Business Commons^™

Fedex Ground Strategic Audit, Samantha Gates

Honors Theses

FedEx Ground is an operating segment of the parcel carrier giant FedEx Inc. The company, known for shipping products via delivery truck, has remained one of the largest parcel carriers in the country, despite drastic changes in its environment. This report seeks to understand the changing operating environment of FedEx Ground, its competitive advantages, and the future challenges it may face. The analysis uses PESTEL and Porter's Five Forces analyses to evaluate the changing external environment and industry FedEx Ground operates in. Additionally, challenges and recommendations are offered to navigate the future of this company.

Optimal Channel Strategy Of Luxury Brands In The Presence Of Online Marketplace And Copycats, Sarah Yini Gao, Wei Shi Lim, Ziqiu Ye

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The strategic interaction between authentic luxury brands and their copycats has evolved since the proliferation of online marketplaces. Using a game-theoretic framework, we examine how an authentic luxury brand, observing the strategic behavior of its competing copycats, should make its optimal entry decision to a third-party online marketplace. Our findings reveal that the authentic luxury brand does not sell on the online marketplace when either the quality or the physical resemblance of the copycat to the authentic luxury brand is high. This contributes to the related literature by offering an explanation for the increasing quality of copycats amid the e-commerce …

Pickup And Multi-Delivery Problem With Time Windows, Pham Tuan Anh, Aldy Gunawan, Vincent F. Yu, Tuan C. Chau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper addresses a new variant of Pickup and Delivery Problem with Time Windows (PDPTW) for enhancing customer satisfaction. In particular, a huge number of requests is served in the system, where each request includes a pickup node and several delivery nodes instead of a pair of pickup and delivery nodes. It is named Pickup and Multi-Delivery Problem with Time Windows (PMDPTW). A mixed-integer programming model is formulated with the objective of minimizing total travel costs. Computational experiments are conducted to test the correctness of the model with a newly generated benchmark based on the PDPTW benchmark instances. Results show …

Can Big Data Cure Risk Selection In Healthcare Capitation Program? A Game Theoretical Analysis, Zhaowei She, Turgay Ayer, Daniel Montanera

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Problem definition: This paper analyzes a market design problem in Medicare Advantage (MA), the largest risk-adjusted capitation payment program in the U.S. healthcare market. Evidence exists that the current MA capitation payment program unintentionally incentivizes health plans to cherry pick profitable patient types, which is referred to as “risk selection”. However, the root causes of the risk selection are not comprehensively understood, which we study in this paper. Academic / Practical Relevance: The existing literature primarily attributes the observed risk selection in MA market to data limitations and low explanatory power (e.g. low R2) of the current risk adjustment design. …

Factors Impacting Sme Business Resilience Post-Covid-19, Kerry Brown, Ferry Jie, Thi Le, Jalleh Sharafizad, Fleur Sharafizad, Subhadarsini Parida

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

The ability of an organization to respond to a crisis with agility is vital for business leaders to maintain business continuity. Our paper examined how business owners responded to the challenges caused by the pandemic. Using online surveys for data collection, we investigated a critical agility issue of supply chain risks through understanding the interrelationship of various business capability factors. Partial least squares path modeling (PLS-PM) was applied to a sample of 220 participants who were owners of micro, small, and medium businesses in Western Australia. The findings showed that the businesses’ efficiency, financial strength, and flexibility in sourcing affected …

Portwest’S Future Strategy: Fashionising Workwear – Threading The Needle, Fiachra Coll, Damian O'Reilly

Case Studies

Portwest- should they further pursue the leisurewear / workwear market or should they focus on expanding the current range?

Portwest is a global manufacturer and innovator of workwear, safetywear and Personal protective equipment (PPE) and one of the fastest growing workwear companies in the world. Recently, the company launched an “Inspired Workwear” collection targeting the leisurewear/workwear market. It is a departure from their traditional markets where their acquisition strategy has seen Portwest rapidly gain market share. Management are concerned that this new departure may take resources from the core business of Workwear and dilute key resources.

