INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING
Jayant Rajgopal, PhD
1039 Benedum Hall | 3700 O’Hara Street | Pittsburgh, PA 15261
Professor and Graduate Program Director
P: 412-624-9840 rajgopal@pitt.edu http://www.pitt.edu/~rajgopal
Summary of Research Interests Prof. Rajgopal’s research interests lie in two broad areas: optimization methods (especially continuous optimization) and the development of analytical and data-driven models to solve problems in operations, logistics, supply chains, and inventory control. Of late, his primary focus has been in the area of healthcare delivery. One specific topic he has worked on extensively is vaccine delivery in low and middle income countries. As part of the HERMES team he has helped develop models to analyze and improve how vaccines work their way through the distribution chain from a central delivery location to hundreds of small clinics,
many of which are in remote locations. There are many issues to be considered, including cold storage capacity, transportation, personnel, and vaccine wastage. The models help with evaluating metrics related to these as well as with addressing many “what-if” scenarios, such as changes in resource availability, supply chain structure and vaccine regimens. A related topic is the development of mathematical models to optimize vaccine administration at clinics by minimizing so-called open vial waste, which results when a partially used vial of vaccine must be discarded at the end of a clinic day. Another area he has worked on a lot
recently is the improvement of operating procedures in hospitals and clinics. This includes things such as better utilization of operating room suites, improving management of hospital inventory items via better storage and inventory control schemes, and improved scheduling procedures at outpatient clinics; most of these have been at the Veteran’s Administration facilities in Pittsburgh. In the past he has also worked on many similar problems in production and manufacturing environments and continues to have an Interest in this area as well.
Optimizing storage of prosthetics inventory
Vaccine Supply Chain Modeling • • • •
No. of doses wasted Open vial loss Unmet demand Average time in supply chain
• • • • •
No. of trips No. stock-outs Avg. inventory Capacity utilization Inventory loss
Biographical Sketch Jayant Rajgopal is a Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. He holds a PhD in Industrial & Management Engineering from the University of Iowa and has been at Pitt since 1986. His current professional
DEPARTMENT OF INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING
interests are in mathematical modeling & optimization, production, operations and supply chain analysis, and applications of operations research to healthcare delivery. He has taught, conducted sponsored research, published or consulted in all of these areas. Dr. Rajgopal is a senior member of IIE and INFORMS, and a licensed professional engineer in the state of Pennsylvania.
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