We live in the age of the informed consumer creating a business climate of increasing competition, which implies that all companies need to be as efficient as possible at every level, and this includes inventory management. For many businesses, inventory is the largest asset on the balance sheet at any given time and therefore needs to be efficiently managed. A large amount of a company's costs can be attributed to the amount it invests in inventory and associated holding, transportation, and management costs; management of inventory is thus critical to an SME's profitability. Therefore, it is important to investigate the models for effective inventory management in SMEs. Inventory management entails more than simply the forecasting and replenishment of inventory; it also demands the management of inventory to optimise services and profit. The main objective of the study was to investigate the standard inventory theories and models used to help management in small to medium-sized enterprises in keeping costs down while still meeting customer service requirements. Organisational effectiveness was defined in terms of the effectiveness of the internal processes of an organisation. While accountants and senior managers tend to measure results of most, if not all, organisational activities in monetary terms, so it is no surprise that many organisations rely on financial measures such as ROI or ROA to measure effectiveness. However, effectiveness was defined as the ability to achieve stated inventory levels, judged in terms of financial measures like inventory turnover for this study. This study posits that the effectiveness of a given SME may be ascertained from the effectiveness of the inventory management decisions made by its management. Modern inventory management systems are based on well-recognised inventory models and even though the methods were developed many years ago they still perform well from a theoretical point of view. Inventory models like economic order quantity (EOQ), activity-based costing (ABC), analysis for inventory and just-in-time (JIT) that form the bases of modern inventory systems are still commonly used in the industry today. Modern inventory management systems like MRP/MRPII and ERP systems offer a complete inventory management system to SMEs, but despite the rapid development of ERP systems, little research can be found in evaluating the extent to which ERP could create a competitive advantage for SMEs. Safety inventory protects against inventory uncertainty by ensuring there are enough products available to maintain desired service levels. Based on this, safety inventory can be expressed as the quantity of inventory that has to be reserved in order to protect the system from random variables such as inventory-outs, which may occur as a result of either forecast errors or deviations from normal demand during average lead times. Supply chain management (SCM) is a set of approaches utilized to effectively incorporate suppliers, manufacturers, logistics, and consumers to place the right amount of inventory at the right places at the right time. Since inventories represent a significant investment by many businesses, the challenge, however, is to determine the lowest amount of inventory required to accomplish all of the service-level targets. Inventory costs are relevant to most liquidity, asset management and liability management ratios and only once a balance is found between service levels, costs of holding inventory and cost of manufacture, which, once achieved, will it lead to increased profitability. Inventory is a measure of both liquidity and in -service efficiency just like receivable turnover. These methods produce an overall level of inventory that senior management typically judges in terms of an inventory turnover ratio (annual sales / average inventory) or a total asset level. A literature study was conducted with the aid of a computer-based search, using the keywords identified, databases and search engines such as Google Search, Google Scholar, Business Source Premier, Emerald and EBSCO Host. The empirical research describes a process whereby data or facts on a specific issue were gathered and analysed. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods were employed to gather information from the defined population for this study. This study used a structured questionnaire as well as an open-ended and semi-structured interview with some of the population sample to collect empirical data. The sample tested consisted of 60 managers, owners or responsible persons for inventory management in small to medium enterprises in Gauteng, South Africa. The results of the questionnaires were submitted for statistical analyses at the Statistical Department of the North-West University. The results of the statistical analysis were interpreted by closer investigation of the correlations, cross tabulations and frequency analysis done with the aid of SSPS. After the statistical analysis the conclusion could be drawn that more than half of all questioned SMEs in the study were not effective in their inventory management and this is most probably the result of most respondents' lack of theoretical knowledge about inventory management theories. Furthermore, it was concluded that most small and medium businesses have experienced inventory shortages as a result of JIT ordering, but still chose not to hold safety inventories because of the cost associated with holding inventories. This also made them and their customers reliant on their suppliers' supply chain management for efficient service delivery. Furthermore, it was also found that ERP systems like SAP were too expensive to implement in small and very small businesses. Therefore, many small and medium businesses adopt the Pastel solution at a fraction of the price of the standard ERP systems to manage their inventories. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2009.

