included simplification of the structure of the model, the application of Special Ordered Sets to reduce the number of binary variables, and the application of a linearisation technique to the non-linear equations. The improved model for one scheduling period now solves to optimality within two minutes. This dramatic improvement ensures that the model can be used operationally. It is currently being implemented and significant cost savings are expected.
Contact person: Prof PS Kruger.
Business intelligence (BI) is emerging as one of the fastest growing fields in business, with a very strong emphasis on the supporting technology and tools. BI is a generic term to describe leveraging the internal and external information assets of an organization to make better business decisions. Although the tools and technology provide very important components of any successful BI initiative, it was felt that value could be added when BI is placed into context with other relevant subjects such as strategy development and alignment, enterprise architecture and modelling and performance management.
Dr Pieter Conradie of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering has developed the Bigger Picture BI Context Model to assist organizations in getting more from their BI investment.
Various detailed processes and templates were also developed to support the closed loop control system with the following process steps:
- A business strategy is defined.
- The implication of the strategy on business processes, supporting Information Technology resources and organizational structure is formally documented according to enterprise architecture principles.
- This documented blueprint of the organization helps to implement the selected business strategy.
- A performance measurement system is developed and supported by a well-designed data warehouse. The measurements that were defined to support the implementation of the strategy, together with information from the external environment are interpreted on a regular basis, thus leading to either a new strategy or refinement of the implementation of the existing strategy. Both options may lead to changes in the enterprise architecture, the execution of business processes and/or the performance measurement system.
Instead of packaging existing ideas slightly differently under a new name, Conradie intentionally searched for existing theories, such as the Zachman Framework for enterprise architecture and the Balanced Scorecard from Kaplan and Norton, to fulfil certain requirements in the Bigger Picture BI Context Model.
Contact person: Mr PJ Conradie.
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