Operations and Supply Chain Management Commons^™

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

Collective Impact Of Scrap, Random Breakdown, Overtime And Discontinuous Issuing On Batch Production Planning In A Supply-Chain Environment, Yuan-Shyi Peter Chiu, Jia-Ning Lin, Yunsen Wang, Hung-Yi Chen

Department of Accounting and Finance Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This research explores the collective impact of overtime, random breakdown, discontinuous issuing rule, and scrap on batch production planning in a supply-chain environment. In today’s global business environment, manufacturing firms encounter numerous operational challenges. Externally, they must promptly satisfy the customers’ various requests, while internally, they must cautiously manage several inevitable issues in the fabrication process. These issues might be concerned with scrap, random breakdown, etc. Resolving such issues is crucial for meeting the due dates of customers’ orders, adhering to the expected manufacturing schedules, product quality, and minimizing the total fabrication-transportation-inventory costs. The study develops a model to characterize …

How To Spot And Avoid Greenwashing In Supply Chains, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Research draws attention to practice of firms greenwashing their CSR by disclosing supply chain relationships with “green” but concealing “brown” suppliers

Multi-Period Lot-Sizing With Supplier Selection: Structural Results, Complexity And Algorithms, Meichun Lin, Woonghee Tim Huh, Guohua Wan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We consider a multi-period lot-sizing problem with multiple products and multiple suppliers. Demand is deterministic and time-varying. The objective is to determine order quantities to minimize the total cost over a finite planning horizon. This problem is strongly NP-hard. For a special case, we extend the classical zero-inventory-ordering principle and solve it by dynamic programming. Based on this new extension, we also develop a heuristic algorithm for the general problem and computationally show that it works well.

Integration Of Blockchain Technology Into Supply Network For Resilient And Efficient Acquisition [Video], Adrian Gheorghe, Farinaz Sabz Ali Pour, Unal Tatar, Omer Faruk Keskin, Cornel Vintila, Laura Manciu

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

In the modern acquisition, it is unrealistic to consider single entities as producing and delivering a product independently. Acquisitions usually take place through supply networks. Resiliency, efficiency, and effectiveness of supply networks directly contribute to the acquisition system's resiliency, efficiency, and effectiveness. All the involved firms form a part of a supply network essential to producing the product or service. The decision-makers have to look for new methodologies for supply chain management. Blockchain technology introduces new methods of decentralization and delegation of services, which can transform supply chains and result in a more resilient, efficient, and effective supply chain. This …

Examining The Real Costs Of Us Manufacturing Decoupling Strategies, Sze Chiang Jonathan Chee

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Decoupling strategies have been the main focus of supply chain and resource management studies. Increasingly, due to the shift in geopolitical dynamics, the term ‘decoupling’ is now used in finance, accounting, political, and strategic management fields to describe the effect from the fallout of tense international relations. Existing research on this topic includes modeling strategic retaliation theories and evaluating firm effects from an accounting and finance perspective. Yet, there still is little research published on meso-level analysis of the relationship between macro and micro factors that affect organizational decoupling strategies. This study hopes to add to this new body of …

Eliminating Forced Labor In American Corporations And Their Supply Chain: Existing Solutions And Failures, Breann Hunt

Brigham Young University Prelaw Review

The author of this article examines current judicial precedent pertaining to human rights violations perpetrated in the supply chains of American companies. The author argues that existing legislation is insufficient to prevent firms from profiting from forced labor. The author demonstrates the effect of forced labor upon the competitive landscape and illustrates the damage done to ethical companies forced to compete with low-priced competitors. By analyzing existing research on competitive injury and Antitrust regulation, the author thus proposes that there be a synthesis of third party research capabilities and legislation that would help prove competitive injury due to forced labor …

Blockchain For A Resilient, Efficient, And Effective Supply Chain, Evidence From Cases, Adrian Gheorghe, Farinaz Sabz Ali Pour, Unal Tatar, Omer Faruk Keskin

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

In the modern acquisition, it is unrealistic to consider single entities as producing and delivering a product independently. Acquisitions usually take place through supply networks. Resiliency, efficiency, and effectiveness of supply networks directly contribute to the acquisition system's resiliency, efficiency, and effectiveness. All the involved firms form a part of a supply network essential to producing the product or service. The decision-makers have to look for new methodologies for supply chain management. Blockchain technology introduces new methods of decentralization and delegation of services, which can transform supply chains and result in a more resilient, efficient, and effective supply chain. This …

