Operations and Supply Chain Management Commons^™

An Empirical Estimation Of Statistical Inferences For System Dynamics Model Parameters, Mohammed Mesabbah, Wael Rashwan, Amr Arisha

Conference papers

For system dynamics simulation (SD) models, an estimation of statistical distributions for uncertain parameters is crucial. These distributions could be used for testing models sensitivity, quality of policies, and/or estimating confidence intervals for these parameters. Assumptions related to normality, independence and constant variation are often misapplied in dynamic simulation. Bootstrapping holds a considerable theoretical advantage when used with non-Gaussian data for estimating empirical distributions for unknown parameters. Although it is a widely acceptable approach, it has had only limited use in system dynamics applications. This paper introduces an application of Direct Residual Bootstrapping (DRBS) for statistical inference in system dynamic …

Managing Warehouse Utilization: An Analysis Of Key Warehouse Resources, Vitaly Brazhkin

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The warehousing industry is extremely important to businesses and the economy as a whole, and while there is a great deal of literature exploring individual operations within warehouses, such as warehouse layout and design, order picking, etc., there is very little literature exploring warehouse operations from a systems approach.

This study uses the Theory of Constraints (TOC) to develop a focused resource management approach to increasing warehouse capacity and throughput, and thus overall warehouse performance, in an environment of limited warehouse resources. While TOC was originally developed for reducing operational bottlenecks in manufacturing, it has allowed companies in other industries, …

Managing Value In Supply Chains: Case Studies On The Sourcing Hub Concept, Anupam Agrawal, Arnoud De Meyer, Luk N. Van Wassenhove

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

A firm’s raw material sourcing knowledge can be a strategic resource. This article explores how firms can capture and use this knowledge. It examines the sourcing experiences of four firms in four different countries in the automotive industry and identifies the raw material sourcing knowledge-related parameters. Synthesizing the findings from these case studies, it proposes the concept of the sourcing hub—a collaborative center involving the firm, its suppliers, and raw material suppliers—which can effectively capture and deploy the raw material sourcing knowledge for managing value in upstream sourcing.

A Universal Appointment Rule With Patient Classification For Service Times, No-Shows And Walk-Ins, Cayirli Tugba, Kum Khiong Yang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study evaluates patient classification for scheduling and sequencing appointments for patients differentiated by their mean and standard deviation of service times, no-show, and walk-in probabilities. Alternative appointment systems are tested through simulation using a universal Dome rule and some of the best traditional appointment rules in the literature. Our findings show that the universal Dome rule performs better in terms of reducing the total cost of patient’s waiting time, doctor’s idle time, and overtime, and its performance improves further with the right sequencing of patient groups. Although it is a challenge to find the best sequence, we propose a …

Tls Newsletter Volume 9, Edition 3. November, 2014, Unf Transportation And Logistics Society

Transportation & Logistics Society Newsletter

Inside the Newsletter: TLS Meeting on Wednesday November 19. Upcoming Events. TLS President's Corner. Get to know Thomas Phengchanh. TLS on Tour--Volkswagen Parts Distribution Center. TLS Philanthropy: 14th Annual Hubbard House Holiday Drive. In the Know: AST & L Certification in Transportation and Logistics. Life after Graduation with Brandon Little

An Examination Of Product Innovation And Buyer-Supply Relationships In Pakistani Firms, Muhammad Shakeel Sadiq Jajja, S.Haukat Ali Brah, Syed Zahoor Hassan, Vijay R. Kannan

Management Faculty Publications

The purpose of this paper is to explore the interface between buyers and suppliers in the context of product innovation in an emerging economy. Specifically, it examines the strategic and tactical initiatives necessary to drive inter-organizational alignment and thus positive innovation outcomes. It also examines the impact of organizational characteristics on product innovation. Design/methodology/approach – Using survey data from 191 organizations in Pakistan, a structural equation model of the relationships between buyers’ and suppliers’ strategic focus on innovation, supplier innovation focus, collaborative innovation, and measures of product innovation and market performance is tested. In addition, hierarchical regression analysis is used …

The Role Of Operations Executives In Strategy Making, Lieven Demeester, Arnoud De Meyer, Jovan Grahovac

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Creating competitive advantage based on operations capabilities is likely to require much analysis and communication within the operations function. At the same time, much communication and joint strategizing with the top and other functional executives is likely to be needed as well. Hence, given that operations executives have limited time and also have to perform many other routine tasks, they need to manage two tradeoffs. The first one is between the time spent on strategy making and the time spent on everything else. The other is within strategy making, between the time spent on "functional deliberation" within the operations function …

