Operations and Supply Chain Management Commons^™

Research On A Suitable Upstream Traceability Model For The Natural Rubber Supply Chain In Thailand, Specifically For Rib-Smoke-Sheet (Rss), Beh Kok Fong

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Traceability is the first step to gain visibility in the supply chain and can be used to meet different purposes. Similar to other agriculture crops, the natural rubber industry faces reputational damage due to deforestation, land grab, loss of biodiversity and non-compliance with environmental standards occurring in the upstream. The introduction of new social and environmental regulations accelerates the need for traceability. Reflecting on the importance of environmental and social considerations, this industry is looking at traceability to identify the historical trends leading to the present sustainability state and any ongoing sustainability risks in the upstream to enable downstream users …

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 …

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 …

The Impact Of Innovation On The Performance Of Chinese Listed Companies, Shaoying Luo

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Company innovation has significant consequences for the macroeconomic development of the nation as well as serving as a guide for the creation of innovation strategies at the micro level of enterprises. But because the mechanism linking R&D inputs to firm success has not been completely explored, findings for various samples and sample intervals have varied greatly. Therefore, using the data of listed companies in China from 2009 to 2017 as the research sample, this paper introduces mediating and moderating variables to empirically analyze the mediating effect of innovation output in the correlation between R&D input and firm performance and the …

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 …

Dynamic Stochastic Matching Under Limited Time, Aouad Ali, Omer Saritac

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In centralized matching markets such as carpooling platforms and kidney exchange schemes, new participants constantly enter the market and remain available for potential matches during a limited period of time. To reach an efficient allocation, the "timing"of the matching decisions is a critical aspect of the platform's operations. There is a fundamental tradeoff between increasing market thickness and mitigating the risk that participants abandon the market. Nonetheless, the dynamic properties of matching markets have been mostly overlooked in the algorithmic literature. In this paper, we introduce a general dynamic matching model over edge-weighted graphs, where the agents' arrivals and abandonments …

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 …

Building A Supply Chain For Emergency: A Case Study Of Kingfa's Mask Supply Chain, Nanjing Li

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In case of emergency such as pandemic or earthquake, there are usually surge demands for some necessary products, which are usually far more than available production capacities thus it is necessary to quickly build more production capacities. However, building production capacities is not just building production lines but to constructing whole supply chains, from raw materials and equipment sourcing, manufacturing flow lines to demand management.

To quickly construct a supply chain for fulfilling such emergency demands is very challenging both theoretically and practically. This thesis aims to develop a model of supply chain construction for emergency demand and identify the …

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 …

Seachi 2022 Symposium: Bringing Equality, Justice, And Access To Hci And Ux Agenda In Southeast Asia Region, Eunice Sari, Masitah Ghazali, Adi B. Tedjasaputra, Yohannes Kurniawan, Thippaya Chintakovid, Siranee Nuchitprasitchai, Ellya Zulaikha, Noris Binti Mohd Norowi, Tamas Makany

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Southeast Asia that consists of eleven countries, has been proud of its way of life and rich culture and is generally happy to maintain its long comforting tradition. However, the region cannot deny that its diverse population and strategic location have become a center of attention for global players to invest in the region. With the emergence of Industry 4.0, digital transformation has become mandatory for any organizations or nations in Southeast Asia to consider. Through SEACHI (Southeast Asian CHI) Symposium, we aim to grow awareness in HCI and UX to improve the design and development of technology for a …

Predicting Success And Failure Factors Of Thai Start-Ups: An Empirical Study Of Start-Up Success And Its Determinants In Thailand, Ajjaree Limpamont

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Innovation is crucial to economic growth in both developed and emerging countries across the world. Its benefits creates impact on individuals, corporate and government stakeholders in improving quality of lives, increasing income levels and boost up economics. While innovations are important, where, and how they are best conceived of, managed, executed, and brought to the society has been of great debate and has attracted a great deal of scholarly inquiry. There have been numerous research findings discussing the wisdom and impact of each of these pathways. While the business start-up is an effective organizational form for harnessing resources and creating …

Joint Capacity Allocation And Job Assignment Under Uncertainty, Peng Wang, Yun Fong Lim, Gar Goei Loke

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In this paper, we consider the multi-period joint capacity allocation and job assignment problem. The goal of the planner is to simultaneously decide on allocating resources across the J different supply nodes, and assigning of jobs of I different demand origins to these J nodes, so as to maximize the reward for matching or minimize the cost of failure to match. We furthermore consider three features: (i) supply is replenishable after random time, (ii) demand is random; and (iii) demand can wait and need not be fully fulfilled immediately. Such problems emerge in many service management settings such as ride-sharing …

Impact Of Restrictive Red Blood Cell Transfusion Strategy On Thrombosis-Related Events: A Meta-Analysis And Systematic Review, Mairehaba Maimaitiming, Chenxiao Zhang, Jingui Xie, Zhichao Zheng, Haidong Luo, Oon Cheong Ooi

