/n AUM
American University Of The Middle East
COURSE Project (10%)
2023-2024
Operations Research -Optimization
IE335
Semester: Spring 2024
2023-2024
www.aum.edu.kw
Tel: (965) 222 51 400 • Fax: (965) 222 51 427
P.O.BOX:220 Dasman, 15453 Kuwait Contents
I. Introduction
II. Project Description...........
III.
ABET Learning Outcome
IV. Project Management & Deliverables.........
V.
Turnitin…………………..
VI.
APA Style
VII.
VIII.
Academic Honesty and Integrity Assurance..
Copyrights..........
IX.
Project and team-based work..
X. Marking Scheme
XI. Student Assessment Rubric
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Page 2 of 14 Introduction
Projects for engineering students give an edge over the race of recruitment to work hard to ensure
a good career. Despite employment practices in recent times, students are progressively taking up
projects to pad up their skill set. Engineering projects help students to learn and acquire practical
knowledge. Despite the theory concept they acquire, various industries also need to know their
capacity to complete projects using their specific initiatives. Thus, we recommend students realize
engineering projects in their four years of engineering and try to present as many white papers as
possible. Students who give importance to their course projects are expected to learn how to:
•
Work in teams including multidisciplinary teams
Build a major design experience based on the knowledge and skills acquired in the
coursework
Build a major design experience that incorporates appropriate engineering standards and
multiple realistic constraints
•
Apply both analysis and synthesis in the engineering design process, resulting in designs
that meet the desired needs
The IE 335 course project shows competency in understanding and applying the course objectives
and achieving learning outcomes. The purpose is for the students to learn how to formulate a real-
life problem and to experience solving it using concepts and techniques taught in class.
Students, in groups of a maximum of three, will work on the assigned transshipment problem. It
is expected that each student will, fully and actively, participate in the project as an effective team
member. The work submitted by the group should be the group's own work and not copied from a
previous case study or project.
The project will be the application of the transshipment problem to a real-life setting.
The solution of the transshipment problem can be partitioned into a 3-step procedure:
1. Determine the type of waste material and make a forecast for the total amount of waste
expected annually.
2. Design a country wide waste collection network using candidate facility locations and
determine how much of waste material to be carried from/to each location at a minimum
cost.
3. Evaluate various scenarios under variable demand, using different number of facilities, and
various locations for them.
Optimization is essentially used in performing steps (2) and (3). The project itself will be completed
in two phases.
First, the project involves formulating a linear program (LP) for the small-scale problem given in
Section II of this guideline.
Second, the project involves solving the LP formulation and interpreting the results. Students
should use a type of waste material data (i.e., plastics, paper, tire, battery, motor oil, construction
material, fabric, etc.). The dataset will be given, or the students can obtain their data from various
sources such as Environment Public Authority Kuwait. The project will be completed by preparing the
EXCEL or the LINGO input files to solve the LP formulation of the problem.
Page 3 of 14 The students can contact the Environment Public Authority Kuwait (https://epa.org.kw/en-
us/RecycleFactory) to reach an appropriate data in which they could undertake this project.
The students can also be inspired by the Kuwait National Development Plan which sets the nation's
long-term development priorities while looking for an appropriate topic/company.
(http://www.newkuwait.gov.kw/en/).
The students should not also forget to apply the ethical code for engineers as stated by the Institute
of Industrial
and
Systems Engineers during
their project
(http://www.iise.org/details.aspx?id=299).
Third, the project constitutes solving the problem using the EXCEL solver or the LINGO software
and obtaining the optimal solution together with discussions.
Project Description
With the project concept (as presented above) have been developed among your group members,
the following gives comprehensive guidelines of what is supposed to be done to go through all
phases of the project and develop all required deliverables. Make smart use of those guidelines in
your project work.
The transshipment problem is an extension of the transportation problem in which intermediate
transshipment points are added between the sources and destinations. An example of a
transshipment point is a distribution center or warehouse located between plants and stores. In a
transshipment problem, items may be transported from sources through transshipment points on
to destinations, from one source to another, from one transshipment point to another, from one
destination to another, or directly from sources to destinations, or some combination of these
alternatives. We will provide the following example to better illustrate what a transshipment
problem involves.
Preliminary Example of a Transshipment Problem
A recycling company wishes to setup a recycling network to overcome the waste problem in
Kuwait. Its aim is to recycle several types of materials such as plastics, batteries, and waste
electrical and electronics equipment. In various locations the waste material is collected in
containers. These are the collection points. Then the waste material is transferred to consolidation
points to consolidate and transfer them to recycling facilities in large quantities. How should the
waste be collected if the company wants to minimize total transportation cost?
Page 4 of 14 d-maps.com
Salemy
Abdali
Kuwait city
Al-Jahra
Hawalli
Waste material collection point
Waste material consolidation center
Al-Wafra
Waste material recycling facility
Qasr
30 km
N
20 mi
O→ Mercator
FIGURE 1. POSSIBLE LOCATIONS OF FACILITIES FOR THE WASTE COLLECTION NETWORK
The company's aim is to transfer all the waste from collection points to consolidation centers, and
from consolidation centers to recycling facilities at a lowest cost. As an example, Table 1 presents
the estimated plastic waste over Kuwait next year.
TABLE 1. SAMPLE DATA FOR ESTIMATED PLASTIC WASTE IN KUWAIT (in thousands of tons)
City
Amount
of plastic
Abdali Al-Jahra
Al-Wafra
Hawalli
Kuwait
City
Salemy
Qasr
28.25
44.00
22.75
32.25
42.00
8.25
18.50
waste
It should be determined how much of the material should be collected from each collection point to
send the facilities. For instance, Kuwait City produces 42,000 tons of plastics waste, annually.
Page 5 of 14