This study considers whether or not optimizing process metrics and settings across a supply chain gives significantly different outcomes than consideration at a firm level. While, the importance of supply chain integration has been shown in areas such as inventory management, this study appears to be the first empirical test for optimizing process settings. A Partial Least Squares (PLS) procedure is used to determine the crucial components and indicators that make up each component in a supply chain system. PLS allows supply chain members to have a greater understanding of critical coordination components in a given supply chain. Results and implications give an indication of what performance is possible with supply chain optimization versus local optimization on simulated and manufacturing data. It was found that pursuing an integrated approach over a traditional independent approach provides an improvement of 2% to 49% in predictive power for the supply chain under study.

Despite its name, Corporate Social Responsibility is not exclusively a concept for large corporations; however, previous studies have primarily focused on CSR within larger firms. As Small and Medium sized Enterprises both possess unique characteristics, and are important actors in the global economy, this is an area that deserves deeper research. As pressure from internal and external stakeholders are mounting, firms needs to ensure that they are following the current rules of the game. As such, firms put pressure on their suppliers, in order to protect their business. Consequently, a failure to cope with this pressure from the supplier’s part is a potential source for a conflict. Thus, the actual CSR standards used by a focal firm, has a direct link to a potential conflict within an offshoring relationship. Hence, this thesis aims to investigate how Swedish SMEs apply CSR policies and activities regarding social issues in their organisations, and how these policies and activities affect conflicts between Swedish SMEs, and their foreign suppliers. Three Swedish SMEs where interviewed, and their CSR activities, and conflict management were analysed. While all the three firms used CSR to a various degree, this research suggests that the nature and direction of the CSR activities are largely determined by the industry in which the firm operates. Furthermore, SMEs typically lack the power to enforce their CSR standards on their suppliers. However, SMEs can act in the roles of supervisors, in order to communicate that CSR is an important aspect within a relationship. The case companies also illustrated that clear goals of CSR activities within SMEs, connected to the actual business goals, aids in the establishment of CSR in small firms. Finally, none of the three case firms experienced any conflicts with their suppliers, based on social issues within CSR. Instead, this research suggests that SMEs avoid conflicts, by emphasising a careful selection of suppliers.

The objective of the study was to develop a management framework for internal logistics in the Department of Education in Gauteng. For the purpose of this study internal logistics was defined as the complete process of obtaining goods and services from the compiling and processing of requisitions to the payment of invoices and the record keeping of all transactions to achieve organisational objectives. Internal logistics entails purchase planning, specification development, supplier research, contract administration and quotations, ordering and inventory control. The management of internal logistics can enhance productivity and performance within the value chain, improving service delivery, the outcome of the audited financial statement and ultimately the optimal spending of the allocated budget per financial year. For three consecutive financial years (2006/2007, 2007/2008, 2008/2009) GDE received a qualified audited financial statement. For financial years 2009/2010 and 2010/2011 GDE succeeded to receive an unqualified audited financial statement. To maintain this achievement and ultimately receive a clean audit financial statement, it is necessary to evaluate all the business processes, specifically within supply chain management, contributing to the audit findings. Supply Chain Management (SCM) is in some way the completion of the circle of financial management. It is important for GDE to develop a uniform internal logistics framework that would enable them to also gain the maximum from its annual allocated budget. It is also critical that the internal logistics are attended to as soon as possible to have a positive input towards the audited financial statement. A literature study was done on the concepts of the value chain, supply chain management and the management of knowledge. A questionnaire was designed, based on the findings in the literature, and used to measure the efficiency of the internal logistics in the District offices. The state of the internal logistics at the District offices was assessed through survey questionnaires to extract the data. It became evident that certain gaps and problems exist in relation to internal logistics at the District offices and that knowledge management is related to these gaps and problems. Internal logistics has a link with the elements of supply chain management as investigated in the literature study. The elements of supply chain management can to be broken down into clear activities for the management of internal logistics. The key area of concern is that the internal logistics within SCM are not acknowledged and therefore not properly managed in the District offices. The result of this is that the allocated budget is not optimally utilised and also receives qualifications from the audited financial statement. A practical framework to manage internal logistics is proposed for the Department of Education to assist with the problems, and to bridge the gaps found after analysing the questionnaires. The findings of the empirical study were used as the basis of the framework. Finally, conclusions and recommendations are drawn and rendered in order to improve the logistics management of the Department of Education in Gauteng. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

