Research Statement

FALLOUL Moulay El Mehdi

Logistics and supply chain optimization the case of iron and steel
industry of the city of Vicenza.
I - General scope of the study

The business environment is becoming more and more complex: globalization of economies,
maturity or saturation of certain markets, very rapid emergence of new technologies,
increasing powers of consumers, growing importance of the means of communication, etc.
In this context particularly unstable and competitive, businesses seek to streamline their
structures and organizations around directly business processes, moreover those processes
should be optimized in order to be used as competitive advantage for the company. It is the
tendency of the process management optimization. This dynamic is structured around three
main axes: reduction of costs and delays, the limitation of internal dysfunction and especially
the increase of the company and customer satisfaction.
This consideration is especially developed with the concept of supply chain as now an
integral part of the global industrial landscape. The idea of managing business in transverse
way and not in a segregated way and on the basis of local performance objectives made his
way. It became obvious to any industrial actor; that supply chain management and
optimization is the key to success. A supply chain is defined as the system whereby
companies bring their products or their services until their customers. The great value of this
approach is to raise awareness to each entity that supply chain it is part of a stream that
exceeds this entity and that its aim is to respond as best as possible to the expectations and
needs expressed by customers and it should be optimized depending on circumstances to
achieve the company efficiency and effectiveness.
The object and the purpose of this study are to assess the use of supply chain optimization in
the iron and steel industry, because we everyone is aware of the importance that plays this
kind of the industry in the global economy, Especially the in the city of Vicenza where many

companies are operating in this field, and moreover this kind of industry use very important
means of production and distribution, and got complicated supply chain processes, this it
will be a very interesting experience studying this kind of industry.
It is to respond to these crucial issues that we have undertaken to study in a empirical
research the behavior of iron and steel industry. In this perspective, we asked what could be
the common elements to all these companies and to what extent their behavior differ from
other companies of different industries. And moreover we will select company as a case
study and work on a Logistic and supply chain Linear optimization model.

II. The objectives the study and the reasons for wanting to pursue them

We would like to perform this research at the school of industrial and engineering
management of Padova, and to focus on our research on the field of logistics and supply
chain management optimization, because we think the Lab of management engineering at
the university of Padova could provide us with all the necessary facilities (computer
software, industrial data bases, office space, and) and talented high profile professors and
and experienced team, moreover school of management engineering in of University of
Padova, offer very important courses in statistics, econometrics, operation research and
computing and also courses in qualitative methodology of research which, these courses are
very important for me because it will give the necessary methods, techniques and
instruments to work in our subject, thus our subjects would be devided into 3 very
important parts:

In The first part : we will tackle the theory of logistics and supply chain management
especially practiced in the field of iron and steel industry, we will collect data from different
sources such as articles and books were used to construct or build the theoretical frame of
reference for the thesis.
In The second part: we will work on an empirical study, we will necessary focus on a sample
of most important iron and steel companies of the city of Vicenza, data will be collected
through semi structured interviews via telephone and internet, and if it possible to go to
those companies and interview managers about the supply chain processes, production and
distribution means and the way of the optimization of the supply chain within those
companies. ( so we have to work on the methods of setting a questionnaire and data
analysis ).

In The Third part: I will work on a case study, I need to contact the responsible of the
companies and to benefit of a short training period in some departments (logistics, planning
) of a selected company and to work on a Linear optimization model using the data and the
processes of this company.

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