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Background and Objectives There is an ongoing controversy regarding the risks of restrictive and liberal red blood cell (RBC) transfusion strategies. This meta-analysis assessed whether transfusion at a lower threshold was superior to transfusion at a higher threshold, with regard to thrombosis-related events, that is, whether these outcomes can benefit from a restrictive transfusion strategy is debated. Materials and Methods We searched PubMed, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials and Scopus from inception up to 31 July 2021. We included randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in any clinical setting that evaluated the effects of restrictive versus liberal RBC transfusion in adults. …

Stochastic Knapsack Revisited: The Service Level Perspective, Guodong Lyu, Mabel C. Chou, Chung-Piaw Teo, Zhichao Zheng, Yuanguang Zhong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

A key challenge in the resource allocation problem is to find near-optimal policies to serve different customers with random demands/revenues, using a fixed pool of capacity (properly configured). In this paper, we study the properties of three classes of allocation policies-responsive (with perfect hindsight), adaptive (with information updates), and anticipative (with forecast information) policies. These policies differ in how the information on actual demand and revenue of each customer is being revealed and integrated into the allocation decisions. We show that the analysis of these policies can be unified through the notion of "persistency" (or service level) values-the probability that …

Pricing Under Uncertainty: Forward And Option Pricing In Sports Markets, Preethika Sainam, Sridhar Balasubramanian, Shantanu Bhattacharya, Lin L. Ong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Tickets to popular elimination style tournaments (e.g., NFL Super Bowl) are expensive and scarce. Sports organizations sell these tickets well in advance of the final game. Fans hesitate to buy them because they are unsure about whether their favorite team will play in it. We present two alternatives to the current practice: consumer forwards and options. A fan pays a reserve price to secure her team-specific forward ticket. If that team makes it to the final game, the fan must (in the option case, has the choice to) pay an exercise price to purchase the ticket. If the team does …

On The Test Accuracy And Effective Control Of The Covid-19 Pandemic: A Case Study In Singapore, Guang Cheng, Sarah Yini Gao, Yancheng Yuan, Chenxiao Zhang, Zhichao Zheng

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study examines the impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) test accuracy (i.e., sensitivity and specificity) on the progression of the pandemic under two scenarios of limited and unlimited test capacity. We extend the classic susceptible–exposed–infectious–recovered model to incorporate test accuracy and compare the progression of the pandemic under various sensitivities and specificities. We find that high-sensitivity tests effectively reduce the total number of infections only with sufficient testing capacity. Nevertheless, with limited test capacity and a relatively high cross-infection rate, the total number of infected cases may increase when sensitivity is above a certain threshold. Despite the potential for …

R&D Consortia In Competitive Supply Chains, Pascale Crama, Gaoyan Lu, Yi Xu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

R&D consortia, which coordinate R&D activities of their member firms, have been successful in many industries. We study a model with two competing supply chains each consisting of a manufacturer and a supplier. The manufacturers compete in the final product market, and can conduct R&D to reduce unit product costs of their final products. The R&D can be done in three different ways: by the two manufacturers independently, by them jointly in a horizontal R&D consortium, or by the supplier and the manufacturer jointly in each supply chain in two vertical R&D consortia. We find that as compared to independent …

Coordinated Delivery To Shopping Malls With Limited Docking Capacity, Ruidian Song, Hoong Chuin Lau, Xue Luo, Lei Zhao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Shopping malls are densely located in major cities such as Singapore and Hong Kong. Tenants in these shopping malls generate a large number of freight orders to their contracted logistics service providers, who independently plan their own delivery schedules. These uncoordinated deliveries and limited docking capacity jointly cause congestion at the shopping malls. A delivery coordination platform centrally plans the vehicle routes for the logistics service providers and simultaneously schedules the dock time slots at the shopping malls for the delivery orders. Vehicle routing and dock scheduling decisions need to be made jointly against the backdrop of travel time and …

Apple And Foxconn: Addressing Power Imbalances In Global Supply Chains, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Global suppliers such as Foxconn can form strong business networks to put pressure on dominant clients such as Apple to address power imbalances in global supply chains

Procurement Management In Agricultural Commodity Processing, Onur Boyabatli, Bin Li

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This chapter provides insights on the optimal procurement decisions of a commodity processing firm that sources a primary input from a quantity flexibility contract (which is characterized by a unit reservation price and a unit exercise price), to produce two outputs in fixed proportions. The firm faces uncertainties in input spot price and output demands. Our objective is twofold. First, in a single-contract setting, we investigate the role of demand correlation in the presence of fixed proportions technology and show that the firm benefits from a higher demand correlation. Second, we investigate the firm’s optimal contract selection strategy between the …

A Constraint Programming Approach To Load Capacity Planning In Container Vessels, Byung Kwon Lee, Joyce M. W. Low

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

A container vessel carries containers of various characteristics, in terms of size, weight, and contents. The cargo load of a container vessel, being subjected to a set of operational conditions and restrictions regarding ship stability and safety, is a fundamental element in decision-making when a shipping line provides logistics services to clients. This study presents a constraint programming-based model for the capacity planning of a container vessel under various operational conditions. The proposed model generates base solutions and is complemented with a rich scenario-based analysis that utilizes real-life ship data of a container vessel operated by a liner shipping company …

