Perishability of fluid milk presents challenges for efficient distribution and limits market expansion for dairy when temperatures cannot be fully controlled during transportation. This research develops a modeling framework that integrates food science and economic parameters examining the impacts of different demand specifications on the cost minimization and profit maximization problem of fluid milk. The square root model from the food science literature is used to estimate the shelf-life of fluid milk at retail level. The shelf-life parameter is then used as input to the fixed- order quantity inventory model from the business economic literature. Additionally two demand specifications, the own-price elasticity and the negative binomial distribution, are used to calculate the total cost of managing inventory and resulting profit. Modeling results confirm that fluctuations in temperature and time dramatically increase the percentage of perishability cost and decrease profitability. Specifications of retail demand directly impact outcomes of the inventory model. Under the demand model based on price elasticity, simulated total costs are lower and profits are higher than under the negative binomial specification. The negative binomial distribution approach provides a simulated outcome where sales losses are minimized and customer satisfaction is higher. This thesis proposes, presents and uses a working model that can be extended and directly applied for fluid milk as well as other perishable food supplies.

This thesis was carried out at Borggårds Bruk AB, a company which specializes in wire products and is located just northwest of Finspång, in Borggård, Sweden. The company’s business idea is to produce tailor-made products for Scandinavian customers with high requirements for product development, prototyping, quality and reliability. The purpose of this thesis is to look further into the raw material warehouse in the factory, to find any possible improvements that can be made. This is done by analysing both the material and the information flow in the warehouse. The analysis results in several problems being acknowledged, such as a complete lack of location labels, material stored between the racks and the placement of the most used materials being stored at random places in the warehouse. A new layout, where all locations can be seen is created to make it easier for anyone to find material in the warehouse. A new sorting system is implemented, creating fixed places for the top six most used materials (which equal 68% of the material used). These are moved as close as possible to the production to decrease any unnecessary transports.

The dissertation contains two major research projects. In the first project, we first study a multi-period inventory planning problem. In each period, the firm under consideration can source from two possibly unreliable suppliers for a price-dependent demand. Our analysis suggests that the optimal procurement policy is neither a simple reorder-point policy nor a complex one without any structure, as previous studies suggest. Instead, we prove the existence of a reorder point for each supplier. No order is placed to that supplier for any inventory level above the reorder point and a positive order is issued to that supplier for almost every inventory level below the reorder point. We characterize conditions under which the optimal policy reveals monotone response to changes in the inventory level. Furthermore, two special cases of our model are examined in detail to demonstrate how our analysis generalizes a number of well-known results in the literature. In the second project, we study a long-run inventory planning problem in which the retailer can replenish inventory and change price adjustment. We establish that it is optimal to change the price from low to high in each replenishment cycle, the optimal order-up-to level may decrease when the ordering cost increases, and fewer customers are served when the unit cost of procurement increases. Additionally, we provide efficient algorithms to compute the optimal stocking and pricing policies. / text

No description available.

No abstract available Copyright / Dissertation (MCom (Business Management))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Business Management / unrestricted

The presented work relates with the purchasing management in construction. It consists of two parts. In the first part, we will focus on the theory of purchasing, then discuss the individual steps of the purchasing management and inventory management in the business. Moreover, we will bring insights from the area of suppliers - their selection and evaluation. In second, practical part, we analyze the current state of the purchasing management in selected companies. The output of attached work is a proposal for improvements and recommendations for business purchase following performed analysis.

La presente investigación trata sobre el impacto de la Gestión de Inventarios en los Objetivos Operacionales de la minería metálica, específicamente del oro, elemento básico para la fabricación de joyas, productos industriales y como refugio financiero de inversionistas. This research deals with the impact of Inventory Management on the Operational Objectives of metallic mining, specifically gold, a basic element for the manufacture of jewelry, industrial products and as a financial refuge for investors.

