Today's world is characterized by volatility and uncertainty. Cooperation is needed to survive in this harsh business climate. Cooperation in supply chains are practiced and well known but in today's tough and volatile environment it is simply not enough. Wastes and unnecessary processes have to be eliminated to secure a competitive advantage. Incorporating lean in supply chains get more and more attention and embrace in the modern literature and media. Lean implemented in supply chains is praised to create a proactive supply chain that successfully eliminate waste and create efficiency. In the thesis the negative aspects, the angle that is very seldom described in the literature, of incorporating lean in supply chain is researched. I will view lean from the management perspective and research the negative aspects, their cause and impact on the entire supply chain. Being aware of the criticism of lean from the employee and society perspective this research serves to find if lean from the management perspective is a flawless story. To achieve the aim of this thesis I conducted a survey research where 100 supply chain executives from different countries, different industries and of different designations within supply chain management were asked to share their lean experience. The summary of my research show that lean incorporated in supply chains is not only a sunshine story. I can conclude problems, even a mismatch, with the lean concept incorporated in supply chains- the time sensibility lean brings. In my research it became obvious that lean supply chains are very sensitive to delays and that the consequences of the delays will strike very hard - hence the lean supply chain can also be seen as more vulnerable and fragile compared to ordinary supply chains. There is no question about the fact that any company, any network of companies or a supply chain for that matter, are better off without delays. A delay will always be negative. In a lean environment, where time aspects such as Just-In-Time and a pull scenario are present, a delay will immediately ruin the entire execution and the consequences will naturally spread in the supply chain. In today's volatile and ever changing world I believe that leanness in supply chains are indeed needed but to an extent where the time factors are viewed realistically in order to avoid drastic consequences. My conclusion is that supply chains should be realistically lean, bearing the time factors of lean in mind, to avoid being mean. I encourage every supply chain to identify their lean level in order to avoid a mean result.

The aim of this research is to investigate collaborative supply chain practices between Taiwanese and Chinese companies. To that end, we seek to address four main objectives: 1) to investigate and provide evidence of collaboration in supply chain management; 2) to evaluate supplier development within supply chain collaboration; 3) to investigate the internal processes of supply chain collaboration; and 4) to examine the outcomes of supply chain collaboration. To explore collaboration in supply chain management, we conduct an extensive review of the state of the art in collaborative supply chain, and we base our investigations and discussions on three real-life companies that practice collaborative supply chain methods in the target countries. Each study contains detailed information on each company, including the company’s background, history, culture, marketing strategy and their collaborative practices. We employ pattern-matching structures to analyse current collaborative practices, which allows us to determine the similarities and differences between theoretical collaboration and collaborative supply chain in practice. We have analysed both the literature and collaborative methodologies used by the companies in each case study, and we have identified a number of key findings that address each of the four research objectives. On one hand there is evidence to support the use of collaboration in supply chain management between Taiwanese and Chinese companies. However, to increase collaboration, we propose agreements between the countries and identification of key suppliers. On the other hand, dominant and powerful partners may prevent good collaboration within the supply chains. Therefore, in order to create an open minded and collaborative culture, we propose greater trust between Taiwanese buyers and Chinese and Taiwanese suppliers. The value in collaborative supply chain can then be realised, which has a positive impact on the business in terms of increasing competitive advantage and customer satisfaction. In addition, such collaborative practices provide the motivation for collaborative supply chain management between Taiwanese buyers and Chinese and Taiwanese suppliers.

Bergische Universiẗat, Bachelorarbeit--Wuppertal, 2006.

<p><strong>Authors:</strong></p><p>Waqas Mehmood, Yasir Liaqat, Nauman Iftikhar, Raza Syed Hassan</p><p><strong>Tutor:</strong></p><p>Petra Andersson</p><p><strong>Examiner:</strong></p><p>Helena Forslund</p><p><strong>Title:</strong></p><p>Managing Supply Chain Risks in Fresh Food Items – a case study on Makro-Habib Pakistan Limited – a wholesales chain in Pakistan</p><p><strong>Background:</strong></p><p>In today’s era, businesses are facing various types of risks which can be legal/political, social, operational/technical, natural and economic in nature. For this purpose, companies need to have effective risk management process to mitigate these risks. Especially companies like Makro-Habib who heavily rely on effective and efficient supply chain can gain competitive advantage if they manage the risks within their supply chain network.</p><p><strong>Research Questions:</strong></p><p>RQ-1: What are the most significant supply chain risks in fresh food items at Makro-Habib?</p><p>RQ-2: How can significant supply chain risks in fresh food items of Makro-Habib be mitigated through proposed action plan?</p><p><strong>Purpose:</strong></p><p>The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the knowledge on how to manage risks in the fresh food supply chain</p><p><strong>Method:</strong></p><p>The empirical data and the conclusions which are drawn from it are based on qualitative facts that are gathered through interviews and questionnaires. The results/conclusions drawn from responses of the interviews of fresh food section heads of Makro-Habib and the literature. This thesis is written from a positivistic perspective with a deductive approach.</p><p><strong>Conclusion:</strong></p><p>Various risk mitigation strategies at strategic, operational and visibility level are suggested like coordination, information sharing, training, monitoring to counter the most significant fresh food supply chain risks which are wrong ordering, contamination of products and FIFO (loose practice).</p>

