Operations and Supply Chain Management Commons^™

Smart Meetings, Morgan Forster, Arthur Durity, Cathy Cole

Operations Transformation

A one year look at how the CHA executive team focused on opportunities to have fewer yet more productive meetings! In this presentation we will discuss the details that help shape improvement around the challenge of too many meetings and share the results from lessons learned at PBMC and Waldo.

Thinking About Cement, Luke Weinbaum

Sustainable Supply Chain Management

A discussion and analysis of contemporary cement production, environmental impact and industry innovations.

Reducing Carbon Emissions In Supply Chain Transportation, Khalid Bin. Essa

Sustainable Supply Chain Management

This chapter explores strategies to reduce carbon emissions in supply chain transportation, a sector responsible for nearly one-quarter of global energy-related CO₂ emissions. It begins by analyzing the environmental impact of major transport modes trucks, planes, and ships and identifies operational challenges like inefficient fleets, outdated infrastructure, and time-sensitive delivery pressures.

The chapter presents practical solutions including the adoption of electric and hybrid vehicles, use of route optimization software, intermodal transport methods, and energy-efficient warehouse operations. Each approach is supported by real-world case studies from Maersk, UPS, and Walmart, illustrating how industry leaders are improving both sustainability and logistics performance. …

Sentinel Surveillance Of Sars-Cov-2 Rates And Equity Impacts Using Labor And Delivery Patients In Phoenix, Arizona, Caitlyn J. Linehan, Trisalyn Nelson, Celeste V. Bailey, Esma Gel, Dean V. Coonrod, Cheryl K. Roth

Department of Supply Chain Management and Analytics: Faculty Publications

Proactive management of SARS-CoV-2 requires timely and complete population data to track the evolution of the virus and identify at risk populations. However, many cases are asymptomatic and are not easily discovered through traditional testing efforts. Sentinel surveillance can be used to estimate the prevalence of infections for geographical areas but requires identification of sentinels who are representative of the larger population. Our goal is to evaluate applicability of a population of labor and delivery patients for sentinel surveillance system for monitoring the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection. We tested 5307 labor and delivery patients from two hospitals in Phoenix, Arizona, …

Bursting At The Seams: An Examination Of The Enrollment Changes At The University Of Mississippi, Carrol Trent Imbler

Honors Theses

Enrollment at the University of Mississippi is at an all-time high. As one of the smallest public universities within the Southeastern Conference (SEC), Ole Miss has faced many changes within the past few years because of its growing population. This research answers the question: “How are offices and departments on campus managing their efforts to accommodate an increased number of students?” Through interviews with faculty, staff, and students on campus, I identified multiple departments who had to adjust their usual practices. These include housing, parking and transportation, advising offices within each school, admissions, and other student services. All these factors …

Preferences, Risk Neutrality And Risk-Sensitive Mdps, James Alexander, Matthew J. Sobel

Faculty Scholarship

A binary preference relation on a real vector space satisfying four (natural) axioms is shown to induce a utility function composed of a linear function to the reals and a weakly monotonic function. The key axiom is decomposition, and the utility function can be taken to be linear if and only if this axiom’s converse is also satisfied. Important consequences follow for risk-sensitive discounted Markov decision processes, decision trees, and the discounted utility model in economics. Since the four axioms imply that preferences correspond to discounting, the four axioms without the converse imply that preferences are consistent with discounting without …

Navigating Towards Sustainability: Tackling Eu Transportation Carbon Emissions, Michael Andre Barajas

Sustainable Supply Chain Management

Mobility plays an essential role in our daily lives, yet the consequences of transportation are often overlooked or misunderstood. Most people take transportation for granted, not considering the opportunity cost of our easy accessibility, namely carbon emissions. These emissions cause significant environmental damage, threatening the ability of future generations to enjoy what we have now unless we reduce and stop them.