Social New Retailing Business Model And Its Applicable Regulatory Pattern, Rui Wang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

With the booming development of mobile Internet in China, social platforms have unlocked new channels for commodity supply chain and retailing and promoted business model innovation. Online social networking has fundamentally changed the way the entire society communicates. Social networking is no longer constrained by space, social platforms have become a stage for many ordinary people to showcase themselves, and the popularity of mobile payment has made mobile phones the wallets of Chinese residents as well. The innovative contents and interaction styles delivered by social software have triggered a qualitative change in the efficiency of everyone's communication and interaction, making …

Managing Stochastic Bucket Brigades On Discrete Work Stations, Peng Wang, Kai Pan, Zhenzhen Yan, Yun Fong Lim

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Bucket brigades are notably used to coordinate workers in production systems. We study a J-station, I-worker bucket brigade system. The time duration for each worker to serve a job at a station is exponentially distributed with a rate that depends on the station's expected work content and the worker's work speed. Our goal is to maximize the system's productivity or to minimize its inter-completion time variability. We analytically derive the throughput and the coefficient of variation (CV) of the inter-completion time. We study the system under two cases. (i) If the work speeds depend only on the workers, the throughput …

The Moderating Effect Of Solar Radiation On The Association Between Human Mobility And Covid-19 Infection In Europe, Wenyu Zhao, Yongjian Zhu, Jingui Xie, Zhichao Zheng, Haidong Luo, Oon Cheong Ooi

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused a global pandemic. Some studies have suggested a negative association between sunlight intensity and COVID-19 infection, alluding to the belief that it might be safe to go out on sunny days. This paper examined whether solar radiation mitigated the association between human mobility and COVID-19 infection in Europe using a dynamic panel data model to investigate the effect of human mobility, solar radiation, and their interaction on COVID-19 infection. The results revealed that outgoing mobility was positively correlated and solar radiation was negatively correlated with COVID-19 infection at lag levels of 1, …

Capacity Management In Agricultural Commodity Processing, Onur Boyabatli, Jason (Quang) Dang Nguyen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This chapter examines the capacity investment decisions of an agricultural processing firm that produces a commodity output and a byproduct using a commodity input. We model the firm’s problem as a finite-horizon stochastic dynamic program where the firm makes one-time input processing capacity and output storage capacity investment decisions—in addition to periodic processing and inventory decisions—when facing uncertainty in both input and output spot prices as well as output yield. We characterize the optimal capacity investment portfolio in closed form. Using a model calibration based on the palm industry, we compare the performance of the optimal investment policy against capacity …

Schedule Reliability In Liner Shipping Timetable Design: A Convex Programming Approach, Abraham Zhang, Zhichao Zheng, Chung-Piaw Teo

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Container liner shipping is the primary mode of moving manufactured products across continents. Partly due to inherent uncertainties at sea and ports, the liner shipping industry has long had a notorious reputation of schedule delays and unreliable on-time performance. This paper formulates a new approach to incorporate schedule reliability targets in liner shipping timetable design, to balance bunker consumption, time taken for the voyage, and schedule delays. We first model a surrogate problem using a copositive program through a moment decomposition approach and solve it as a convex semidefinite programming relaxation. We next incorporate schedule reliability targets implicitly by exploiting …

Optimising Cold Chain Asset Locations With Real-Estate Considerations: A China Perspective, Chaik Ming Koh

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This thesis explores the logistics costs optimization of a cold chain logistics network with a real estate perspective. This study draws on data and experience of a cold chain player in China. This study seeks to help users who are currently renting large amounts of warehouse space to quantitatively and systematically evaluate if they should construct their own warehouses and then do a sale-and-leaseback to achieve economic benefits. Using a computing optimization model, the study was able to find the optimized parameters of warehouse capacity, warehouse quality to build as well as the recommended existing network warehouses to use, to …

Pivot Or Perish: The Retail Reality, Anne Lepissier, Ryan Vaughan, Shantanu Bhattacharya

Perspectives@SMU

Brick-and-mortar retailers are adapting to meet the challenges posed by accelerating e-commerce adoption. Some are doing better than others, but supply chain obstacles could prove decisive

Sustainably Feeding The World In The 21st Century, Ren Hua Ho, Husodo Angkosubroto, Oi Hian Lee

Perspectives@SMU

Managing investor expectation, exploiting low-hanging fruit, and farmer education will be key

Technology Lends A Hand To Green E-Commerce, Hao Liang, Sin Mei Cheah

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The world has witnessed an e-commerce boom in the past 2 decades, and Asia-Pacific is now driving the latest wave of growth. The Covid-19 pandemic has further accelerated consumers' growing preference for online consumption, with the Asia-Pacific region raking US$230 billion in online retail sales in 2020. This article is adapted from the authors' teaching case study - Alibaba Cainiao's Smart Green Logistics Strategy: Good for the Earth, Good for the Business.