Prior to 1980, the practice in multilevel autorack management was to load the railcars at various origin points, ship them to the destination ramps, unload them, and then return each car to the loading point where it originated. Recognizing the inefficiency of such a practice with respect to the fleet size that had to be maintained, and the associated poor utilization due to the excessive empty miles logged, a consolidation of the railcars was initiated and completed by February 1982. Under this pooling program, a central management was established to control the repositioning of three types of empty railcars for eight principal automobile manufacturers. Today, the practice is to consolidate the fleets of all automobile manufacturers for each equipment type, and to solve the distribution problem of repositioning empty multilevel autoracks of each type from points at which they are unloaded to automobile assembly facilities where they need to be reloaded. Each such problem is referred to in the railroad industry as a repositioning scenario. In this dissertation, we present two tactical models to assist in the task of centrally managing the distribution of empty railcars on a day-to-day basis for each repositioning scenario. These models take into account various practical issues such as uncertainties, priorities with respect to time and demand locations, multiple objectives related to minimizing different types of latenesses in delivery, and blocking issues. It is also of great practical interest to the central management team to have the ability to conduct various sensitivity analyses in its operation. Accordingly, the system provides for the capability to investigate various what-if scenarios such as fixing decisions on running a specified block of cars (control orders) along certain routes as dictated by business needs, and handling changes in supplies, demands, priorities, and transit time characteristics. Moreover, the solution methodology provides a flexible decision-making capability by permitting a series of runs based on a sequential decision-fixing process in a real-time operational mode. A turn-around response of about five minutes per scenario (on a Pentium PC or equivalent) is desired in practice. This dissertation begins by developing several progressive formulations that incorporate many practical considerations in the empty railroad car distribution planning system. We investigate the performance of two principal models in this progression to gain more insights into the implementation aspects of our approach. The first model (TDSS1: Tactical Decision Support System-1) considers all the identified features of the problem except for blocking, and results in a network formulation of the problem. This model examines various practical issues such as time and demand location-based priorities as well as uncertainty in data within a multiple objective framework. In the second model (TDSS2: Tactical Decision Support System-2), we add a substantial degree of complexity by addressing blocking considerations. Enforcement of block formation renders the model as a network flow problem with side-constraints and discrete side-variables. We show how the resulting mixed-integer-programming formulation can be enhanced via some partial convex hull constructions using the Reformulation-Linearization Technique (RLT). This tightening of the underlying linear programming relaxation is shown to permit the solution of larger problem sizes, and enables the exact solution of certain scenarios having 5,000 - 8,000 arcs. However, in order to accommodate the strict run-time limit requirements imposed in practice for larger scenarios having about 150,000 arcs, various heuristics are developed to solve this problem. In using a combination of proposed strategies, 23 principal heuristics, plus other hybrid variants, are composed for testing. By examining the performance of various exact and heuristic procedures with respect to speed of operation and the quality of solutions produced on a test-bed of real problems, we prescribe recommendations for a production code to be used in practice. Besides providing a tool to aid in the decision-making process, a principal utility of the developed system is that it provides the opportunity to conduct various what-if analyses. The effects of many of the practical considerations that have been incorporated in TDSS2 can be studied via such sensitivity analyses. A special graphical user interface has been implemented that permits railcar distributors to investigate the effects of varying supplies, demands, and routes, retrieving railcars from storage, diverting en-route railcars, and exploring various customer or user-driven fixed dispositions. The user has the flexibility, therefore, to sequentially compose a decision to implement on a daily basis by using business judgment to make suggestions and studying the consequent response prompted by the model. This system is currently in use by the TTX company, Chicago, Illinois, in order to make distribution decisions for the railroad and automobile industries. The dissertation concludes by presenting a system flowchart for the overall implemented approach, a summary of our research and provides recommendations for future algorithmic enhancements based on Lagrangian relaxation techniques. NOTE: (03/2011) An updated copy of this ETD was added after there were patron reports of problems with the file. / Ph. D.

