A Linear Programming Methodology to Optimize Decision-Making for Ready-Mixed Cement Products: a Case Study on Egypt’s New Administrative Capital

Process Integration and Optimization for Sustainability https://doi.org/10.1007/s41660-022-00282-y ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER A Linear Programming Methodology to Optimize Decision‑Making for Ready‑Mixed Cement Products: a Case Study on Egypt’s New Administrative Capital Ahmed A. Mawgoud1 · Mohamed Hamed N. Taha1 · Nour Eldeen Khalifa1 Received: 24 January 2022 / Revised: 7 September 2022 / Accepted: 8 September 2022 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 Abstract Egypt has started constructing its New Administrative Capital since 2015. The new capital was designed to meet smart city standards, which presents a challenge for businesses to make the optimum business decisions given the set budget for such a project. As a result, reaching the optimum solution for allocating the needed materials to each building became important. Many researchers have considered the theory of constraints in their studies to determine the optimum product mix. Frequently, research considers the target of profit maximization to reach the optimum solution with one scenario. In this paper, we aim to solve the problem of product mix in cement production, which organizations face. The problem was formulated based on a case study in Egypt with two linear programming approaches. For this problem, many scenarios were presented under the consideration of two aspects, which are resource utilization and productivity. Data visualization was used in this paper to simplify the procedure of decision-making. Also, a dashboard web application was made for the decision makers to make it easier to create, analyze, and see different business scenarios. Keywords Optimization · Linear programming · Industry · Decision-making · Egypt Introduction The New Administrative Capital (NAC) is a huge project that has been under construction since 2015 in Egypt. The idea of this city was reaffirmed at the Egypt Economic Development Conference (Serag 2017). The main idea of this city is to gather all the governmental establishments and the headquarters of all ministers away from Cairo. It will be located about 45 km east of Cairo (El-Maksoud et al. 2019). It is estimated by the experts that the new smart city can handle a population of 6 million citizens. Following the idea of Wellington City in New Zealand, the New Administrative City will * Ahmed A. Mawgoud Mohamed Hamed N. Taha Nour Eldeen Khalifa 1 Information Technology Department, Faculty of Computers and Artificial Intelligence, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt function as the administrative and financial capital (Peirce and Ritchie 2007). In Table 1 below, a list of all the used abbreviations in this study with their descriptions is provided. One of the main reasons for initiating this project was the need to relieve overcrowding in Greater Cairo, as it is expected that the overall population of Cairo — estimated to be 11.4 million in 2024 — is expected to be doubled in the following few decades (Chen 2018). Various organizations around the world, including Egypt, have faced difficulties in optimizing their production inputs. The organization’s stability in a competitive market place mainly relies on its capability to meet the highest rate of production with the lowest acceptable cost without affecting the product’s quality. The authors (Chen et al. 2021) have studied the companies’ production rate challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. The companies worldwide have faced the threat of production input deficiency and low utilization levels that have accordingly led to low levels of production output. The organizations have to design a management workflow that can help in monitoring their 13 Vol.:(0123456789) Process Integration and Optimization for Sustainability Table 1  A description list for the used abbreviations in this study Acronym Description CCRs GA IEC ISO MARR NAC RMC TOC WIP Capacity constraint resources Genetic algorithm International electro-technical commission International Organization for Standardization Minimum attractive rate of return New Administrative Capital Ready-mixed concrete Theory of constraints Work in process performance level in both operations and resource usage as the total profit of any industry is mainly affected by the budget used on the resources that contribute to the production process. There is a need for a strong infrastructure in the new capital to face the cyber threats facing the region and secure the whole buildings from being attacked as stated in (Mawgoud et al. 2019) and (Mawgoud and Ali 2020). As a result, the need for lowcost and secure housing projects is increasing in Egypt, housing costs, and the lack of financing solutions are all factors that contribute to this problem. Recently, readymixed companies have realized the need for increasing the product mix (Collard-Wexler 2006). RMC is considered the most well-known in the construction materials industry worldwide. Regularly, due to the technical necessities, the concrete is usually mixed in a small mixing station, and then it is transported to the building site. Essentially, there are two core factors that affect the cost of RMC: transportation and the material itself. Producing different types of cement products increases the possibility of the organization being profitable and providing the target market with its needs. Non-financial performance procedures in the organization, such as administration, customer service, and WIP, can have an impact on product mix optimization (Abinesh 2019). Linear Programming for Cement Industry Linear programming is considered an effective operational research approach that is used to assign an organization’s best practice solution for optimum production resource usage. This approach is widely used in international business as a tool for determining optimal resource usage. Multiple products need various production amounts of resources, with various costs, and revenues for each stage in the production cycle. By one way or another, the importance of product mix decisions has become essential for cement organizations that produce multiple types of products (Vasant 2005). 13 The problem of cement products arises from difficulties that cement organizations face while assigning the available resources to the different types of activities, which can affect the production rate and lead to problems meeting the market demand (Yu et al. 2013). On the contrary, the availability of productive resources in most cases can lead to a lack of use of all those resources together in an efficient approach. The applied methodology in this paper is a constraint-based approach, which can deal with the market's needs and supply of raw materials. The main reason behind using the TOC is to reach the targeted throughput or revenue rather than the produced quantity (Eastman and Pande 2010). Throughput represents the main factor in TOC operational indicators (Brink 2019). The theory of co (...truncated)