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Over 13 million people live in Guatemala, and among this population more than 50% live below the poverty line. One proposed solution to mitigate the large percentage of poverty in the country is micro-entrepreneurship. A compost micro-enterprise is a small business, which collects organic raw material and processes it into stable humus material for the purpose of applying to soils to increase crop yields. Developing such micro-enterprises could not only indirectly improve current soil nutrient deficiencies specific to the region, but also provide alternative incomes for the already agriculturally involved community. The success or failure of enterprises practicing composting may be measured by a plethora of figures or outcomes. Employee characteristics are one variable that should be taken into consideration when estimating the efficiency of an agricultural enterprise's operations and productivity. While a variable, such as an employee characteristic, may not be able to be quantified exactly it should be argued that this variable can have a structural impact on productivity. Another crucial variable considered when developing such a micro-enterprise is accounting for its input and output. It is explained the issue of costs within micro-enterprises is complex and should be considered not only in terms of fees but also in terms of payments in any kind, such as entry and exit presence, and the duration of the apprenticeship. When an enterprise has failed to account for its various inputs and consequent output, it has become unsustainable because it has not satisfied basic economic, social and security needs presently and for its future. This study identified and described employee characteristics and documented the inputs and outputs of compost micro-enterprises in Chimaltenango, Guatemala. The study found that employee characteristics, particularly gender, age, and occupation affected a micro-enterprise's access to markets as well as row materials, and how efficiently tasks were completed. Costs of labor, raw material, transport, packaging, energy and the location the micro-enterprise itself heavily influenced profitability. The production of any product on a large scale must anticipate how positive financial outcomes will occur because profitability may not arrive as planned. If the revenue cannot be determined and/or made, compost micro-enterprise may fail to be a sustainable, much less a viable option for alternative income streams.

Inom logistiken finns det ett antal frågeställningar, där struktur är ett viktigt område. Strukturfrågorna berör bland annat distributionen, exempelvis om en färdig produkt ska lagras eller skickas direkt till kund samt hur själva transporten ska gå till. Distributionsstrukturen syftar till att överbrygga de gap som uppstår mellan producerande företag och konsumenterna av deras produkter. Distributionen är i vissa fall mer komplex än företaget i sig, där beslutsfattandet kan handla om vilka delar som ska outsourcas och vilka externa aktörer som ska samarbetas med. Val gällande distributionen kan vara avgörande för ett företags lönsamhet och konkurrensförmåga. Många författare hävdar dock att det inte finns någon generellt svar på hur en distributionsstruktur ska utformas utan det skiljer sig från situation till situation, exempelvis beroende på produkttyp. En produktgrupp där distributionen är av betydelse är FMCG-varor, då de bland annat kännetecknas av en stor geografisk spridning, hög lageromsättningshastighet och frekventa inköp.

The rapid growth of online games enables firms to charge players for virtual goods they sell for use within their online game environments. Determining prices for such virtual goods is inherently challenging due to the absence of explicit supply curve as the marginal cost of producing additional virtual goods is negligible. Utilizing sales data, we study daily revenue of a firm operating a virtual world and selling cards. Explicitly, we analyze the impact of new product releases on revenue using ARIMA with intervention model. We show that during initial days after a new product release, the firm's daily revenue significantly increases. Using a quality measure, based on the Elo rating method, we can determine the relative good prices based on good usage. Applying this method we show that the rating of a product can be a good proxy for units sold. We conclude that our quality-based measure can be adopted for pricing other virtual goods.

This thesis investigates whether luxury handbags in secondary markets make for viable invesments. Reasoning for the investment potential of designer handbags is primarily based on the excessive retail price increases of luxury goods. Prices of handbags were collected from FashionPhile, a source that provides product authentication. The analysis attempts to understand characteristics of the FashionPhile market and how prices changed from April 28, 2006 to March 2, 2011. This thesis identifies which brands and models of handbags had the highest returns and which brands have the highest resale potential. Insight into when the highest and lowest market prices for handbags occurred for each brand is also included.

