IE 710: O.R.

Applications in Infrastructural and Service

Sectors
Prerequisite: IE 601 or equivalent

Contents

The course will take up applications from live problem areas in infrastructural and service
sectors. Representative applications will be considered in areas such as transport, energy, and
telecom .The emphasis will be on the way OR techniques are used in decision making.

The applications will be at two levels: Strategic decisions of long term significance such as design
of networks for power distribution or transport will be considered. The second area is in
operations management at the tactical level, where applications such as routing, scheduling,
time tabling and allocation will be discussed.

Typical problem areas are rail network design and analysis, section scheduling on railway
sections, time tabling for vehicles and crew in rail and road operations, analysis of telecom
networks and analysis and design of power distribution networks. Solution techniques will be
based on mathematical programming and queuing models. The focus will be on detailed
modeling from the application area and selection and usage of an appropriate solution
methodology.

References

• J.D. Patton (Jr.) (1980), Maintainability and Maintenance, Management Instrument

Society of America.
• L. Fortuin, P. van Beek and L. V. Wassenhove (1996), O.R. at WORK, Taylor & Francis
Ltd., Londan
• H. P. Williams (1978), Model Building in mathematical Programming,Wiley, New York
• M. Florian (1983), The Practice of Transportation Planning, ICTS, Amalti
• D. Teodorovic (1988), Airline Operations Research, Gorden and Breach Science
Publishers, New York.
• P. A. Steenberk (1974), Optimization of Transport Networks,John Wiley and Sons Inc.,
New York.
• B. Frederic and C. Alian(Editors) (1993), Constraints Logic Programming:Selected
Research, MIT Press,Cambridg.
• J. Parikh (1997), Energy Models for 2000 and Beyond,Tata-McGraw Hill, New Delhi.
IE 705: Quantitative Methods in Project Management
Contents

Overview of Project Management: Framework for conceiving, planning, executing and closing
projects; Project views of the stakeholders; Typical project examples in new product
development, manufacturing, services, construction, IT and infrastructure.

Anatomy of projects: Objectives and success criteria- both financial and non financial measures;
Project evaluation and selection methods using multiple attributes -economic and operation
analysis; Decision tree, AHP and Utility theory.

Concepts and applications of Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), Network analysis for time
management (CPM, PERT, Crashing and Simulation).

Project Resource Management: Allocation, Leveling and Smoothing methods; Multi project and
multi resource , multi mode scheduling under various constraints- limited resources, limited
budget, non-split, start / end lag; Application of Heuristics, Mathematical programming ,
Evolutionary algorithms such as GA, Application of knowledge-based systems.

Theory of constraints and the Critical Chain method for planning and controlling a project; role of
buffers.

Managing Project Risks: Identification, Assessment and Mitigation.

Earned value concept in project control: Calculation of Schedule and Cost Variances; Managing
Human resources, conflicts, quality, reliability, IT and Life cycle costs in projects.

References

• Shtub, A., Bard, J. F. and Globerson, S. (1994), Project Management: Engineering,

Technology and Implementation, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, USA.
• Goodpasture, J. C. (2003), Quantitative Methods in Project Management, J Ross
Publishing, Boca Raton, Florida, USA.
• Meredith, J. R. and Mantel Jr., S. J. (2004), Project Management: A Managerial Approach,
John Wiley, New York.
• Berkun, S. (2005), Art of Project Management, O'Reilly Media, Cambridge, MA, USA.
• Kolisch, R. (2001), Make-To-Order Assembly Management, Springer, Berlin.
• Marchewka, J. T. (2006), Information Technology Project Management, John Wiley, New
York, USA.
• Project Management Institute (2000). A Guide to the Project Management Body of
Knowledge, Project Management Institute, Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, USA.
• Kerzner, H., (1998), Project Management: A Systems approach to Planning, Scheduling
and Controlling, John Wiley, New York.
• Nicholas, J. M. (2001), Project Management for Business and Technology: Principles and
Practice, Prentice Hall India, New Delhi.
• Bruke, R. (2004), Project Management Planning and Control Techniques, Wiley,
Chichester.
• Goldratt, E. M., (1997), Critical Chain, North River Press, Great Barrington, MA, USA.