PI: Luis F. Zuluaga
Co-PI(s): Robert H. Storer
University: Lehigh University
Johnson & Johnson Services, Inc. (J&J) provides indispensable medical devices for the performance of surgeries and the support of orthopedics, cardiovascular disease, and other specialty treatments. In fact, for the past 25 years, J&J has been the leading company providing the most innovative medical devices to health providers. These products allow treating conditions like infection prevention, arrhythmias, orthopedics, and vision care, as well as devices to help in wound closure, bio surgery, and general surgery. To support the tactical and strategic decisions in the area of medical devices made by J&J, the company is committed to the use of quantitative techniques that can be developed to efficiently adapt assets and processes to actual resources, innovations, and market conditions, as well as to ensure the safety and satisfaction of its clients in the health space.
The main objective of this project is to seed the use of such techniques by applying them to a very important decision-making problem faced by J&J in their area of medical devices: to decide the best way to provide eye surgeons with the intraocular lenses tools (IOL) needed to best perform vision surgery (typically cataract surgery) on a patient.
Specifically, the team plans to look at the following problems:
- What fulfillment methodology (make to stock, consignment, or something different) is the best suited for the IOL implant problem when considering what is best for different regions/customers, as well as considering customers’ needs and downstream supply chain performance (e.g., transportation costs and production scheduling).