MORe: Dr. Heng-Soon Gan

Short Biography

Heng-Soon is the Director of Melbourne Operations Research. He is a PhD graduate from The Univerity of Melbourne's Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering. Heng-Soon is actively involved in the teaching of undergraduate courses at the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering and the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. While still involved in his PhD research, he undertook a number of projects for manufacturing companies, developing inventory, production and transport cost models, and undertaking supply chain/system optimization, under conditions of varying (and at times difficult to predict) customer demand.

Consulting Activities

Heng-Soon has extensive consulting experience with the manufacturing and logistics sectors. Key activities include the development of optimisation systems, cost models and simulation involving extensive data analysis and simulation model parameter estimation.

Technical Expertise

Research Activities

• Machine Scheduling (deterministic, robust and online)

• Supply Chain Optimisation

• Operations Research Education: Case studies and methodogies

Publications

Refereed Journals

1. Amir H. Abdekhodaee, Andrew Wirth and Heng-Soon Gan. Equal processing and equal setup time cases of scheduling parallel machines with a single server. Computers and Operations Research, 31(11):1867-1889, 2004.

2. Heng-Soon Gan and Andrew Wirth. Comparing Deterministic, Robust and Online Scheduling using Entropy. International Journal of Production Research, 43(10):2113-2134, 15 May 2005.

3. Amir H. Abdekhodaee, Andrew Wirth and Heng-Soon Gan. Scheduling two parallel machines with a single server: the general case. Computers and Operations Research, 33(4):994-1009, April 2006.

4. Heng-Soon Gan, Kwanniti Khammuang and Andrew Wirth. Getting out of a (strawberry) jam: An introduction to supply chain analysis. INFORMS Transactions on Education, 6(3), May 2006.

5. Heng-Soon Gan and Andrew Wirth. Heuristic Stability: A Permutation Disarray Measure. Computers and Operations Research, 34(11):3187-3208, 2007.

Conference Papers

1. Heng-Soon Gan and Andrew Wirth. Telecommunication Networks Ownership Cost Optimisation. Proceedings of ASOR 2001, Adelaide (CD-ROM), September 2001. (HSG presented)

2. Amir H. Abdekhodaee, Andrew Wirth and Heng-Soon Gan. Some Special Cases of Scheduling Parallel Machines with Single Server. INFORMS International Conference, Hawaii, June 2001. (HSG presented)

3. Heng-Soon Gan and Andrew Wirth. Robust Scheduling. ICIAM International Conference (ASOR sub-meeting), Sydney, July 2003. (HSG presented)

4. Heng-Soon Gan and Andrew Wirth. Generating Robust Schedules on Identical Parallel Machines: Heuristic Approaches. Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Optimization: Techniques and Applications, December 2004. (HSG presented)

5. Richard Egudo, Natashia Boland and Heng-Soon Gan. A Mathematical Programming Based Decision Support Tool for Force Allocation. Proceedings of the 18th National Conference of the Australian Operations Research Society, September 2005.

6. Natashia Boland, Emily Duane, Heng-Soon Gan and Mark Helding. Improving Order-picking Efficiency Through Better Warehouse Design. Proceedings of the 18th National Conference of the Australian Operations Research Society, September 2005.

Technical Reports

1. Heng-Soon Gan and Shueh Hai Lim. Telecommunications Network Ownership Cost Optimisation. Technical Report, Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, The University of Melbourne, 2000.

Conference Abstracts

1. Natashia Boland and Heng-Soon Gan. Modelling and Optimisation of Bus Service with Multi-Pickup-Dropoff Locations. The 18th National Conference of the Australian Operations Research Society, September 2005.

Papers Submitted for Publication (under Review)

1. Heng-Soon Gan and Andrew Wirth. Scheduling Identical Parallel Machines: Off-line and Robust Schemes. Submitted to Computers and Operations Research.

In Preparation

1. Richard Egudo, Natashia Boland and Heng-Soon Gan. Force allocation support tool.

2. Natashia Boland, Emily Duane, Heng-Soon Gan and Mark Helding. Complexity of an Order-picking problem.