We develop an extension to the tactical planning model (TPM) for a job shop by the third author. The TPM is a discrete-time model in which all transitions occur at the start of each time period. The time period must be defined appropriately in order for the model to be meaningful. Each period must be short enough so that a job is unlikely to travel through more than one station in one period. At the same time, the time period needs to be long enough to justify the assumptions of continuous workflow and Markovian job movements. We build an extension to the TPM that overcomes this restriction of period sizing by permitting production control over shorter time intervals. We achieve this by deriving a continuous-time linear control rule for a single station. We then determine the first two moments of the production level and queue length for the workstation. / Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA)

La gestion de chaîne d’approvisionnement est un élément essentiel à la performance des entreprises et fait l’objet d’une attention particulière depuis plusieurs décennies. Dans le domaine des télécommunications, cette gestion inclût généralement des activités de réparation et prend alors place sur une chaîne d’approvisionnement en boucle fermée. Dans ce contexte, la gestion de la chaîne d’approvisionnement vise à la planification optimale des mouvements de pièces saines et défaillantes basée sur une prévision des défaillances futures et fait face à différents objectifs conflictuels (rupture de stock, stockage, réparation,transfert). Le travail présenté dans cette thèse s’intéresse à ce problème d’optimisation et s’appuie sur un cas réel. Spécifiquement nous proposons un système d’aide à la planification tactique. Ce système est centré sur une modélisation générique du problème d’optimisation applicable à une grande variété de chaînes d’approvisionnement. Nous présentons particulièrement une approche exacte et une méta-heuristique pour résoudre ce problème et évaluons ces approches sur une variété d’instances de différentes tailles avec plusieurs niveaux et distributions du stock initial dans la chaîne d’approvisionnement. Nous étudions également la possibilité de mener des politiques de gestion particulières (e.g., juste-à-temps, réparations minimales) en pondérant les différents objectifs étudiés. Nous nous intéressons également à l’application de plans successifs produits par le système et, particulièrement, nous étudions la capacité du système à faire face aux incertitudes pouvant apparaître dans les prévisions. / Supply chains are ubiquitous across industries and a considerable effort has been invested in supply chain management techniques over the last decades. In Telecommunications service industries, it often involves repair operations and consequently takes place in a closed-loop supply chain. In this context, supply chain management is concerned with optimally planning movements of faulty parts and spare parts based on a demand forecast and in the face of conflicting objectifs (stock out, storage, repair, transfer). This thesis describes this optimisation problem and based on a case study. Specifically, we consider a tactical planning decision support system. This system depends on a generic modeling of the problem that can be applied on a wide range of supply chains. We present an exact method and a metaheuristic to solve this problem and evaluate our approaches against a variety of instances of different sizes. We also study the ability to emulate specific management policies (e.g., just-in-time replenishment, minimal repair) by weighting the objectives. Finally, we investigate how to apply successive plans generated by the system and study the capability to face forecast uncertainties.

Cette thèse est une contribution à la modélisation, la planification et l’optimisation du transport pour l’approvisionnement en bois de forêt des industries de première transformation. Dans ce domaine, les aléas climatiques (mise au sol des bois par les tempêtes), sanitaires (attaques bactériologiques et fongiques des bois) et commerciaux (variabilité et exigence croissante des marchés) poussent les divers acteurs du secteur (entrepreneurs et exploitants forestiers, transporteurs) à revoir l’organisation de la filière logistique d’approvisionnement, afin d’améliorer la qualité de service (adéquation offre-demande) et de diminuer les coûts.L’objectif principal de cette thèse était de proposer un modèle de pilotage améliorant la performance du transport forestier, en respectant les contraintes et les pratiques du secteur.Les résultats établissent une démarche de planification hiérarchique des activités de transport à deux niveaux de décision, tactique et opérationnel. Au niveau tactique, une optimisation multi-périodes permet de répondre aux commandes en minimisant l’activité globale de transport, sous contrainte de capacité agrégée des moyens de transport accessibles. Ce niveau permet de mettre en oeuvre des politiques de lissage de charge et d’organisation de sous-traitance ou de partenariats entre acteurs de transport. Au niveau opérationnel, les plans tactiques alloués à chaque transporteur sont désagrégés, pour permettre une optimisation des tournées des flottes, sous contrainte des capacités physiques de ces flottes.Les modèles d’optimisation de chaque niveau sont formalisés en programmation linéaire mixte avec variables binaires. L’applicabilité des modèles a été testée en utilisant un jeu de données industrielles en région Aquitaine et a montré des améliorations significatives d’exploitation des capacités de transport par rapport aux pratiques actuelles.Les modèles de décision ont été conçus pour s’adapter à tout contexte organisationnel, partenarial ou non : la production du plan tactique possède un caractère générique sans présomption de l’organisation, celle-ci étant prise en compte, dans un deuxième temps, au niveau de l’optimisation opérationnelle du plan de transport de chaque acteur. / The present manuscript tackles the supply chain