Inventory management of steel plates at an oil rig construction company

Abstract

Keppel Fels produces make-to-order oil exploration rigs for the global market. Each rig requires close to 6000 metric tons of steel in the course of its production. Optimal management of this steel is very critical in this line of business. However, in recent years, demand for these rigs has been increasing at a tremendous rate and previous steel management policies are fast becoming unable to cope with this surge of demand. The thesis first looks at characterizing the nature of the demand of steel plates in the company. This led to the identification of key factors of demand, resulting in a classification system of the steel plates according to their demand behavior. This system further led to the crafting of various policies to manage the risks involved in the procurement of the steel plates. We propose to use the newsboy model to minimize the inventory costs, subject to uncertain demand. The conclusion of the thesis presents the optimized steel plate procurement quantities for the company.