Kartik Ramachandran graduated from department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering in Spring 2003.  He also has a B. E (ME) in 1998 from the Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal, India.

Thesis title: A Generic Methodological Approach for Determining Hybrid Push/Pull Boundary.

(Spring 2003)

Abstract

A critical decision for any production manager today is in selecting the correct production system. Manufacturing operations need to cultivate the capability to deal with unanticipated events. There is an overwhelming need to develop production systems, which can flexibly respond to market demands and still maintain high productivity. The need is to have a production system that can combine the features of both push and pull type production systems rather than treating them as separate entities. Such a system that contains specific elements of both is referred as hybrid push/pull system. This project presents a generic methodical approach for determining hybrid push/pull boundary that determines stages in a production system that should work in pull and those that should work in a push environment. The two major steps involved are: Identify alternatives for determining the boundary and decide the various ways by which the boundary can be determined and select the appropriate boundary. For determining the method among given alternatives, this project uses the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). It also- provides an activity based modeling methodology (IDEFO) for determining the push/pull boundary.