Visual Analysis of the Product Supply Chain in Smart Manufacturing and Industry 4.0

PhD Thesis Proposal Defence


Title: "Visual Analysis of the Product Supply Chain in Smart Manufacturing and 
Industry 4.0"

by

Mr. Dong SUN


Abstract:

The product supply chain often includes the purchase of raw materials, 
production, product distribution, and the sale of products. The exploration and 
analysis of the data in the product supply chain is important for evaluating 
the operation of the product supply chain, identifying potential problems, 
improving the supply chain, and adjusting the strategy for product supply in 
response to market changes However, challenges exist due to the huge amount of 
data, the complicated relationship between different components of the product 
supply chain, the increasing number and complexity of the machine learning 
models used, and the uncertainty of the market. Prior studies on visualizing 
the data in the product supply chain lack a detailed comparison of different 
algorithm outputs and do not show the reason for the difference between the 
outputs. What's more, the uncertainty of the market is not considered in these 
studies, which makes it difficult for users to adjust the product supply chain 
in case of market changes. In this thesis, I propose visual analytics 
approaches for exploring and diagnosing multiple stages of the product supply 
chain. Specifically, the approaches support the detailed comparison and 
selection of product demand forecasting models, enable the fast exploration and 
comparison of different production plans, allow a quick adjustment to a 
production plan in case of market changes, and help users to explore, inspect 
and diagnose the strategy for the multistage distribution of products. The 
effectiveness and usability of the proposed approaches are demonstrated by case 
studies with real-world datasets of the product supply chain and interviews 
with experts working on managing the product supply chain in large 
manufacturing companies.


Date:			Friday, 7 May 2021

Time:                  	2:00pm - 4:00pm

Zoom Meeting: 
https://hkust.zoom.us/j/91448656194?pwd=LzA5UVhPTFg2UEZ5T3VKRXNMeldHdz09

Committee Members:	Prof. Ting-Chuen Pong (Supervisor)
 			Prof. Huamin Qu (Supervisor)
 			Prof. Chiew-Lan Tai (Chairperson)
 			Prof. Raymond Wong


**** ALL are Welcome ****