Vind: A Blockchain-Enabled Supply Chain Provenance Framework For Energy Delivery Systems, Eranga Bandara, Sachin Shetty, Deepak Tosh, Xueping Liang

VMASC Publications

Enterprise-level energy delivery systems (EDSs) depend on different software or hardware vendors to achieve operational efficiency. Critical components of these systems are typically manufactured and integrated by overseas suppliers, which expands the attack surface to adversaries with additional opportunities to infiltrate into EDSs. Due to this reason, the risk management of the EDS supply chain is crucial to ensure that we are knowledgeable about the vulnerabilities in software and hardware components that comprise any critical part, quantifiable risk metrics to assess the severity and exploitability of the attack, and provide remediation solutions that can influence a prioritized mitigation plan. There …

The Supply Chain Of Digital Music: Empowering Independent Artists Through Availability And Accessibility, Justin Reed

Senior Theses

The process of creating and sharing digital music can be viewed from the “supply chain” perspective: identifying the resources and value-adding tools that ultimately result in a final audio product. By researching and documenting the steps involved in this process, I identify this supply chain as a series of steps, an itinerary, or process model of digital music creation. Moreover, I found that each step in the process can be assess for its accessibility and usability by independent artists. I conclude by exploring how this democratizes the music industry by affording independent artists the necessary tools and empowerment to create …

Too Good To Eat? Cosmetic Standards And Waste In Agricultural Supply Chain, Jiahui Xu

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

There is a significant amount of food wasted at the farm level due to high cosmetic standards adopted by retailers. We examine the economic incentives for retailers to adopt such high cosmetic standards and their impact on food loss. We build a sequential game between a retailer and a farmer, where the retailer signs a contract with the farmer specifying both the wholesale price and cosmetic quality standard. By adopting high cosmetic standards, retailers can motivate farmers to exert a higher effort to improve the cosmetic quality, e.g., using better seeds and applying more pesticides. As for the drivers of …

The Relocation Of Supply Chains From China And The Impact On The Chinese Economy, Shaomin Li

Management Faculty Publications

The U.S.-China trade war has had a huge impact on the supply chains in China, accelerating their relocation that had already begun due to rising taxes, costs of labor, and other input factors. The exodus reported in the past year is only the tip of the iceberg, as more serious effects will not become apparent immediately. A major effect of the relocation on China is job losses, which may reach as many as 5 million in the coming years. Given the unlikeliness of a quick end to the trade war and the reluctance of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to …

Cost Stickiness And Supply Chain Bargaining Power, Binghao (Jimmy) Zhao

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Given the essential role of supply chains in the economy, furthering our understanding of the interactions between trade partners is important. In this paper, I study the relation between cost stickiness and bargaining power over supply chain partners. I document evidence consistent with the argument that firms wield supply chain bargaining power to avoid cost stickiness by shifting high adjustment costs onto their trade partners. In particular, I show that the level of SG&A and COGS stickiness is negatively associated with firms’ bargaining power over their suppliers and customers. My results are robust to using industry competition as an alternative …

Customer's Inventory Accruals And Supplier's Earnings Quality, Cheuk Kwong Fok

Lingnan Theses (MPhil & PhD)

We examine the influence of customer’s inventory accruals on supplier’s accounting quality and earnings management practices. We consider two views of the role of customer’s inventory accruals play on their supplier and how they relate to their financial reporting. The first is the customer’s inventory accruals reflect supplier’s earnings management (i.e., intentional bias) as well as lead to difficulty in supplier’s earnings estimation (i.e., unintentional errors). The second view is based on supplier’s information advantage theory, which suggests suppliers are capable to interpret the information content of customer’s inventory accruals. In contrast to the information advantage view, we find that …

Humanitarian Logistics: Shipping Designs For The Post Disaster Cargo Surge, Nicholas L. Green

Theses and Dissertations

In 2017 Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico. The humanitarian aid community scrambled a response to support the 3.4 million people affected by the disaster. In response, thousands of shipping containers filled with supplies were sent to the island. Numerous reports surfaced regarding significant delays in receiving the shipments. This research reviews the historical account of cargo throughput into Puerto Rico following Maria. A computer simulation built in ARENA compares various what-if scenarios based on empirically collected data and interviews with FEMA, port authorities, and commercial cargo carriers to determine how the humanitarian supply chain could improve for future disaster planning. …

