MOBIL OIL CORPORATION: CANADA DISTRIBUTION NETWORK

• Russell  Hall (B.S. 1975, Trinity University; M.S. 1999, Kansas State ),  Lt. Colonel, US. Army
• Dan McNamara (B.S. 1988,  SUNY Oneonta ; M.S. 1998,  GMU ), Senior  Consultant, Booz, Allen &  Hamilton
• Scott Swann (B.A. 1988, Texas A&M M.S. 1998,  GMU), Technical Staff Member, BDM

Course: OR 680, Applications Seminar

Professor: Stephen G. Nash

This project built a logistics network model to supply the current  demand (1997) and the projected future demand (2002).  Once the  model was built, expected costs of production, transportation and  operations were matched against demand to decide the best location for  several Regional Distribution Centers (RDC).At the completion  of the analysis Mobil management was given a complete breakout of the  findings.

The optimal number of RDC's selected to maximize Mobil's measure of  quality service (number of days required to deliver product) was eight.  Interestingly, the number of RDC's selected in the future model was also  eight. Sensitivity analysis indicated that the solutions would not change even with a large magnitude of change in the model parameters.  In addition, Both models selected the same  eight RDC's. This tells Mobil they can start selecting based on their  anticipated demand growth centers.

Links

• MOBIL
• Insight
• Systems Engineering & Operations Research Dept.
• School of Information Technology and  Engineering
• George Mason University

(snash@gmu.edu)