forest transportation problem in the context of forestry primary industry. In this context, several risks may affect the forest supply chain: the unpredictable weather conditions (tree falling provoked by major storms); sanitary emergencies (tree pest and diseases); and, diverse commercial circumstances (the variability of market demands). The aforementioned issues motivate the diverse forest sector protagonists (entrepreneurs, forest operators and drivers) to seek support for improving their logistic operations. The aim of this effort is to improve the service quality (offer-demand agreement) diminishing in this way the total costs. Therefore, the main goal of this thesis is the proposal of a novel management model which improves forest-to-mill transport performance. At the same time, the proposed model accounts for the forest sector manners and constraints. The contribution of this thesis is threefold: first a transportation model is developed, later on the transport planning is managed, and finally an optimization procedure is proposed.The thesis results propose a hierarchical planning for the forestry transportation. Two decision levels are suggested: tactic and operational. At a tactic level, a multi-period optimization is considered. The multi-period optimization strategy meets the customer supply demands while minimizes the global transportation activity. Such strategy takes into account the restrictions of the total available transportation means. Moreover, at this level the activity balancing politics may be developed, as well as subcontractors coordination between transport companies. On the other hand, at the operational level, the tactic planning assigned for each transporter is divided so an optimization of the fleet’s transport assignation is done considering the vehicles constraints.The decision process is modelled as a Mixed Linear Programming formulation. The application considers a data set coming from the industry settled at the Aquitaine region in France. The results have shown a significant improvement on the transport capabilities with respect to the conventional transport practices.It is worth to mention that the decision models were designed such that they may be adapted to different context either collaborative or not. In both cases, the tactic planning has a generic purpose, in other words, it is independent of the kind of organization involved, whereas specific organizations are taken into account when planning actors’ activities at the operational level.

The Moment Recursion (MR) models are a class of models for tactical planning of job shops or other processing networks. The MR model can be used to determine or approximate the first two moments of production quantities and queue lengths at each work station of a job shop. Knowledge of these two moments is sufficient to carry out a variety of performance evaluation, optimization and decision-support applications. This paper presents a literature survey of the Moment-Recursion models. Limitations in the existing research and possible research opportunities are also discussed. Based on the research opportunities discussed, we are in the process of building a model that attempts to fill these research gaps. / Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA)

Saab är ett ledande företag på marknaden inom försvar- och säkerhetslösningar. De levererar produkter, tjänster och lösningar inom både militärt försvar och civil säkerhet. Saab Aeronautics tillverkar och utvecklar stridsflygplanet JAS 39 Gripen. Saab har en pågående affär med det brasilianska flygvapnet som inkluderar produktion och utveckling av totalt 36 stycken stridsflygplan av modellerna Gripen E och Gripen F. Planering kan ske på strategisk, taktisk eller operativ nivå. Om leveranstiden till kunden är lång är det vanligt att den strategiska och taktiska nivån slås samman, vilket också är fallet på Saab där nivåerna slagits samman och benämns som huvudplanering. Huvudplaneringen har som uppgift att ta fram ett huvudprogram för produktion av Gripen med en planeringshorisont på tio år. För att produktionen ska vara effektiv är det viktigt att huvudprogrammet är så bra utformat som möjligt, samt att det inkluderar alla avtalade teknikutbyten. I dagsläget har huvudplaneringen inget optimeringsverktyg som på ett systematiskt vis inkluderar de faktorer som bör tas hänsyn till vid framtagandet av ett huvudprogram. Syftet med examensarbetet är att utreda vad som krävs för att huvudplaneringen ska kunna ta hänsyn till fler faktorer vid framtagande av huvudprogram. En matematisk modell för Saab togs fram och därefter var planen att implementera den i Excel, eftersom huvudplaneringen använder denna programvara i dagsläget. Under arbetets gång upptäcktes det att Excel har begränsningar som gjorde att det inte var möjligt att implementera den matematiska modellen enligt den matematiska notationen. En avvägning om att endera fokusera på implementerbarhet eller teknisk noggrannhet gjordes och implementerbarhet valdes. Ett verktyg som inkluderar de krav som anges i den matematiska modellen skapades i Excel. För att verifiera den matematiska modellen implementerades den i optimeringsverktyget AMPL. Därefter gjordes en jämförelse mellan de olika verktygen för att visa på eventuella skillnader i resultatet som de genererade. Arbetet resulterade i en matematisk modell för Saab och ett verktyg i Excel. Modellen tar hänsyn till olika typer av teknikutbyte, att ledtiden är inom tillåtet tidsspann för varje aktivitet och att glapptider minimeras. Verktyg i Excel tar hänsyn till faktorerna som inkluderades i den matematiska modellen. För att målet ska uppnås krävs djupare utredning kring befintliga programvaror eller att investera i en ny programvara. / Saab is a global company within defense and security, and they deliver products, services and solutions within military defense and civil security. The business area Aeronautics develop and produce the aircraft system JAS 39 Gripen. Saab has a contract with the Brazilian air force