Operations and Supply Chain Management Commons^™

Analysis Of The Current Air Force-Specific Status Of Resources And Training System (Sorts) Reporting System, Tia A. Jordan

Theses and Dissertations

The status of resources and training system (SORTS) is a process that measures the health of units and wings in day-to-day preparedness and the ability to execute a major theater war or other scenario envisioned in the national security strategy. With talk of the current reporting system not accurately reflecting units readiness, it is time to evaluate the system to identify key problems and re-design the process to better reflect units capabilities. The objective of this thesis was to inform Air Force leadership of the current state of the SORTS system to ensure it was adequate. By surveying current MAJCOM, …

Supply Chain Management In Humanitarian Relief Logistics, William K. Rodman

Theses and Dissertations

Hundreds of millions of people are affected by disasters each year. This thesis explores the use of supply chain management techniques to overcome the barriers encountered by logistics managers during humanitarian relief operations. Using grounded theory methodology, barriers were analyzed based on academic, organizational, and contemporary literature. Possible solutions to these barriers were selected from available supply chain management literature. This work is different from others in that it marries supply chain principles from different disciplines (including private, nonprofit, and military sectors) to benefit humanitarian operations. It also serves to advance the body of knowledge on this subject so that …

Customer-Focused Business Practice Adoption: A Comparison Of Private And Public Sector Implementations, James P. Swisher

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis evaluates a variety of documented cases of customer-focused business practice initiatives to discern common principles of implementation within the private and public sectors. The business practices Quality, Activity-Based Costing (ABC), Customer Profitability Analysis (CPA), and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) were found to be the major techniques utilized over the past three decades. Cases were collected which documented implementation of these customer-focused business practices in the private and public sectors. Using grounded theory methodology, the implementations were analyzed for emerging concepts. The concepts uncovered in this study were further analyzed through a comparison of private and public sector implementations. …

An Analysis Of Depot Repair Capacity As A Criterion In Transportation Mode Selection In The Retrograde Movement Of Reparable Assets, Harold M. Kahler

Theses and Dissertations

To support smaller reparable asset inventories, current Air Force supply and transportation policies direct the expedited evacuation of reparables by bases and deployed units to the source of repair. Mode selection is based on the asset. Focusing on the asset and moving it quickly is an efficient and effective method of getting assets to where they are needed in a timely manner in the forward portion of the supply pipeline. However, in the reverse portion of the pipeline, the demand for a particular type of asset may no longer be the most important factor in how it is transported. The …

Solving Hierarchical Constraints Over Finite Domains With Local Search, Martin Henz, Roland H.C. Yap, Yun Fong Lim, Seet Chong Lua, J. Paul Walser, Xiao Ping Shi

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Many real world problems have requirements and constraints which conflict with each other. One approach for dealing with such over-constrained problems is with constraint hierarchies. In the constraint hierarchy framework, constraints are classified into ranks, and appropriate solutions are selected using a comparator which takes into account the constraints and their ranks. In this paper, we present a local search solution to solving hierarchical constraint problems over finite domains (HCPs). This is an extension of local search for over-constrained integer programs WSAT(OIP) to constraint hierarchies and general finite domain constraints.The motivation for this work arose from solving large airport gate …

Comparative Functional Analysis Of Air Force And Commercially Available Transportation Information Management Systems, Patrick S. Holland

Theses and Dissertations

The Air Force currently relies on two transportation information management systems for managing cargo and passenger movements throughout the Defense Transportation System. The two systems are Global Air Transportation Execution System (GATES) and Cargo Movement Operations System (CMOS). Although GATES and CMOS have evolved from legacy systems created during the 1980s, both systems are used to process cargo and passengers while providing the information needed to maintain in-transit visibility (ITV) and manage each movement. The purpose of this research is to identify commercially available logistics software packages and determine whether they provide the same functionality as the two Air Force …

An Analysis Of The Impact Of Base Support Resources On The Availability Of Air Mobility Command Aircraft, Christian E. Randall

Theses and Dissertations

The AMC Directorate of Logistics is responsible for ensuring AMC aircraft are available to accomplish the mission. Currently, however, the organization lacks an objective tool for assessing the impact of proposed operations on the health of the fleet, To improve this process, the Directorate has initiated the development of a Mobility Aircraft Availability Forecast (MAAF) simulation model designed to identify alternatives and associated impacts on aircraft availability, manpower, and cost. This research seeks to assist the MAAF development effort by identifying and demonstrating how different base support factors impact the availability of AMC aircraft. To address this research objective, multiple …

Closed-Loop Supply Chain Models With Product Remanufacturing, R. Canan Savaskan, Shantanu Bhattacharya, Luk N. Van Wassenhove

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The importance of remanufacturing used products into new ones has been widely recognized in the literature and in practice. In this paper, we address the problem of choosing the appropriate reverse channel structure for the collection of used products from customers. Specifically, we consider a manufacturer who has three options for collecting such products: (1) she can collect them herself directly from the customers, (2) she can provide suitable incentives to an existing retailer (who already has a distribution channel) to induce the collection, or (3) she can subcontract the collection activity to a third party. Based on our observations …

Constraint Programming For Scheduling, John J. Kanet, Sanjay L. Ahire, Michael F. Gorman

MIS/OM/DS Faculty Publications

Our goal is to introduce the constraint programming (CP) approach within the context of scheduling. We start with an introduction to CP and its distinct technical vocabulary. We then present and illustrate a general algorithm for solving a CP problem with a simple scheduling example.