Tendering process is central to national government in South Africa. The goods and services bought by national government in South Africa represent a large amount of public money, and it is very important that national government put in place measure to manage how these goods and services are acquired. In the main government acquire goods and services through tender system and the focus of the study was tendering process in national government in South Africa. The amount of public resources that national government uses in the tendering process is huge and is approximately over 20% of GDP, which has direct implication for service delivery and job creation as well as redressing past discrimination by empowering designated groups of peoples to receive preference in tendering. South Africa is one of the countries with the highest level of corruption rate in the world, of which tender fraud and corruption play a major part. Considering that, the reform of tendering process in national government is therefore inevitable and has to take place. The primary objective of this study is to analyse national government tender system, and identify the tendering problems facing South African national departments. The study further made practical recommendations to National Government, National Treasury, and all the relevant stakeholders relating to the management of tendering process. Data from 355 questionnaires completed by participants, represented 45 national department was collected and analysed. This study found that national government is facing major challenges in managing of tendering process, and these challenges relates to implementation and adoption of the code of best practice. The most important conclusions drawn from the study are: * The department complies with all the above legislation and keep the rules as stipulated in the legislation; * There is a need to issue a single national legislative framework in terms of section 76(4)(c) of the PFMA to guide uniformity in tendering process; * The tendering legislations and its associated regulations are complex and may make it difficult to implement correctly; * The department follow all tendering process generic steps at all times; * The current evaluation system is not a good system and is biased towards the lowest price bidders; * The current tendering practices in government are outdated and inefficient; * Tender practitioners are not adequately trained in the application of the tender process and its associated regulations; * The departments did not keep a detailed and consistent documentation of all events of the whole tendering procedure at all times; * The current tendering practices do not conform to internationally accepted best practices; * The department’s tendering function is not carried out in a cost–effective way; and * The current tendering system is fair, encourages competition, and has integrity. Practical recommendations are suggested to ensure the effective management of tendering process in national government. / Thesis (MBA)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

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We study three problems on supply chain location and inventory under uncertainty. In Chapter 2, we study the inventory purchasing and allocation problem in a movie rental chain under demand uncertainty. We formulate this problem as a newsvendor-like problem with multiple rental opportunities. We study several demand and return forecasting models based on comparable films using iterative maximum likelihood estimation and Bayesian estimation via Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation. Test results on data from a large movie rental firm reveal systematic under-buying of movies purchased through revenue sharing contracts and over-buying of movies purchased through standard ones. For the movies considered, the model estimates an increase in the average profit per title for new movies by 15.5% and 2.5% for revenue sharing and standard titles, respectively. We discuss the implications of revenue sharing on the profitability of both the rental firm and the studio. In Chapter 3, we focus on the effect of travel time uncertainty on the location of facilities that provide service within a given coverage radius on the transportation network. Three models - expected covering, robust covering and expected p-robust covering - are studied; each appropriate for different types of facilities. Exact and approximate algorithms are developed. The models are used to analyze the location of fire stations in the city of Toronto. Using real traffic data we show that the current system design is quite far from optimality and provide recommendations for improving the performance. In Chapter 4, we continue our analysis in Chapter 3 to study the trade-off between adding new facilities versus relocating some existing facilities. We consider a multi-objective problem that aims at minimizing the number of facility relocations while maximizing expected and worst case network coverage. Exact and approximate algorithms are developed to solve three variations of the problem and find expected--worst case trade-off curves for any given number of relocations. The models are used to analyze the addition of four new fire stations to the city of Toronto. Our results suggest that the benefit of adding four new stations is achievable, at a lower cost, by relocating 4-5 stations.