which includes development and production of 36 aircraft systems. There are three different levels of planning, strategical, tactical and operational. It is common to merge the strategical and tactical level if the delivery time is long. The strategical and tactical level at Saab is one unit and they are called Master Planning. The main task for Master Planning is to create a master production schedule with a planning horizon of ten years. It is important that the master production schedule includes all technological transfers and that the schedule is as efficient as possible. They do not use any technological tool that systematically includes all factors that needs to be taken into account when creating a schedule. The aim with this master thesis is to investigate how more factors can be integrated when developing the master production schedule. A mathematical model for Saab was created. Then the plan was to implement the mathematical model in Excel, since the Master Planning use this tool currently. During the implementation it was discovered that Excel has limitations that makes it impossible to implement the mathematical model according to the mathematical notation. A tradeoff was made, to either focus on implementability or technological accuracy, and implementability was chosen. Then a tool was created in Excel, which includes the requirements from the mathematical model. To verify the mathematical model, it was implemented in the optimization tool AMPL. Then a comparison between Excel and AMPL was made, to be able to show possible differences. The result of the master thesis is a mathematical model for Saab and a tool in Excel. The mathematical model includes different types of technological transfer, lead time requirements and minimization of gap time. The tool in Excel includes the requirements which is specified in the mathematical model. To be able to achieve the goal, an investigation must be done to find out if Saab can use any existing software at the company or if they need to invest in a new type of software.

[pt] A importância das Compras organizacionais pode ser explicada, em parte, pelo alto impacto dos custos envolvidos. A estratégica das atividades de Compras vem se evidenciando nas organizações, independentemente do tamanho e da natureza do negócio. Essa importância fez surgir um estudo profundo das categorias de produtos e do mercado fornecedor, tendo como consequência, além da melhoria dos processos, a padronização dos itens de um mesmo produto para diversas unidades de um negócio; a seleção e qualificação de fornecedores; avaliação do desempenho dos prestadores de serviço e fornecedores de materiais; negociação entre as partes interessadas em uma contratação; e o monitoramento dos níveis de estoque para planejamento de futuras aquisições. Nessa dissertação, é abordada a gestão de categorias de compras a partir da análise crítica das categorias de compras de itens de tecnologia da informação e comunicação (TIC) em uma empresa de petróleo. Este estudo se torna relevante devido à importância do tema que gera desafios e oportunidades de formalizar, organizar e padronizar os processos de gestão de suprimentos na área de TIC da empresa. Para tanto, os itens da carteira de compras da área TIC foram classificados de acordo com a Matriz de Kraljic (1983), segundo a visão do pessoal da própria área de TIC e das áreas responsáveis pela gestão do macro processo suprir bens e serviços e gestão de contratos. Assim, foram identificados os fatores ao longo da cadeia de suprimentos que contribuem para a divergência da classificação entre as áreas. Desta forma, foi feita a validadação da análise nas dimensões: redução de custo da cadeia de suprimentos, melhoria do nível de serviço, redução do risco de descontinuidade de suprimento e priorização de materiais e produtos. Esta validação procurou verificar a aderência do modelo utilizado às premissas estabelecidas pela empresa. Como conclusão, são propostas alterações necessárias na classificação e recomendações em relação aos procedimentos e estratégias de compras a serem adotados pela área de TIC. / [en] The importance of organizational Purchases can be explained partly by the high impact of the costs involved. Strategic Purchasing of activities has been evident in organizations, regardless of size and nature of business. This importance made a deep study of the product categories and vendor market, resulting in addition of process improvement, standardization of items of the same product to different units of a business arise; the selection and qualification of suppliers; assess the performance of contractors and suppliers of materials; negotiation between the parties in a contract; and monitoring of inventory levels for planning future acquisitions. In this dissertation, we discuss management of categories of purchases from the critical analysis of the categories of purchases items of information and communication technology (ICT) in an oil company. This study is relevant because of the importance of the topic that generates challenges and opportunities to formalize, organize and standardize the processes of supply management in the ICT area of the company. To do so, the items of ICT area portfolio were classified according to Kraljic Matrix (1983), according to the vision of their own area of ICT staff and the areas responsible for managing the macro process supplying goods and services and management of contracts. Thus, the factors were identified along the supply chain that contributes to the divergence between the areas of classification. Thus, it was made validation analysis dimensions: cost reduction of supply, improving the level of service, reduces the risk of supply interruption and prioritization of materials and products chain. This validation tried to check adherence of the model used the premises established by the company. In conclusion, we propose necessary changes in classification and recommendations regarding procedures and sourcing strategies to be adopted by the ICT area.

