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

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Department of Computer Science and Engineering


PhD Thesis 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:			Tuesday, 10 August 2021

Time:			10:00am - 12:00noon

Zoom Meeting:		https://hkust.zoom.us/j/3941396622

Chairperson:		Prof. Shuhuai YAO (MAE)

Committee Members:	Prof. Ting Chuen PONG (Supervisor)
 			Prof. Huamin QU (Supervisor)
 			Prof. Siu Wing CHENG
 			Prof. Xiaofang ZHOU
 			Prof. Fugee TSUNG (IEDA)
 			Prof. Jinwook SEO (Seoul National University)


**** ALL are Welcome ****