Next, we review several published studies where CP has been used in scheduling problems so as to provide a feel for its applicability. We discuss the advantages of CP in modeling and solving certain types of scheduling problems. We then provide an illustration of the use of a commercial CP tool (OPL Studio) in modeling …

Institutional Factors Influencing E-Business Adoption, Anand Jeyaraj, Deborah Balser, Charles Chowa, Gary Griggs

Management Information Systems Faculty Publications

Studies of e-business adoption have generally been restricted to understanding organizational factors. Institutional factors provide an alternate explanation of the diffusion of e-business across organizations. We test the influence of coercive, normative, and mimetic pressures on first-time adoption of B2B and B2C innovations by organizations. We further propose that an organization’s response to institutional pressures may be affected by its distinctive organizational identity. Specifically, we hypothesize that those organizations that value innovation and customer service will be more likely to adopt e-business over time. We test the likelihood that the intensity of institutional pressures will vary over different time periods. …

Attaining A World Class Supply Management Organization Through Strategic Initiatives, Peter O'Reilly

Publications

Goals of a World Class Supply Management Organization:

• One Supply Management Voice
• Create a Collaborative Team Environment
• Control 90% of Enterprise-wide Spend
• Achieve Expense to Savings Ratio of 8:1 or Higher
• Integrate Technology
• Establish Metrics

Problems/Hurdles:

• Lack of ResourcesNo Direction (Vision or Plan)
• Too much transactional work to overcome or “I do not have time to think, much less plan”
• Corporate Culture or History
• Organizational Structure

Goals Of A World Class Supply Management Organization, Peter O'Reilly

Publications

The presentation Goals of a World Class Supply Management Organization discusses the following problems/hurdles:

• Lack of Resources
• No Direction (Vision or Plan)
• Too much transactional work to overcome or “I do not have time to think, much less plan”
• Corporate Culture or History
• Organizational Structure

Understanding The Relationship Between Organizational And Individual Adoption Of It Innovations: Literature Review And Analysis, Anand Jeyaraj, Joseph Rottman, Mary Lacity

Management Information Systems Faculty Publications

Researchers who study IT innovations aim to understand the relationship between two different loci of adoption1 – individual adoption and organizational adoption. A first step is diagnosis of the current state of empirical research on IT innovation adoption. We analyzed 486 relationships between independent variables (IVs) and dependent variables (DVs) found in 89 empirical studies of which 45 studied individual adoption and 44 studied organizational adoption. We categorized 135 IVs into 4 classes (organizational variables such as top management support, individual variables such as age, innovation variables such as relative advantage, and environment variables such as external pressure). We classified …

Metaheuristics With Local Search Techniques For Retail Shelf-Space Optimization, Andrew Lim, Brian Rodrigues, Xingwen Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Efficient shelf-space allocation can provide retailers with a competitive edge. While there has been little study on this subject, there is great interest in improving product allocation in the retail industry. This paper examines a practicable linear allocation model for optimizing shelf-space allocation. It extends the model to address other requirements such as product groupings and nonlinear profit functions. Besides providing a network flow solution, we put forward a strategy that combines a strong local search with a metaheuristic approach to space allocation. This strategy is flexible and efficient, as it can address both linear and nonlinear problems of realistic …

Operational Hedging: A Review With Discussion, Onur Boyabatli, L. Beril Toktay

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Motivated by the increasing prevalence of operational hedging in corporate-level risk management programs, this paper provides an extensive overview and synthesis of the existing literature on operational hedging. In particular, we focus on the treatment of operational hedging in the operations management literature. We then explore how the concept of operational hedging is studied in the fields of finance, strategy and international business. Finally, we discuss and critique the approaches adopted in the operations management literature in the context of the broader literature on the topic.

Heuristics For A Brokering Set Packing Problem, Yunso Guo, Andrew Lim, Brian Rodrigues, Yi Zhu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In this paper we formulate the combinatorial auction brokering problem as a Set Packing Problem (SPP) and apply a simulated annealing heuristic to solve SPP. Experimental results are compared with a recent heuristic algorithm and also with the CPLEX Integer Programming solver where we found that the simulated annealing approach outperforms the previous heuristic method and CPLEX obtaining results within smaller timescales.