O presente trabalho aborda o Problema de Coleta Domiciliar Urbana (PCDU) de resíduos sólidos, tratado no nível tático de planejamento, em que zonas de coleta são definidas para cada dia da semana e designadas aos veículos coletores, cuja frota deve ser dimensionada. O problema estudado é baseado em um caso real, o qual possui como particularidades: cada zona de coleta é formada por regiões adjacentes e será representada por um nó-semente; a demanda de cada zona deverá ser atendida dentro do período de uma semana, conforme múltiplos programas possíveis de coleta; em um turno de um dia de trabalho um veículo poderá realizar múltiplas viagens; e há uma garagem para a frota e uma estação de transbordo, a qual possibilita que o veículo seja esvaziado para realizar outras viagens. A literatura apresenta alguns métodos heurísticos para a resolução de variantes deste problema, sendo os métodos exatos utilizados somente na resolução de instâncias pequenas, dado que o problema de VRP (Vehicle Routing Problem) é classificado como NP-hard. A imposição de adjacência é uma característica particular, a qual é justificada pela possível melhoria na utilização dos veículos em posterior planejamento operacional. São propostos um modelo matemático e um método heurístico para resolver o problema, sobre os quais são realizados experimentos computacionais. O método heurístico é aplicado sobre um estudo de caso de um problema de escala real, sendo obtida solução heurística como resultado. / The present work addresses the Urban Household Solid Waste Problem (UHSWP) on a tactical planning level, wherein collection zones are assigned to every week daywork and collection vehicles, which fleet is to be sized. The studied problem is based on a real case, such peculiarities as: each collection zone is a set of adjacent areas and a seed node represents it; the demand each zone must attended within a week, according to the several possible collection schedule; on a work day shift a vehicle can be assigned to multiple trips; and there is a base depot for the fleet and a transfer station, where the vehicles are unloaded, restoring their load capacity for the next trips. Literature presents heuristic methods for the solving of its problem variants, in which exact methos are only applied to small instances, due to the VRP (Vehicle Routing Problem) NP-hard property. The adjacency imposition is a peculiar feature, which is justified by the potential improvement on vehicle usage considering a posterior operational planning. A mathematical model and a heuristic method are proposed for the problem solving and evaluated by computational experiments. A real scale problem case study is solved by the heuristic method and the results are presented.