Examining The Express Supportability Module: Implementing An Autoregressive Distributed Lag Approach With Air Force Maintenance Data, Troy J. St Peter

Theses and Dissertations

Launched in 1996, EXPRESS (Execution and Prioritization of Repairs Support System) is a program integral to the Air Force reparable supply chain. Daily, EXPRESS relies on a number of data sources and individual modules like the Supportability Module to determine which necessary repairs can and should be made. The Supportability Module examines the prioritized list of repairs and checks four constraints in order to decide whether each repair can be made given current resources. According to the logic of the module, a single constraint failure means that subsequent resource checks are not made before evaluating the next repair. Unfortunately, this …

A Meticulous Food Safety Plan Today Avoids Handcuffs Tomorrow, Kim Bousquet

Journal of Food Law & Policy

In August 2010, thousands of people across the United States were poisoned by eating eggs unknowingly tainted with Salmonella enteritidis bacteria. Following a lengthy investigation, the owners of the facility where the outbreak began were sentenced to three months in prison. This is not a one-off case; poor food safety practices are responsible for several outbreaks and often end in incarceration. Filthy hen houses, diseased fruit storage, and negligent food processing may be the last thing we want to imagine, but these practices have much to teach today's food producers. This article first examines how poor food production practices can …

Assessing The Impacts Of Crowdsourcing In Logistics And Supply Chain Operations, Ha Hai Ta

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Crowdsourcing models, whereby firms start to delegate supply chain operations activities to a mass of actors in the marketplace, have grown drastically in recent years. 85% of the top global brands have reported to use crowdsourcing in the last ten year with top names such as Procter & Gamble, Unilever, and Nestle. These emergent business models, however, have remained unexplored in extant SCM literature. Drawing on various theoretical underpinnings, this dissertation aims to investigate and develop a holistic understanding of the importance and impacts of crowdsourcing in SCM from multiple perspectives. Three individual studies implementing a range of methodological approaches …

Evaluating Feasibility Of Blockchain Application For Dscsa Compliance, Tracie Scott, Armand L. Post, Johnny Quick, Sohail Rafiqi

SMU Data Science Review

Abstract. We evaluated the feasibility of using a blockchain technology to create a traceability solution for pharmaceutical drugs that would promote compliance with recent legislation. Counterfeit and other illegitimate pharmaceutical drugs threaten patient safety, drug efficacy, and patient trust. The purpose of the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) is to greatly reduce distribution of illegitimate drugs by requiring all pharmaceuticals to be serialized and traceable from the manufacturer through the supply chain to the dispenser. A software application to serialize and track pharmaceuticals must overcome numerous obstacles. In particular, the solution must provide a high degree of trust while …

Orchids Paper Company 2014-2015, John K. Masters, Pamela P. Rogers

Faculty Publications

This case captures Orchids Paper Company at a time of significant change internally and in its environment. It presents opportunities to examine the concept of fit between Strategy, Environment, and Resources to maximize profit potential. The nature of Orchids’ products and industry facilitate the case’s accessibility, since Orchids operates in an industry which is fairly simple to understand (paper manufacturing). The case is intended for use in business policy and strategy classes at the undergraduate or MBA level, but might be used in operations, supply chain, finance, accounting or marketing classes by focusing on specific questions facing the firm.

Modernizing The Supply Chain Of Airbus By Integrating Rfid And Blockchain Processes, Michael D. Santonino Iii, Constantine M. Koursaris, Michael J. Williams

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, has been gaining momentum within the aviation industry for improving efficiencies in the supply chain. RFID technology is not new, with many manufacturers outside of aviation being more responsive as early adopters to the technology. Currently, many of the full-scale implementation organizations from late adopters, have strategically integrated RFID technology into the manufacturing supply chain to tag parts and for airports/airlines to track baggage and passengers throughout their airport journey. Literature remains rather sparse in the implementation and success factors within the aviation supply chain as a number of businesses have kept much of the …

From Rags To Riches: Following The East Asian Blueprint By Governments And Firms, Shantanu Bhattacharya

Asian Management Insights

What governments and firms should know before following the East Asian blueprint.