I explore whether inter-firm linkages affect firms' credit risk. After controlling for the endogeneity between a firm's credit risk and its dependence on customers and suppliers, I find that supply-chain relationships affect firms' credit risk. My results indicate firms with exposure to major customers have lower ratings, and the level of firm dependence on major customers is negatively associated with firms' credit ratings. Further, I show when a firm's customers also depend on it, this mitigates the negative effect of dependence on credit risk. Finally, I document a negative association between a customer's reliance on its dependent suppliers and the customer's credit rating. Overall, my results provide insights regarding how inter-firm relationships between corporate customers and suppliers affect credit risk.

Authors: Waqas Mehmood, Yasir Liaqat, Nauman Iftikhar, Raza Syed Hassan Tutor: Petra Andersson Examiner: Helena Forslund Title: Managing Supply Chain Risks in Fresh Food Items – a case study on Makro-Habib Pakistan Limited – a wholesales chain in Pakistan Background: In today’s era, businesses are facing various types of risks which can be legal/political, social, operational/technical, natural and economic in nature. For this purpose, companies need to have effective risk management process to mitigate these risks. Especially companies like Makro-Habib who heavily rely on effective and efficient supply chain can gain competitive advantage if they manage the risks within their supply chain network. Research Questions: RQ-1: What are the most significant supply chain risks in fresh food items at Makro-Habib? RQ-2: How can significant supply chain risks in fresh food items of Makro-Habib be mitigated through proposed action plan? Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the knowledge on how to manage risks in the fresh food supply chain Method: The empirical data and the conclusions which are drawn from it are based on qualitative facts that are gathered through interviews and questionnaires. The results/conclusions drawn from responses of the interviews of fresh food section heads of Makro-Habib and the literature. This thesis is written from a positivistic perspective with a deductive approach. Conclusion: Various risk mitigation strategies at strategic, operational and visibility level are suggested like coordination, information sharing, training, monitoring to counter the most significant fresh food supply chain risks which are wrong ordering, contamination of products and FIFO (loose practice).

No description available.

This thesis studies three problems related to inventory control. The first problem is motivated by the need to eliminate the bullwhip effect in a supply chain. An important source of this effect is the inventory control policy, which is originally designed to smooth production in response to demand variation along the supply chain arising from the customers. To address this issue, we propose an estimation method based on the control variate technique. A byproduct of this approach is a stabilizing inventory control policy. We evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method using the models from the literature. Generally, the derivation of the inventory policies requires the knowledge of the specific demand distribution. Unfortunately, in several cases the demand is not observable in a direct way. The second problem is motivated by a practical application where only partial demand information is observable. Towards this end we derive estimators of the first two moments of the (daily) demand by means of the renewal theoretical concepts. We also propose a regression-based approximation to improve the quality of the estimators. A series of numerical studies are carried out to evaluate the accuracy and precision of the estimators and to investigate the impact of the estimation on the optimality of the inventory policies. The last part of this dissertation studies a periodic-review inventory system with regular and emergency orders. Emergency orders, characterized by shorter lead-time, higher ordering cost and higher setup cost, are placed when the inventory level becomes critically low. Based on our assumptions, we formulate a dynamic programming model and prove the optimality of state-dependent sS type polices for both emergency and regular orders. We also derive analytic properties of the optimal policies. We gain some managerial insights into the optimal policies and cost performance from numerical studies.

The Planning of Supply Chain Management System for Industrial Materials Intermediary

Demand forecasting is an important step of a company’s supply chain management process, allowing companies to project their needs for different components that are used in the final product. This is even more important in emerging industries with job order (or project-based) products where historical demands do not exist and components may not be readily available or may involve a long lead time. Developing a demand forecasting model which accurately projects the needs of components for a company can decrease costs while decreasing overall lead times of final products. This demand forecast model takes into account projected component needs along with the likelihood of successfully winning a project bid. The model is extended to four different demand forecasting formulas incorporating different use of the winning probabilities. Historical results are then used to compare the methods and their advantages and disadvantages are discussed. / text