Organisations need to know more in order to do more for customers. As demand for customer information grows, so to, do the archives in the back office and the servers at the central hub. It is estimated that the amount of data now captured and stored nearly doubles every 12-18 months.(Information Week) The logistics industry is plagued by the very element of changing customer demands, customization thus resulting in the survival of the fittest. The informed customer demands an integrated product offering customised to their needs. This industry has evolved to one where companies need deep pockets to ensure an IT platform capable of meeting the increasing demands of the modern supply chain. The objective of the report is to gain further insight and understanding of how stakeholders within South Africa assess the flow of information as an enabler to greater collaboration within the supply chain. Information flow is one of the many elements that contribute toward greater collaboration, which is a recent trend in supply chain management that focuses on joint planning, coordination and process integration between stakeholders in the supply chain (Spekman et al 1998). Globalisation and the advent of e-commerce Business 2 Business transactions and the Lean production philosophies that are being adopted by more and more industries is demanding real time, data exchange and information flow in order to make the necessary and timely decisions which are required to meet ever changing customer demands. Information is only one of the areas in which tremendous benefit can be derived, this paper considers a thorough literature review of aspects surrounding information flow from a global perspective and assesses the feedback of South African organisations in relation to this theme with the view to providing readers with greater insight to possible opportunities that may exist for improvement in their respective supply chain. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

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published_or_final_version / Urban Planning / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

In Chapter 4, we consider a supply chain which consists of a manufacturer, a logistics service provider (LSP) and a retailer. The LSP provides the emergency replenishment, financing and logistics services. The advent of the LSP changes the structure and incentive in the traditional one-supplier-one-retailer channel. We develop a framework of 3-player game to investigate the dynamics and competitive behaviors with multiple decision sequences. We provide the explicit equilibria for different decision sequences and demonstrate the possibility that the LSP and the manufacturer collude to create price increment, which squeezes out the retailer. Whereas, the triple marginalization effect is alleviated. / Supply chain coordination and associated contracts have been an active research area for supply chain management research. Yet, little has been done in addressing robustness matters of design, evaluation, and implementation for these coordination contracts. In chapter 2 and 3, we develop a consistency framework for supply chain contracts and classify a number of well-studied contracts into groups. We demonstrate with examples that coordination contracts can be evaluated by their consistency properties. Based on precise mathematical definitions and subsequently developed structural properties and management insights, we are not only able to measure the goodness of supply contracts but also to reveal the nature of their coordination. Our findings open an avenue for design, evaluation and implementation of supply chain coordination contracts. / Lu, Meng. / Adviser: Houmin Yan. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-06, Section: B, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 138-147). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.

In light of all these, we study in this dissertation the application of the classical Mean-Variance Theory in finance for supply chain models. In mathematical finance, pioneered by the Nobel laureate Harry Markowitz in the 1950s, the Mean-Variance Theory has been an important theory for risk control in portfolio management. Under the Mean-Variance Theory, we can quantify the profit and risk in a portfolio investment by the expected return and variance of return, respectively. The Mean-Variance Theory has been demonstrated to be very applicable in practice. Based on the spirit of the Mean-Variance Theory, many optimal investment policies in finance are developed. / In the supply chain management literature under the stochastic environment, most of the proposed policies target at improving the supply chain's efficiency in terms of the expected cost reduction or the expected profit improvement. However, the performance measure with an expected value alone lacks precision when the corresponding variance is high. It also ignores the risk preferences of individual supply chain's decision makers. In order to provide a tailor-fit optimal decision-making policy for the decision maker, it is desirable to have a systematic and quantifiable measure for risk preference. / In this dissertation, using the idea of the Mean-Variance Theory, together with the Bayesian Decision Theory and the other optimization techniques, we study, analyze and build various supply chain management models, which include the inventory problems, the supply chain coordinating buyback contracts, and the optimal ordering policies with information updates. / This dissertation is divided into two parts and each part contains several chapters. Each chapter can be treated as a self-contained paper and the Mean-Variance Theory has been applied in each one of them. Throughout this dissertation, short example cases and numerical studies with computer simulations are included to illustrate the applicability of the models. From the studies in this dissertation, we can see that the classical Mean-Variance Theory can provide a systematic framework for the scientific studies of risk and uncertainty control in stochastic supply chain models in the information age. Moreover, the importance of risk control in supply chain management should not be neglected. / by Tsan-Ming Choi. / "September 2002." / Mentors: Duan Li; Houmin Yan. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 63-10, Section: B, page: 4844. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 206-225). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest dissertations and theses, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

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published_or_final_version / Urban Planning / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

published_or_final_version / Geography and Geology / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / abstract / Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / abstract / Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy