Abstract: The motivation for this work comes from the innovative practices of one of India's largest private sector companies, The ITC Group. In the year 2000 ITC embarked on an initiative, known as e-Choupal, to reengineer the farm-to-market supply chain by going direct to the farmer to procure the commodities. Consider soybeans.  ITC buys soybeans (input) at its hubs.  The firm then decides whether to keep the bean in storage or process them into oil and meal (a by-product) at one
of several processing plants. Both oil and meal are sold using forward contracts whose prices are determined by traded instruments on global commodity exchanges such as the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT). The firm can also trade the bean itself, usually to other processors.  The e-Choupal experiment has been very successful. Today the network for soybeans consists of close to fifty hubs and twelve processing plants.  Managing this network requires integrated decision making regarding
procurement (including price and quantity), transshipment (of input and output commodities), trading, and demand management to maximize profits.

In this talk, after introducing the context, I will present a model that considers procurement, processing and trading of commodities over a network. We derive optimal policies for a risk-neutral ?rm, develop heuristics and an upper bound & numerically demonstrate the robustness of our results. We are presently working to extend the model to a risk-averse firm.  I will present some preliminary results.

(Joint work with Sripad Devalkar and Amitabh Sinha)

Short Bio: Ravi Anupindi is the Michael R. and Mary Kay Hallman Fellow and an Associate Professor of Operations Management at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor.  He is also the Program Director for the Master of Supply Chain Management Program.  Previously, he taught at the Stern School of Business, New York University and the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University.  He has taught courses in Operations Management (core), Supply Chain Management for MBAs as well as several executive education programs.

His main research areas include supply chain management, strategic sourcing, lean operations and marketing-operations interfaces.  He is the co-author of a textbook, Managing Business Process Flows (2nd Edition), Prentice Hall, 2006.  His work has appeared in leading journals like Management Science, Operations Research, Journal of MSOM, and Marketing Science.  His recent consulting experience and speaking engagements have been with Boeing, ITC Corp. (India), Cordis, Dell, Intel, Pall,
Steelcase, Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Target, and the USG Corporation.  He has served (is serving) on the editorial boards of Journal of Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, Operations Research, Management Science, Naval Research Logistics, POMS, and IIE Transactions.

Professor Anupindi received a Ph.D. in Management of Manufacturing and Automation from Carnegie Mellon University, an M.E. in Automation from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, and a B.E. (Hons.) in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India.