Robust network design

As an equipment manufacturer for the mining and construction industries, Caterpillar's business is heavily impacted by the cyclicality of these two industries. To be competitive in the market while investing prudently to ensure shareholders' value, Caterpillar needs to make capacity decisions with peaks and troughs of the cycles in mind. Through the peaks and troughs of business cycles, the perceptions change from not enough capacity to under-utilization of asset constrained capacity respectively. The purpose of this thesis is to establish a framework that enhances robustness in investment decision-making within the 2-6 year capacity planning horizon. This entails the ability to balance risk and return for the company and account for the cyclical nature of business and other strategic considerations. The project also aims to enhance consistency across stakeholders and introduce an aggregate risk perspective under corporate capital constraint.

Department dc:contributor.department

Leaders for Global Operations Program at MIT

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2015

Author dc:creator

• Chua, Shui Ying

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Saurabh Amin and Chris Caplice.

• Sloan School of Management.
• Civil and Environmental Engineering.
• Leaders for Global Operations Program.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/99030

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/99030