The overarching theme of the book is differential treatment in death, which is examined at the site-specific, settlement, regional and national level. More specifically, the symbolism of conversion-period grave good deposition, the impact of the church, and aspects of identity, burial diversity and biocultural approaches to cemetery analysis are discussed.

This thesis presents a series of integrated models for simultaneous optimization of location, capacity, product range, and production technology decisions in production-distribution systems. The interactions between these decisions can be significant. This thesis draws its motivation from these interactions. In order to benefit from the capital and/or employment subsidies, preferential tax rates, and free trade zones provided by governments, firms need to take the interdependencies between their location, capacity and technology decisions into account. These decisions could be further complicated due to varying scale and scope economies inherent in different production technologies. / The models proposed in this thesis are based on two fundamentally different but equally central approaches. The first approach builds on traditionally popular integer programming formulation in facility location theory, in which two such models presented in this thesis. The first one assumes that there are a number of dedicated production technologies for each product whereas, the second one assumes that a set of flexible technologies is also present. Analytical properties of the models are described, which lead to the development of exact and heuristic solution procedures. Results of several sets of computational experiments are also reported. The second approach is based on continuous approximation (also known as continuum mechanics), which has not been used to its potential in the literature. The third model in this thesis is proposed for a system with single product. It is based on the use of continuous functions in representing spatial distribution of cost parameters and decision variables. In this model, the focus is to compute the service regions leaving the precise plant locations to a subsequent analysis. This model lends itself to closed form solutions and allows derivation of a number of insights on the impact of several cost factors on facility design decisions. Then, it is utilized in an analytical framework to analyze several plant focus decisions of firms in a multi-product environment. The closed form solution is used to analyze several product and market focus strategies, which have provided several insights into more sophisticated plant focus decisions and into the impact of different production technologies on these decisions.

Given the regional nature of freight movement, the metropolitan planning organization (MPO) is one of the most appropriate agencies to deal directly with this challenge. However, most metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) have little experience planning for freight. There is a need for a planning framework that MPOs can use to incorporate freight considerations into the planning process. The purpose of this research is to analyze the freight planning efforts of a number of MPOs and provide a conceptual framework for integrating freight into transportation planning. The methodology used to conduct this research was the case study approach. Information regarding the freight planning activities of several large MPOs were obtained both through collection of available on-line documents and, when appropriate, through direct contact with MPO representatives. Subsequently, this was reviewed and summarized into case studies that noted the nature of the freight planning activities, the process by which MPOs conducted studies, and the components of those studies. Finally, a conceptual framework for incorporating freight into transportation planning was developed based on the data collected and the case studies. As a result of these studies, it was concluded that MPOs are beginning to address freight movement concerns, but there are still deficiencies in their planning processes that the conceptual framework could highlight. These deficiencies are primarily in the areas of performance measure development, the implementation of freight programs, and the appearance of only nominal freight planning efforts. In addition to these deficiencies, there are certain obstacles that must be addressed and overcome. These include a lack of data, the level of sophistication found in freight modeling, the participation of freight stakeholders in the planning process, and the lack of freight-specific dollars for transportation investment.

Supply chain scheduling (SCS) emerged as a result of the integrated Supply Chain Management concept and should be incorporated in planning and operating Supply Chain (SC). The review of literature indicated integration of SCS in the SC is still far from being achieved. Recognising that optimisation of scheduling activities separately will only lead to local optima, this research proposes a SCS global optimisation through the integration of scheduling within manufacturing and distribution networks. / Thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 2008.

This thesis discusses the use of inventory pooling methods in inventory management for the so-called multi-location systems whereby the stocking locations share their inventories, typically by using lateral transhipments, in order to fill demand at a stock-out retailer with supplies from another having surplus items. The capability of conventional pooled-inventory systems are upgraded with the proposal herin of a novel approach that employs emergency orders along with lateral transshipments to improve network performamce under a high shortage-penalty environment. / Thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 2008.