Exspectare: A Digital String, Arjen Van Klink Dr, Johan Reijenga

Case Studies

The pandemic and labour market shortages in the Dutch healthcare sector have demanded much attention from managers. In many ways the situation has resulted in enormous challenges and dilemmas for everyone working in the healthcare sector, whether as a carer or board member. Healthcare institutions deal with regulations, complicated financial accountability, and social issues. It is not always easy to get recognition for how much the sector serves society. Henk is almost 59 years old and has been working with heart and soul in the sector for Nursing and Care Homes & Homecare (VVT) for decades. The last six years …

Florensis: More Catholic Than The Pope?, Gerard Van Der Star, Arjen Van Klink, Florensis

Case Studies

The beauty of a family business is that it always keeps an eye on the continuity of the business. For a family business nothing is more important than long-term continuity and harmony. A good balance between family and business interests is essential24. In any case, the focus is on the long term25. How can Florensis ensure that the fifth and sixth generations and the numerous employees can still enjoy the benefits of this beautiful company. The Calvinist and Christian roots of Florensis ensured from the outset that the human factor was central and key. Without this people orientation quality production …

Made In Singapore, Pao-Li Chang, Tran Bao Phuong Nguyen

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper, we characterize the position of Singapore in global value chains and identify Singapore’s key upstream and downstream trade partners. We trace how the position of Singapore in global value chains has changed in the past two decades: whether it has moved upstream or downstream, how involved it is in global value chains, how its trend compares with the other major Asian exporters (China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong), and which key sectors of Singapore play a major role in these global trade networks.

Field Experiments In Operations Management, Yang Gao, Meng Li, Shujing Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

While the field experiment is a powerful and well-established method to investigate causal relationships, operations management (OM) has embraced this methodology only in recent years. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the existing OM literature leveraging field experiments and serves as a one-stop guide for future application of field experiments in the OM area. We start by recapping the characteristics that distinguish field experiments from other common types of experiments and organizing the relevant OM studies by topic. Corresponding to the commonly overlooked issues in field experiment-based OM studies, we then provide a detailed roadmap, ranging from experimental design …

Riding Off Into The Sunset: Dual-Class Structure In The Age Of Unicorns Going Public, Hao Liang, Junho Park, Wei Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The increasing adoption of dual-class shares (DCS)—an ownership structure that gives corporate insiders greater voting power than other shareholders—among newly listed companies has raisedsignificant governance concerns. We investigate the decision to adopt the DCS structure and itsvalue implications in the recent U.S. IPOs. Using founder cultural traits and Silicon Valley lawfirms as instrumental variables, we find significant post-IPO outperformance by firms adopting DCSwith a sunset clause, especially incapacity-based sunset which stipulates that the DCS will ceaseafter founders’ death, incapacitation or departure, compared to non-DCS firms and DCS firms without sunsets. This outperformance is more pronounced for high-tech firms, after Google’s …

An Evaluation Of Ireland’S Sustainable Freight Transport Policy, Xu Zhang, Eoin Plant, Nikolaos Valantasis Kanellos

Articles

Background: The Irish government has put forth sustainable transport policy measures, yet the emphasis is mainly on the active travel and sustainable mobility for passenger transport. Contrariwise, freight transport has not received equal consideration in policy measures, regulatory frameworks, and support schemes towards the low-carbon transition. This study seeks to address this imbalance. Methods: The paper proposes an adaptation of the ASI framework for freight transport and assesses the applicability of a number of international sustainable transport measures based on their potential sustainability impact if adopted in Ireland. The research applied a Policy Delphi Method to a heterogeneous …

Smart Charging Of Electric Vehicle: An Innovative Business Model For Utility Firms, Owen Wu, Safak Yucel, Yangfang (Helen) Zhou

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Problem Definition: By providing an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional vehicles, electric vehicles will transform urban mobility, particularly in smart cities. In practice, once an electric vehicle is plugged in, the charging station completes charging as soon as possible. Given that the procurement cost of electricity and associated emissions vary significantly during a day, substantial savings can be achieved by smart charging—delaying charging until the cost is lower. In this paper, we study smart charging as an innovative business model for utility firms. Practical Relevance: Utility firms are already investing in charging stations and they can achieve significant cost savings …

Choice-Based Crowdshipping: A Dynamic Task Display Problem, Alp Arslan, Firat Kilci, Shih-Fen Cheng, Archan Misra

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper studies the integration of the crowd workforce into a generic last-mile delivery setting in which a set of known delivery requests should be fulfilled at a minimum cost. In this setting, the crowd drivers are able to choose to perform a parcel delivery among the available and displayed requests. We specifically investigate the question: what tasks should be displayed to an individual driver, so as to minimize the overall delivery expenses? In contrast to past approaches, where drivers are either (a) given the choice of a single task chosen so as to optimize the platform’s profit, or (b) …

Risk-Aware Procurement Optimization In A Global Technology Supply Chain, Jonathan Chase, Jingfeng Yang, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Supply chain disruption, from ‘Black Swan’ events like the COVID-19 pandemic or the Russian invasion of Ukraine, to more ordinary issues such as labour disputes and adverse weather conditions, can result in delays, missed orders, and financial loss for companies that deliver products globally. Developing a risk-tolerant procurement strategy that anticipates the logistical problems incurred by disruption involves both accurate quantification of risk and cost-effective decision-making. We develop a supplier-focused risk evaluation metric that constrains a procurement optimization model for a global technology company. Our solution offers practical risk tolerance and cost-effectiveness, accounting for a range of constraints that realistically …

Improving Australia’S Containerised Grain Exports, Ross Kingwell, Scott Mckay, Peter White Dr

Research Reports

This report provides an overview of Australia’s containerised grain export supply chains and compares them to Australia’s bulk grain supply chains. The report outlines the main broad ways in which Australia’s containerised grain supply chains can be improved by investment, policy or regulatory change and education.