Crm In Russia And U.S. -- Case Study From American Financial Service Industry, Tamilla Curtis, Tom Griffin, Donald Barrere

Dr. Tamilla Curtis

This paper discusses Customer Relationship Management in two sharply contrasting business cultures: the United States and Russia. Included in the present work is a case study of a midsized American financial services firm that illustrates a common path to the decision to have a CRM system: the planning, selection, and the implementation of the CRM program, including a discussion of the likelihood of success. The clients in this case are Financial Advisors, who in turn sell the investment products to the end user individual investors. CRM in Russia is yet in its infancy as the economy emerges from 200 years …

Isscm Cohort, Fall 2014-2015, Raj Soin College Of Business, Wright State University

ISSCM Master Cohort Posters

Poster featuring the Fall 2014-2015 Cohort from the Master of Information Systems and the Master of Science in Logistics and Supply Chain Management Programs.

Tls Newsletter Volume 9, Edition 2 October, 2014, Unf Transportation And Logistics Society

Transportation & Logistics Society Newsletter

Inside the Newsletter: TLS Meeting Wednesday October 15th. TLS President's Corner. Get to Know Kelly Pennington, TLS Secretary. TLS on Tour--Pilot Pen Assembly and Distribution Center. Expand Your Network--Get Involved with Professional Organizations. Life after Graduation with Toby Robin

Stability And Endogenous Formation Of Inventory Transshipment Networks, Xin Fang, Soo-Haeng Cho

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper studies a cooperative game of inventory transshipment among multiple firms. In this game, firms first make their inventory decisions independently and then decide collectively how to transship excess inventories to satisfy unmet demands. In modeling transshipment, we use networks of firms as the primitive, which offer a richer representation of relationships among firms by taking the coalitions used in all previous studies as special cases. For any given cooperative network, we construct a dual price allocation under which the network is stable for any residual demands and supplies in the sense that no firms find it more profitable …

Auction With Rolling Horizon For Urban Consolidation Centre, Chen Wang, Stephanus Daniel Handoko, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

A number of cities around the world have adopted urban consolidation centres (UCCs) to address some challenges of their last-mile deliveries. At the UCC, goods are consolidated based on their destinations prior to their deliveries into the city centre. In many examples, the UCC owns a fleet of eco-friendly vehicles to carry out the deliveries. A carrier/shipper who buys the UCC’s service hence no longer needs to enter the city centre in which time-window and vehicle-type restrictions may apply. As a result, it becomes possible to retain the use of large trucks for the economies of scale outside the city …

Strategic Sourcing In The Presence Of Uncertain Supply And Retail Competition, Jianqing Chen, Zhiling Guo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper develops an analytical model to evaluate competing retail firms’ sourcing strategies in the presence of supply uncertainty. We consider a common supplier that sells its uncertain supply to two downstream retail firms engaging in price competition in a horizontally differentiated product market. The focal firm has a dual-sourcing option, while the rival firm can only source from the common supplier. We assess the system-wide effects of supply uncertainty on the focal firm's incentive to pursue the dual-sourcing strategy. We find that the focal firm's dual-sourcing strategy can create a win-win situation that leads to increased retail prices and …

Using Contests To Provide Business Students Project - Based Learning In Humanitarian Logistics: Psaid Example, Koray Özpolat, Yuwen Chen, Doug Hales, Degan Yu, Mehmet Yalcin

Koray Özpolat

Business students appreciate working on classroom projects that are pleasurable and also prepare them for future careers. Promoting competition among project teams is often used as a method to motivate students. We have developed the “Humanitarian Logistics Project (HLP)” to teach undergraduate students the logistical implications of unsolicited material donations in disaster relief. To encourage competition, students are organized into teams of three and tasked with designing humanitarian public service announcements (PSAs) that improve the understanding of humanitarian issues in the general public. These announcements are then submitted to the national PSAid (Public Service Announcements for International Disasters) contest for …

Salvaging Print: Letterhead In Post-Industrial Urban America, Nancy Sharon Collins

The Mid-America Print Council Conference

This panel will explore the link between today’s small press movement and the formal aspects of commercial printing during the American 20th century. Panelists include Christine Medley , Philip Gattuso, and Nancy Bernardo.

Using as its primary example letterhead from defunct companies in Detroit, and secondarily, specimens of business and legal letterhead from other urban centers of the industrial United States, this panel will examine and discuss: What did letterhead represent to 20th century printers in local markets such as Detroit? What is the significance of printed letterhead, and stationery, to the art of small press printing in post-industrial cities …

Exploiting Knowledge About Future Demands For Real-Time Vehicle Dispatching, Soumia Ichoua, Michel Gendreau, Jean Yves Potvin

Soumia Ichoua

An important, but seldom investigated issue in the field of dynamic vehicle routing and dispatching is how to exploit information about future events to improve decision making. In this paper, we address this issue in a real-time setting with a strategy based on probabilistic knowledge about future request arrivals to better manage the fleet of vehicles. More precisely, the new strategy introduces dummy customers (representing forecasted requests) in vehicle routes to provide a good coverage of the territory. This strategy is assessed through computational experiments performed in a simulated environment.