The European Union has been a leader in sustainability over the past decade, expressing concerns about carbon emissions and exploring various ways to address the issue. To understand the EU's future plans, it is crucial to grasp the scale …

Cloud Server's Impact: The Environment And Supply Chain, Jeremy Silvis

Sustainable Supply Chain Management

In our data-driven society, the exponential growth of data generation presents both opportunities and challenges. Each day, 328.77 million terabytes of data are produced, necessitating vast storage solutions. Traditional data storage methods, such as HDDs and SSDs, have given way to the revolutionary Cloud, which offers scalable and accessible storage options. However, the environmental impact of Cloud servers, characterized by significant energy and water consumption, raises concerns. This chapter examines the evolution of data storage, the environmental ramifications of Cloud servers, and the sustainability efforts of Cloud companies. The chapter also explores the transformative effects of the Cloud on global …

Identifying High-Value Tactical Livestock Decisions On A Mixed Enterprise Farm In A Variable Environment, Michael Young, John Young, Ross S. Kingwell, Philip E. Vercoe

Animal production and livestock research articles

Context

Australia is renowned for its climate variation, featuring years with drought and years with floods, which result in significant production and profit variability. Accordingly, to maximise profitability, dryland farming systems need to be dynamically managed in response to unfolding weather conditions.

Aims

The aim of this study is to identify and quantify optimal tactical livestock management for different weather-years.

Methods

This study employed a whole-farm optimisation model to analyse a representative mixed enterprise farm located in the Great Southern region of Western Australia. Using this model, we investigated the economic significance of five key livestock management tactics. These included …

Effects Of Climate Change On The Agricultural Supply Chain In The American Northeast, Brian Villanueva

Honors Projects in Global Supply Chain Management

The purpose of this project is to investigate the effects that climate change will have on the agricultural supply chain in the Northeast United States. The goal is to provide risk mitigation methods to farmers and supply chain professionals for how to combat the rapidly changing environmental status quo. This was investigated by surveying 21 farmers about their opinions about the current state of farming and their optimism or pessimism on the future of farming. The findings reflected a great concern for the future of farming despite many alarming signals about the increasing intensity of storms. The conclusion was that …

Supply Chain Management Internship Thesis – The Mercery, Katherine Chamberlin

Supply Chain Management Undergraduate Honors Theses

The main purpose of this thesis is to evaluate my internship with The Mercery, enabled by the Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation’s VIP Internship program. This provides background information on both the company and the program, along with the different projects and skills I worked on throughout this semester-long internship. This is accompanied by a self-assessment and learning objectives, implications for the company, and the main project results. Finally, this concludes with the summation of all my learnings and growth, and an assessment of the experience.

Supply Chain Management Internship – Tyson Foods Inc., Burke Hoover

Supply Chain Management Undergraduate Honors Theses

In my thesis I reflect upon my internship at Tyson Foods Inc., where I served as a Transportation Strategy Intern in the Supply Chain department. My role centered on logistics strategy, transportation management, and third-party logistics provider relationships. Through projects like the Request for Proposal (RFP) implementation and the development of carrier and lane scorecards, I learned about the complexities of supply chain management. This experience also highlighted the critical role of communication, soft skills, and technical competence in the industry. This internship provided me with hands-on experience, allowed me to apply academic knowledge, and helped me realize my strengths …

Design Of Off-Grid Lighting Business Models To Serve The Poor: Field Experiments And Structural Analysis, Bhavani Shanker Uppari, Serguei Netessine, Ioana Popescu, Rowan P. Clarke

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

A significant proportion of the world’s population has no access to grid-based electricity and so relies on off-grid lighting solutions. Rechargeable lamp technology is gaining popularity as an alternative off-grid lighting model in developing countries. In this paper, we explore consumer behavior and the operational inefficiencies that result under this model. Specifically, we are interested in (i) measuring the impact of inconvenience (of travelling to recharge the lamp) along with the impact of liquidity constraints (due to poverty) on lamp usage, and (ii) evaluating the efficacy of strategies that address these factors. We build a structural model of consumers’ recharge …

Spatiotemporal Negative Inventory Outlier Decomposition For Supply Chain Applications In Consumer-Packaged Goods (Cpg), Hayden Mcdonald

Data Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

Coca-Cola is a popular soft drink brand with sales occurring in every Walmart store across the world, which generates large quantities of data and requires a robust supply chain system. However, the company does not currently have a sophisticated, automated, and/or prescriptive system for detecting where, when, and why inventory outages occur and applying preventative measures to avoid loss of revenue from the absence of inventory on store shelves. This thesis proposes and applies a novel, prescriptive system for this purpose. An inventory outage can be seen as a ‘negative’ statistical outlier in a time series of inventory for an …

