Getting out of a (Strawberry) Jam: An Introduction to Supply Chain Analysis

In order to illustrate how various areas of operations research interact in an actual manufacturing scenario, we propose the use of a strawberry jam-making supply chain model consisting of an inventory partner, a production scheduling partner and a delivery partner. The problem is to minimise the overall supply chain cost consisting of inventory order cost, inventory unit purchasing cost, inventory storage cost, transport booking cost, jam storage cost, delivery travel distance cost and jam arrival earliness and tardiness costs. We report on how we devised and taught this case to First Year Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering students at the University of Melbourne.