Changing The Way Posts Operate, Jacob Johnsen

Jacob Johnsen, MSc

The first part of the book describes how the market is changing and identifies some of the key factors influencing these changes; the second section then explores what kind of leadership is needed in this context, where collaboration is essential and no business stands by itself. Needless to say, posts do not just need to think differently but also to change the way that they operate, which is explored in the third section; the whole culture of the posts needs to change and that is not achieved easily or quickly, as can be seen in the fourth section. Section five …

Capacity Planning With Financial And Operational Hedging In Low‐Cost Countries, Lijian Chen, Shanling Li, Letian Wang

MIS/OM/DS Faculty Publications

The authors of this paper outline a capacity planning problem in which a risk-averse firm reserves capacities with potential suppliers that are located in multiple low-cost countries. While demand is uncertain, the firm also faces multi-country foreign currency exposures. This study develops a mean-variance model that maximizes the firm’s optimal utility and derives optimal utility and optimal decisions in capacity and financial hedging size. The authors show that when demand and exchange rate risks are perfectly correlated, a risk- averse firm, by using financial hedging, will achieve the same optimal utility as a risk-neutral firm. In this paper as well, …

Tls Newsletter Volume 9, Edition 1 September, 2014., Unf Transportation And Logistics Society

Transportation & Logistics Society Newsletter

Inside the Newsletter: TLS Fall Kick-off Meeting. TLS President's Corner. Upcoming Events. Get to Know Fallon McDonald, TLS Newsletter Editor. T & L Fall Career Day 2014. Jump-start your career--How to Graduate with a Degree and a Job. UNF T & L Students Travel to National Conferences. Life After Graduation with Veer Patel.

Designing Efficient Infrastructural Investment And Asset Transfer Mechanisms In Humanitarian Supply Chains, Shantanu Bhattacharya, Sameer Hasija, Luk N. Van Wassenhove

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We analyze the efficacy of different asset transfer mechanisms and provide policy recommendations for the design of humanitarian supply chains. As a part of their preparedness effort, humanitarian organizations often make decisions on resource investments ex ante because doing so allows for rapid response if an adverse event occurs. However, programs typically operate under funding constraints and donor earmarks with autonomous decision-making authority resting with the local entities, which makes the design of efficient humanitarian supply chains a challenging problem. We formulate this problem in an agency setting with two independent aid programs, where different asset transfer mechanisms are considered …

The Sourcing Hub And Upstream Supplier Networks, Anupam Agrawal, Luk N. Van Wassenhove, Arnoud De Meyer

Arnoud DE MEYER

In this paper, we explore how firms can better manage their sourcing by developing relationships not only with their suppliers but also with their suppliers' suppliers. We detail an empirical case study explaining how the firm developed relationships with its suppliers and raw material suppliers via a collaborative center, the sourcing hub. We then analytically model the scenarios encountered in our empirical work and examine two facets of upstream sourcing under uncertain demand scenarios: (a) firms can supply raw material directly to their suppliers, and this may be beneficial for the firm and its suppliers; and (b) firms can bring …

An Empirical Investigation Of The Influence Of Preparation And Implementation Capabilities On Lean Management Competence, David Barrett

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This research offers several noteworthy contributions to advancing a more comprehensive scholarly theorization and managerial understanding of the prerequisites for deploying a “strategically ready” approach to lean management (LM). The first contribution is the conceptualization of a productive LM deployment model as a three phased value generation approach: (1) value design, (2) value delivery, and (3) value capture. This conceptualization is theoretically framed by Resource Advantage Theory and resource orchestration. Supporting this value generation conceptualization is a LM Competence comprised of two operational capabilities: (1) LM Preparation and (2) LM Implementation. In concert, these two capabilities generate a resource comparative …

German, French And British Manufacturing Strategies Compared: A Growth Towards Each Other, Arnoud De Meyer

Arnoud DE MEYER

Manufacturing has gained over the last years in attention as a tool to create competitive advantage. For four years now a survey has been carried out by a research team at Insead to build a database on the manufacturing strategies as they are defined and implemented by large European companies. In this paper some of the 1987 data are presented, and a comparison of manufacturing strategies of large companies in the three most important European countries is made. Though the most important conclusion is that there are only slight differences between the three countries, one can see some difference in …