La chaîne logistique humanitaire (CLH) est essentielle pour assurer une réponse performante aux crises humanitaires. Les Organisations Humanitaires (OH) ont fait des efforts pendant les dernières décennies afin d'améliorer la réponse à la crise en termes d'efficience et d’efficacité. Tout de même, la performance est mise à l’épreuve dû au manque de fonds, et à l'augmentation des besoins humanitaires, le delta ne cessant pas de s’accroître. Les principaux donateurs exigent de plus en plus de transparence et de justification des dépenses. De plus, la pression de l’opinion publique et de la communauté internationale amène les OH à prendre en compte les enjeux du développement durable dans un futur proche. C'est dans ce contexte, et avec des études au terrain, qu'on a pu constater les difficultés pour intégrer le développent durable dans la prise de décision de la CLH. Le manque d'outils d'aide à la décision ainsi qu’une culture du développement durable spécifique à la CLH sont identifiés comme des freins pour améliorer la planification durable des opérations humanitaires. Le travail de recherche cherche à introduire la notion de développement durable dans la gestion des réseaux logistiques humanitaires. L'approche retenue est le développement d'un système d'aide à la décision basé sur la performance pour planifier les opérations de la CLH. Dans ce sens, trois directions de recherche ont été explorées : (a) Comment recueillir une connaissance exhaustive de la CLH pour la recherche terrain ainsi que pour développer des Systèmes d'Aide à la Décision adéquats ? La contribution proposée est une méthodologie pour la recherche terrain qui s’appuie sur un Meta-Modèle de la CLH. (b) Qu'est-ce que la durabilité signifie dans le contexte de CLH ? En base à une revue littéraire ainsi qu’aux recherches terrain, on a établi un cadre pour définir la performance durable d'une CLH. (c) Comment prendre des décisions durables au cours de la réponse humanitaire ? Cette contribution est basée sur un algorithme de Recherche Opérationnelle qui permet d'intégrer la performance durable dans la prise de décision avec une approche interactive. La thèse illustre les trois contributions avec des études de cas basées sur la CLH de la IFRC. / The Humanitarian supply Chain is a key element to enhance a performing response to humanitarian crisis. Because of the internal and external pressure, Humanitarian Organizations (HO) has done efforts during last decades to improve the crisis response in terms of effectiveness and efficiency. However, the performance is challenged by the increasing gap between funding and needs. The main donors ask for more transparency and accountability. Moreover, the pressure from the international community is pushing HO to integrate Sustainability challenges on a near future. Is in this context, and field research results, that the difficulties to consider sustainability on HSC decision-making. The lack of Decision Support Systems and a sustainability culture specific to the HSC have been identified as break to improve the planning of sustainable humanitarian operations. This research work seeks to introduce the sustainability notion to the management of the HSC. The approach followed is the development of a decision support system based on performance, to plan the HSC operations. Three research directions have been explored: (a) How to gather an exhaustive knowledge of a HSC, for both field research and development of DSS? The proposed contribution is a Meta-Model of the HSC, for field research porpoise and for developing adequate Decision Support Systems. (b) What sustainability means in HSC context? Based on a literature review and field research, a framework is established to define the HSC sustainable performance. (c) How to make sustainable decisions during humanitarian response? This contribution is based on an Operational Research Algorithm, which permits to integrate the sustainable performance on decision making with an interactive approach. The thesis illustrates the three contributions with use cases based on the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC).

[pt] As atividades que envolvem problemas muito complexos e imprevisíveis continuam se baseando em tomada de decisão por humanos e ferramentas manuais como formulários. Este ainda é o caso para tomada de decisão no planejamento tático em um grane incidente, onde o conhecimento coletivo de especialistas em múltiplas especialidades é essencial para tomada de decisões urgentes e efetivas. Especialistas tendem a rejeitar ferramentas que comprometem a agilidade de decisão exigida, uma vez que elas podem colocar vidas humanas sob risco e causar grandes danos ao meio ambiente e propriedades. Comunicação e gestão são desafios, considerando que cada especialista possui sua própria linguagem especializada. Esta tese propõe um modelo de planejamento que mantém as decisões com os especialistas e permite que eles utilizem suas próprias expressões para planejamento tático, mas faz o rastreamento do contexto de cada expressão, faz o controle da autoridade sobre cada expressão, e armazena as expressões para permitir seu reuso. Essas funcionalidades foram implementadas numa ferramenta Web que visa dar maior poder aos especialistas tomadores de decisão, procurando preservar os atributos dos formulários em papel. A ferramenta Web foi avaliada em cenários de emergência na indústria de óleo e gás, e os resultados das avaliações da ferramenta indicaram que a abordagem do modelo viabiliza importantes melhorias em termos de comunicação e gestão do planejamento tático neste contexto. / [en] Activities that involve very complex and unpredictable problems are still relying on human decision-making and manual tools like paper forms. This is still the case for decision-making within tactical planning in a major incident, where the collective knowledge of multi-expertise specialists is essential to make urgent and effective decisions. Specialists tend to reject tools that jeopardize the decision agility required, as it can put human lives at risk and cause major damages to the environment and property. Communications and management are challenges, as these specialists have each their own expert language. This thesis proposes a planning model that keeps decisions with specialists and allows them to use their own expressions for tactical planning, but incorporates expressions context traceability, authority control over these expressions, and expressions storage for reuse. These features were implemented in a Web tool that aims at empowering decision-making specialists, but tries to preserve the attributes of paper forms. The Web tool was evaluated in oil and gas industry emergency scenarios, and evaluation results indicated that the model s approach enables important improvements in tactical planning communications and management within this context.