Education

• 2009 Ph.D., Industrial Engineering, Arizona State University
• 2005 M.S., Industrial Engineering, Arizona State University
• 2003 B.S., Industrial Engineering, Tsinghua University

Research Areas

Lean Manufacturing and Management;

Scheduling;

Discrete Event Simulation.

Research Profile

My research interest lies in the following two aspects:

1. Lean Scheduling

On time delivery is a critical aspect of lean concept. It is vital to the continuation of the production effort as it eliminates time uncertainty in the production stream. In today's world, with nearly 80% of the cost to manufacture flowing through the supply chain, manufacturers cannot ignore the economic value of precision and they must constantly resolve any weaknesses in their own on time delivery performance.

I am interested in achieving system level on time delivery through better job scheduling. My research aims to identify the assignable causes of delay uncertainty in the system and to design proper scheduling rules to promote production efficiency.

2. Simulation Optimization

Many engineering systems in areas such as manufacturing are too complex to be modeled analytically. Discrete event simulation has long been a useful tool for evaluating the performance of such systems. Simulation optimization is the process of finding the best values of some decision variables for a system where the performance is evaluated based on the output of a simulation model of this system.

My research interest is in the theoretical aspect of simulation optimization. Specifically, I am interested in developing algorithms that enable faster global convergence, create more reliable search path and provide better estimate on the solution quality.

Professional Activities

• Reviewer of Computers & Industrial Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science & Engineering, IEEE Transactions on System, Man & Cybernetics.
• Member of INFORMS, IEEE and IIE

Selected Recent Publications

1. Xiaoyun Xu, Xi Zhang and Long Wang, “Simulating Energy Efficient Wireless Sensor Network Using Cellular Automata”, Proceeding of Winter Simulation Conference, to appear, 2011
2. Xiaoyun Xu, “Minimizing Weighted Waiting Time Variance on a Single Processor”, Computers & Industrial Engineering, accepted, 2011
3. Xiaoyun Xu and Long Wang, “Complexity of variance optimization: from production lines to computer networks,” CAAI Transactions on Intelligent Systems, vol. 4, no. 6, pp. 475-482, 2009.
4. Xiaoyun Xu and Nong Ye, “Minimization of Job Waiting Time Variance on Identical Parallel Machines,” IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics - Part C: Applications and Reviews, vol. 37, no. 5, pp. 917-927, 2007.
5. Xueping Li, Nong Ye, Xiaoyun Xu and Rapinder Sawhney, “Influencing Factors of Job Waiting Time Variance Minimization,” European Journal of Industrial Engineering, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 56-73, 2007.
6. Nong Ye, Xueping Li, Toni Farley, and Xiaoyun Xu, “Job Scheduling Methods for Reducing Waiting Time Variance,” Computer & Operations Research, vol. 34, pp. 3069-3083, 2007.