Manufacturing Operations In Europe: Where Do We Go Next?, Arnoud De Meyer

Arnoud De Meyer

Extrapolating from the results of a 10-year INSEAD Survey, the author offers some views on the future for manufacturing in Europe. The model on which the Survey was based indicates that competitive priorities and action plans in manufacturing changed over the 10-year period. Taking lessons from these, the author makes some 'informed guesses' on the future implications for European manufacturers in the form of seven normative features: innovation in the value package; close integration between manufacturing and service; the importance of internationalism; flexible project-based organisation; more integrated management of the value added chain; successful transformation of operational programmes into strategic …

On Uncertainty, Ambiguity, And Complexity In Project Management, Michael T. Pich, Christoph H. Loch, Arnoud De Meyer

Arnoud DE MEYER

This article develops a model of a project as a payoff function that depends on the state of the world and the choice of a sequence of actions. A causal mapping, which may be incompletely known by the project team, represents the impact of possible actions on the states of the world. An underlying probability space represents available information about the state of the world. Interactions among actions and states of the world determine the complexity of the payoff function. Activities are endogenous, in that they are the result of a policy that maximizes the expected project payoff.

A key …

Lasting Improvements In Manufacturing Performance: In Search Of A New Theory, Kasra Ferdows, Arnoud De Meyer

Arnoud DE MEYER

Is there a way to avoid trading off one capability for another in manufacturing? The prevailing wisdom says no. But some manufacturers seem to have been able to defy that: compared to their competitors, they have better quality, are more dependable, respond faster to changing market conditions, and in spite of all that, achieve lower costs. How can this be explained? Our aim here is to provide an explanation. We contend that the nature of the trade-offs among manufacturing capabilities is more complex than has been assumed. Depending on the approach taken for developing each capability, the nature of the …

Flexibility: The Next Competitive Battle: The Manufacturing Futures Survey, Arnoud De Meyer, Jinichiro Nakane, Jeffrey M. Miller, Kasra Ferdows

Arnoud DE MEYER

Over the past 4 years research teams from INSEAD (Fontainebleau), Boston University and Waseda University (Tokyo) have administered a yearly survey on the manufacturing strategy of the large manufacturers of the three industrialized regions of the world. In this paper the results for the 1986 survey are compared. One of the most striking results of that year’s survey is the emphasis some of the more advanced manufacturers put on their efforts to overcome the trade-off between flexibility and cost efficiency. In particular for the Japanese respondents these attempts become clear. Europeans and North Americans are not yet seizing the opportunity …

How To Successfully Harness The Power Of Partners With The Ecosystem Advantage, Arnoud De Meyer

Arnoud De Meyer

In a recent research published by Professor Arnoud De Meyer, President and Professor at the Singapore Management University and Professor Peter Williamson, who is a Professor of International Management at Judge Business School at Cambridge, they described six keys to unlocking the ecosystem advantage. These are pinpointing where value is created; defining an architecture of differentiated partner roles; stimulating complementary partner investments, reducing the transaction costs, facilitating joint learning across the network; and engineering effective ways to capture profit.

But what does all this mean to companies especially since customers today are increasingly demanding complex, integrated solutions rather than standardised …

Exchanging Preliminary Information In Concurrent Engineering: Alternative Coordination Strategies, Christian Terwiesch, Christoph H. Loch, Arnoud De Meyer

Arnoud DE MEYER

Successful application of concurrent development processes (concurrent engineering) requires tight coordination. To speed development, tasks often proceed in parallel by relying on preliminary information from other tasks, information that has not yet been finalized. This frequently causes substantial rework using as much as 50% of total engineering capacity. Previous studies have either described coordination as a complex social process, or have focused on the frequency, but not the content, of information exchanges. Through extensive fieldwork in a high-end German automotive manufacturer, we develop a framework of preliminary information that distinguishes information precision and information stability. Information precision refers to the …

Ecosystem Advantage: How To Successfully Harness The Power Of Partners, Peter James Williamson, Arnoud De Meyer

Arnoud DE MEYER

Changes in the global environment are generating opportunities for companies to build advantage by creating loosely coupled networks or ecosystems. Ecosystems are larger, more diverse, and more fluid than a traditional set of bilateral partnerships or complementors. By leveraging ecosystems, companies can deliver complex solutions while maintaining corporate focus. This article describes six keys to unlock ecosystem advantage: pinpointing where value is created, defining an architecture of differentiated partner roles, stimulating complementary partner investments, reducing the transaction costs, facilitating joint learning across the network, and engineering effective ways to capture profit.