Identification Of Reverse Engineering Candidates Utilizing Machine Learning And Aircraft Cannibalization Data, Marc Banghart

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

As military aircraft continue to remain in service and age, cannibalization of parts is increasing. Proactive identification of parts that are at high risk for cannibalization will inform engineering processes such as reverse engineering, thus allowing potentially reducing lead time to develop new parts. The research objective was to develop a causal structure that can be used for prediction of when cannibalization actions may occur. Bayesian networks allow encoding of causality between various descriptive features given a data set. The method utilized a tabu search algorithm, identified the underlying causal structure and the associated node probabilities. The method is then …

Creating Sustainable Supply Chains: Influencing Sustainable Practices In The Supply Chain, Saif Mir

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Organizations worldwide are reporting their commitment to create sustainable supply chains. Ultimately, supply chain professionals are the drivers of change within their respective organizations, so this dissertation examines the role of communication as a tool to persuade supply chain professionals to create sustainable supply chains. The three studies within this dissertation employ different methodologies to examine the role of communication in the development and implementation of sustainability initiatives. The first study, a grounded theory investigation, highlights the network, communication, and structural factors that provide a strong business case for the development of sustainability initiatives. A strong business case influences the …

The International Business Risk Of Terrorism: A Pragmatic Framework For Assessing Its Impact On The U.S.-Based, Small- To Medium-Sized Enterprise’S Supply Chain Operations, Scott A. Lemons

The Hilltop Review

Purpose - Subject paper examines the international business risk of terrorism’s impact on the focal firm’s supply chain operations, as proliferated by the acceleration of globalization, via a fundamental review of pertinent country- and firm-level considerations shaped by global environmental factors. Subsequently, a managerial risk assessment and mitigation planning framework is presented for the supply chain executive’s pragmatic use.

Design/methodology/approach – Broad evaluation of contemporary viewpoints precedes a risk assessment and mitigation planning framework from the supply chain executive’s point-of-view.

Findings – While observed research found the probability of the risk of terrorism to be low, the severity (impact) of …

Governance Interactions In Sustainable Supply Chain Management, Errol Meidinger

Transnational Business Governance Interactions Working Papers

“Supply chains” are a major site of transnational business governance, and yet their dynamics and effectiveness are usually more assumed than interrogated in regulatory governance discourse. The very term “chain” implies a more determinist and simplistic understanding of supply relationships than is empirically supportable. Supply chains in practice are complex, dynamic, and highly variable networks. Based on peer-group presentations by over 60 supply chain professionals, this paper analyzes sustainable supply chain management practices in terms of the interactions conceptions of the Transnational Business Governance Interactions framework. It discusses possible refinements of the framework and suggests that sustainable supply chain management …

The Use Of Rfid And Sensor Networks To Optimize Enterprise Operations And Logistics, Sobhi Mejjaouli

Theses and Dissertations

One of the biggest challenges faced by today’s supply chain is machine and equipment failures which impacts the producers’ ability to meet their scheduled demand and lead to logistics delays and quality issues, especially when perishable items are transported. This research work eliminates, or at least decreases the costs pertaining to the impact of machine and equipment failures on supply chain operations, particularly on production and transportation, like out of stock costs, lost sales cost and penalties imposed by customers. Two relatively new technologies for the production and logistics domain, RFID and wireless sensor networks, provide the needed sensing, processing, …

Customer Service Through Incoterms, Josh Nichol-Caddy

White Papers

Settling for the "one size, fits all" shipping solutions typically offered by large logistics companies, small businesses miss out on customer service options that could help differentiate their products. This paper defines the terms and conditions of all the options Incoterms present.

Supply Chain Performance Measurement For Services: An Operational Level Framework, Asher Ramish, Sarwar M. Asher

Business Review

Purpose

The purpose of the study is to propose a consolidated and comprehensive operational level framework of performance metrics to facilitate the supply chain integration in the service industry. Design/methodology/approach

In order to do so, we rely on a systematic review procedure to delineate and thus integrate the measures into factors. This paper draws upon prior work done on performance measure in supply chain integration.

Findings

These measures will then be assigned by incorporating industrial practice to various factors that we believe are relevant to the measure of performance in the integrated supply chain system in the service industry.

Research …