Western Australia's Bulk And Containerised Grain Exports In A National Context, Ross Kingwell, Dipesh Maharjan

Research Reports

This report describes containerised and bulk grain exports from Western Australia and all other main grain-producing Australian states. The types of grain, their export volumes and destinations, since 2011-12 until 2021-22 are described.

Pricing And Quality Strategies For An On-Demand Housekeeping Platform With Customer-Intensive Services, Jianjun Yu, Yanli Fang, Yuanguang Zhong, Xiong Zhang, Ruijie Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In this paper, we study an on-demand housekeeping platform in which suppliers have hetero-geneous opportunity costs, and customers are sensitive to service quality, price, and waitingtime. The platform charges fees from customers and divides revenue with service suppliers ina certain proportion. We analyze two types of market coverage, namely full market coverageand partial market coverage. We find that as the potential demand market capacity expands,the platform will choose to lower prices to attract more customers and service suppliers until itreaches the partial market, thereby obtaining higher revenue, and suppliers will provide lowerquality services to serve more customers and thus obtain …

Joint Chance-Constrained Staffing Optimization In Multi-Skill Call Centers, Tien Thanh Dam, Thuy Anh Ta, Tien Mai

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper concerns the staffing optimization problem in multi-skill call centers. The objective is to find a minimal cost staffing solution while meeting a target level for the quality of service (QoS) to customers. We consider a staffing problem in which joint chance constraints are imposed on the QoS of the day. Our joint chance-constrained formulation is more rational capturing the correlation between different call types, as compared to separate chance-constrained versions considered in previous studies. We show that, in general, the probability functions in the joint-chance constraints display S-shaped curves, and the optimal solutions should belong to the concave …

Capturing Sustainability Goals In City Logistics: A Delphi Approach To Develop Sustainability Indicators, Xu Zhang, Eoin Plant, Nikolaos Valantasis Kanellos

Conference Papers

Purpose of this paper: ‘Sustainability’ as a phenomenon is difficult to define and sense (Meadows,1998). Sustainable city logistics is a concept with many subjective interpretations by different actors in the urban freight transport ecosystem (Behrends et al., 2008). Developing useful metrics to measure sustainability performance and impact in city logistics is challenging as there are many uncertainties and multiple stakeholders’ interests to consider. Selecting the indicators is also a complicated task because of the numerous variables used in literature and the variety of KPIs reported by logistics companies in their sustainability reports.

Extant research studies have proposed different frameworks …

Determinants For The Uptake Of Alternatively Fuelled Hgvs: Towards A Maturity Framework, Nikolaos Valantasis Kanellos, Xu Zhang

Conference Papers

Purpose of this paper: Alternatively fuelled vehicles (AFVs) have received increasing attention from policy makers and industry practitioners because they are perceived as a silver bullet for decarbonising freight transport (Mohammed et al., 2020; ITF 2021). However, the uptake rate of AFVs by heavy goods vehicle (HGV) freight operators in Europe remains low. With 97.8% of all trucks in the EU running on diesel, only 0.04% of trucks are zero-emission vehicles (ACEA, 2021). Price, technology maturity, infrastructure, and government policy support are factors examined by freight transport operators who consider the switch to AFVs as a low-carbon option (Mohammed et …

Electrical Equipment Industry Cluster, Pragati Gautam

2022 REYES Proceedings

The growing collaboration between two or more industries in a specific region in which they work in a symbiotic relationship, providing benefits to each other and contributing in the overall development of the region, is what is popularly known as business clusters. Even though this concept is commonly known and implemented in the West, South Asian economies are unfamiliar with the advantages of this unique business strategy. There are, undeniably, many potential business clusters in these developing countries, which if tapped efficiently, could result into an industrial boom.