The Importance Of Data Preparation In A Data Science Problem, Sophia Beard

Data Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

This study is going to be based on an inventory outlier automation data science problem that is being solved to identify and prescribe inventory level outliers to help keep shelves stocked in terms of beverages. The objective of this paper will address why it is so important to understand the data that is involved in a particular data science problem and how planning ahead ensures a successful outcome in the data science world. In this data science project, Spatiotemporal Outlier Analysis for Inventory Intervention Automation, it was crucial for the team to understand, research, and visualize the data we were …

Innovative Rate Design As A Free Market Solution To Climate, Resiliency, And Economic Challenges, Brendan J. Moore

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

A century-old problem of electricity rate design is cost-shifting between ratepayers (Wellinghoff, J. & Tong, J., 2015). A much newer cost-shifting example of great and increasing importance happens whenever ratepayer generated “renewable energy” is sold to the grid—all too often, this is accused of being unfairly rewarded (Ritchie, 2016). ProRate resolves both these concerns and ProRate can actually be derived simply from the premise of avoiding “all” cost shifts between ratepayers (Katz, CLEPm Rewards to Arrest Demand Cost-Shifting, 2019; Katz, CLEP5 Rewards to Arrest Energy Cost-Shifting, 2019). Another major problem with the Old Utility Model is the lack of price …

Examining The Impact Of Customer Rfp Characteristics On Award Compliance, Laasya Ravipati

Data Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

In the context of intermodal transportation, understanding the dynamics of award compliance holds significant importance for operational efficiency and strategic decision-making. Award compliance refers to the percentage of awarded freight volume that is realized, indicating the extent to which contractual agreements are fulfilled. This analysis delves into the intricate relationship between customer characteristics and award compliance, aiming to provide valuable insights into the variability and predictability of compliance rates. By analyzing Request for Pricing (RFP) data and primary awarded freight volumes, the study seeks to address the need for more accurate volume estimations, crucial for sales planning, revenue projections, and …

Examining Award Compliance To Inform Resource Allocation, Jacob Haarala

Data Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

This project focuses on JB Hunt Transport Inc's intermodal business unit (JBI) by focusing on the challenges associated with Published Pricing and Contractual Pricing. The primary issue revolves around the variance between the awarded freight volumes in Requests for Pricing (RFPs) and the actual volumes realized when the freight is shipped. This discrepancy poses challenges for effective sales planning, revenue goals, and optimal freight network management within JBI. Reporting tools, such as PowerBI, are currently used by JBI to provide insights into award compliance on a weekly basis. However, our goal with this project was to provide a deeper understanding …

Lockheed Martin Strategic Audit, Trevor Deboer, Gunnar Lombard, Sam Nelson, Tj Taylor, Paul Wynegar

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Abstract

This case study explores Lockheed Martin, a global leader in defense contracting. Our team performed a strategic audit using the theories of strategic management. Our research was pulled from various sources, including Lockheed Martin’s website, SEC filings, related news articles, and relevant industry analysis. The goals of this case study revolved around collecting data and performing analysis to evaluate Lockheed Martin’s potential for competitive advantage in the airplane and parts manufacturing industry.

Some of the various analyses performed on Lockheed Martin include firm analysis, industry analysis, internal analysis, external analysis, competitive dynamics, business-level strategy, corporate-level strategy, and exploring their …

Impact Of Seasonality On Demand Forecasting Techniques For Small-Scale Food Retailers, Indu Sree Guturu

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This study explores the impact of seasonality on SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) demand forecasting in small-scale food retailers through the analysis of historical sales data, focusing on four key products, labelled: Product A, Product B, Product C & Product D. The research aims to assess the accuracy of different forecasting models in capturing seasonal fluctuations. The research questions are: (Q1) What is the impact of seasonality on SKU demand forecasting in case of small-scale food retailers. (Q2) How does the efficacy of Traditional model compare to alternative technologically driven forecasting techniques? (Q3) To what extent can the impact of seasonality …