Recycling and remanufacturing returned goods are economically beneficial for companies since the cost of obtaining used parts is lower in many cases and selling price is close to that of a new product. This leads to decreased costs and thereby increased profits for the company. In addition, there are also great environmental benefits by keeping the structural integrity of a part; the energy used for disassembly and refurbishing is much lower than the energy required for raw material extraction and machining. Encompassing the returned goods makes the supply chain to closed loop supply chain, which is different from the traditional supply chain due to reverse logistics. A reverse flow of material is however usually more complex than a forward flow of parts and components from suppliers. This means that inventory management becomes critical and needs to be viewed from a new perspective. The purpose of the report is to study FAW Co., Ltd’s inventory situation in reverse logistics. The report analysed the inventory management in the company, specifically focusing on one product as the instance Motor Engine LFTS-2000since it is in the maturity stage of product life cycle. Two scenarios were designed to consider how different parameters affect inventory levels in reverse logistics. The report analysed how different parameters affect the inventory levels and minimum cost. With the increasing returned goods are processed, inventory levels and minimum cost will decrease correspondingly.

Logistics Transportation is an indispensable step that connects production, storage, and the final customers. Plenty of previous research has been done to achieve the goals such as low cost, high accuracy in timing, good customer service, and low damage rate, within the transportation system. However, most of those improvements are on the operational level. There are few supply chain collaborations that try to optimize logistics transportation from a strategic level. This thesis proposes a new collaboration policy, Carrier Managed Transportation (CMT). It is a coordinated relationship between the carrier and the clients in a supply chain. As opposed to the traditional approach, where the client decides when to request shipments of the products, in CMT, the carrier will make these decisions on their behalf through information sharing. Due to the complexity in relationships and responsibilities of chain members, we divide the business scenarios into four cases and discuss the impact of CMT on each case. Comparisons and numerical examples across cases are also provided, along with some conclusions regarding the implementation of CMT.

Because the business environment has changed (e.g., volatility in demand, curtailment of product life cycle, changing of information technology, and so forth), corporate supply chains become more network-connected and involve more business partners. Whether the company has the capability to operate well in such supply chain network becomes a significant issue. To fulfill this need, this research aims to develop a framework for measuring the supply chain capability. The literature review and company interviews allow us to propose four capabilities and relative measurements. A field survey is then conducted in the Taiwan PC industry to assess the measurements. To ensure the measurements are valid, we apply two-step measurement assessments: the factor analysis and initial reliability are first conducted and then followed by item-total correlation, optimal reliability coefficients, convergent validity, and discriminant validity. The resulting model is an 18-item and three-dimension construct. The three dimensions are: (1) reducing transaction related risk, (2) promoting good relationship, and (3) managing environment change. The confirmatory factor analysis then suggests us to arrange the three dimensions in two groups. The first group includes the first dimension, indicating the firm capability, and the second group includes the other two, expressing the inter-firm capability. We further explore the relationships between the supply chain capabilities and IOS adoption, as well as supply chain roles. It is interestingly to note that different IOS requires different capability and so does different supply chain roles. Therefore, the contribution of this research can be two-folded: first, the managers can use this reference framework to diagnose the supply chain capability of their own firms, finding their strength and weakness. Second, managers can use the framework to evaluate the capability of their partners and better gauge the characteristics of the supply chain collaboration. This research can also contribute to the IT literature as the researchers can build upon this model to further examine of the factors that are discovered.