This research focuses on investigating the existence of a business cluster in …

Economic And Environmental Implications Of Biomass Commercialization In Agricultural Processing, Bin Li, Onur Boyabatli, Buket Avci

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Motivated by the agricultural industries, this paper studies the economic and environmental implications of biomass commercialization; that is, converting organic waste into a saleable product, from the perspective of a processor that uses a commodity input to produce both a commodity output and biomass. We characterize the economic value of biomass commercializa- tion and examine how input and output spot price uncertainties affect this value. Using a model calibration, we find that lower input spot price variability or higher output spot price variabil- ity or correlation between the two spot prices increases this value for a typical palm oil mill. …

Transportation Service Level Impact On Aircraft Availability, Vincent Mclean, Adam D. Reiman

Faculty Publications

Purpose — Aircraft fail to meet mission capable rate goals due to a lack of supply of aircraft parts in inventory where the aircraft breaks. This triggers an order at the repair location. To maximize mission capable rate, the time from order to delivery needs to be minimized. The purpose of this research is to examine the case of three airfields for the order to delivery time of mission critical aircraft parts for a specific aircraft type. Design/methodology/approach — This research captured data from three information systems to assess the order fulfillment process. The data were analyzed to determine the …

Supply Chain Resilience: How Autonomous Rovers Empirically Provide Relief To Constrained Flight Line Maintenance Activities, Mary A. Stanton, Jason Anderson, John M. Dickens, Lance Champagne

Faculty Publications

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to explore the utility of autonomous transport across two independent airframe maintenance operations at a single location. Design/methodology/approach – This study leveraged discrete event simulation that encompassed real-world conditions on a United States Air Force flight line. Though the Theory of Constraints (TOC) lens, a high-demand, human-controlled delivery asset is analyzed and the impact of introducing an autonomous rover delivery vehicle is assessed. The authors’ simulations explored varying numbers and networks of rovers as alternative sources of delivery and evaluated these resources’ impact against current flight line operations. Findings – This research …

Endogeneity Of Commodity Price In Freight Cost Models, Kian Guan Lim

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In this paper, we answer a novel question on how the value of goods carried can affect the freight cost. We focus on the issue based on a more specialized freight market involving transport of seaborne iron ore from mining ports to Qingdao in China during the period 2014 to 2019. We construct simultaneous systems of demand–supply equations on both the iron ore market and the freight market. In the models, we explain how endogeneity of iron ore as a regressor can arise due to the nexus between the two markets, and that the freight demand is largely a derived …

The Imbalance Of Food And Biofuel Markets Amid Ukraine-Russia Crisis: A Systems Thinking Perspective, Zahra Shams Esfandabadi, Meisam Ranjbari, Simone Domenico Scagnelli

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

The Ukraine war has immensely affected both food and energy systems due to the significant role of Russia in supplying natural gas and fertilizers globally and the extensive contribution of both Russia and Ukraine in exporting grains and oilseeds to the international markets. Hence, the Ukraine-Russia conflict has resulted in a shortage of crops and grains in the food market, especially in Europe, causing speculations if these resources should still be used for biofuel production (1st Generation). However, the International Energy Agency has warned that lowering biofuel mandates could result in rising petroleum demand and supply concerns. In light of …

Northern Sea Route As An Emerging Option For Global Transport Networks: A Policy Perspective, Stavros Karamperidis, Nikolaos Valantasis Kanellos

Articles

The Northern Sea Route (NSR) is an emerging alternative route to the Suez Canal; however, inconclusive research exists on its benefits and viability. This paper uses a two-stage Delphi approach to collect qualitative data from experts, on what actions Nordic countries[1] can undertake to prepare themselves to enter NSR and capture potential benefits deriving from trading in global transport networks. By conceptually developing a framework based on First Movers Advantage (FMA) and Dynamic Capabilities Theory (DCT), this paper empirically identifies a path to develop capabilities that could allow stakeholders to reduce logistics costs through collaborations in NSR. Our paper …

Smart Supply Chain Management In Industry 4.0, Guoqing Zhang, Yiqin Yang, Guoqing Yang

Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering Publications

The emerging information and communication technologies (ICT) related to Industry 4.0 play a critical role to enhance supply chain performance. Employing the smart technologies has led to so-called smart supply chains. Understanding how Industry 4.0 and related ICT affect smart supply chains and how smart supply chains evolve with the support of the advanced technologies are vital to practical and academic communities. Existing review works on smart supply chains with ICT mainly rely on the academic literature alone. This paper presents an integrated approach to explore the effects of Industry 4.0 and related ICT on smart supply chains, by combining …

Understanding Transparency In Supply Chains, Lucy N. Buck

Haslam Scholars Projects

The purpose of this thesis paper is to examine what standards should be used for supply chain product transparency across industries to satisfy the needs of external stakeholders, specifically Gen Z consumers. Sustainability is becoming increasingly important in supply chain management with growing stakeholder pressure, strict government regulations, and scarcity of resources. A scenario-based role-playing experiment is conducted using descriptive vignettes to measure Gen Z consumer reactions to the following factors: timing of transparency, type of product, and type of sustainability.

Online survey methods are used involving 33 students in one of the Honors and Scholars Programs at the University …