Chain of custody in the forest sector is very dependent on effectively tracking products though the supply chain and manufacturing processes, including sawmilling, drying, planing, and pulp processes. The effectiveness of a tracking system is largely influenced by the characteristics of the process it works within, the nature of the tracking system being used, and increasingly by the penetration of technologically advanced material tracking methods into on-the-ground CoC practices. A variety of CoC systems that exist in the global marketplace accommodate the use of advanced materials tracking systems as a tool for their their implementation. These advances not only offer the potential to reinforce the traceability of products in inventory, but also promote maintenance of their certified status between the various organizations that exist along the wood product supply chain, and ultimately to the end consumer. In the past, a number of different product tracking methods have been used, all of which suffer certain shortcomings in the challenging environment of the forest industry, and the extremely complex nature of Chain of Custody tracking. This work explores the development of a novel material tracking method using the innate IR signatures of polymeric compounds, varied by compound and concentration to develop millions of potential combinations, and consequently millions of unique identities. The combined variation of multiple IR peak frequencies and magnitudes provide the conceptual basis of a chemical barcode system, named "Chemi-Code", to be explored. To prove the validity of this concept, a series of polymers were assayed for suitability in such a system by tracking their IR response stability in the presence of solar UV radiation and over time. As well, the feasibility of varying polymer concentration, and subsequently identification of concentrations by DRIFT spectroscopy was explored by constructing response curves between polymer concentration and peak absorbance, and assessing associated error. Seven polymers were identified and assessed. Only two of these polymers were found to be sufficiently stable for use in the context of the forest industry, and of those two, only one behaved in a manner that would allow peak absorbance to be used as an identifiable chemical variable. Although only one of the seven polymers was suitable for use in the "Chemi-Code" system, the study did demonstrate the validity of the concept by showing that polymers can be exploited for use in such a system.

Chain of custody in the forest sector is very dependent on effectively tracking products though the supply chain and manufacturing processes, including sawmilling, drying, planing, and pulp processes. The effectiveness of a tracking system is largely influenced by the characteristics of the process it works within, the nature of the tracking system being used, and increasingly by the penetration of technologically advanced material tracking methods into on-the-ground CoC practices. A variety of CoC systems that exist in the global marketplace accommodate the use of advanced materials tracking systems as a tool for their their implementation. These advances not only offer the potential to reinforce the traceability of products in inventory, but also promote maintenance of their certified status between the various organizations that exist along the wood product supply chain, and ultimately to the end consumer. In the past, a number of different product tracking methods have been used, all of which suffer certain shortcomings in the challenging environment of the forest industry, and the extremely complex nature of Chain of Custody tracking. This work explores the development of a novel material tracking method using the innate IR signatures of polymeric compounds, varied by compound and concentration to develop millions of potential combinations, and consequently millions of unique identities. The combined variation of multiple IR peak frequencies and magnitudes provide the conceptual basis of a chemical barcode system, named "Chemi-Code", to be explored. To prove the validity of this concept, a series of polymers were assayed for suitability in such a system by tracking their IR response stability in the presence of solar UV radiation and over time. As well, the feasibility of varying polymer concentration, and subsequently identification of concentrations by DRIFT spectroscopy was explored by constructing response curves between polymer concentration and peak absorbance, and assessing associated error. Seven polymers were identified and assessed. Only two of these polymers were found to be sufficiently stable for use in the context of the forest industry, and of those two, only one behaved in a manner that would allow peak absorbance to be used as an identifiable chemical variable. Although only one of the seven polymers was suitable for use in the "Chemi-Code" system, the study did demonstrate the validity of the concept by showing that polymers can be exploited for use in such a system.

Chain of custody in the forest sector is very dependent on effectively tracking products though the supply chain and manufacturing processes, including sawmilling, drying, planing, and pulp processes. The effectiveness of a tracking system is largely influenced by the characteristics of the process it works within, the nature of the tracking system being used, and increasingly by the penetration of technologically advanced material tracking methods into on-the-ground CoC practices. A variety of CoC systems that exist in the global marketplace accommodate the use of advanced materials tracking systems as a tool for their their implementation. These advances not only offer the potential to reinforce the traceability of products in inventory, but also promote maintenance of their certified status between the various organizations that exist along the wood product supply chain, and ultimately to the end consumer. In the past, a number of different product tracking methods have been used, all of which suffer certain shortcomings in the challenging environment of the forest industry, and the extremely complex nature of Chain of Custody tracking. This work explores the development of a novel material tracking method using the innate IR signatures of polymeric compounds, varied by compound and concentration to develop millions of potential combinations, and consequently millions of unique identities. The combined variation of multiple IR peak frequencies and magnitudes provide the conceptual basis of a chemical barcode system, named "Chemi-Code", to be explored. To prove the validity of this concept, a series of polymers were assayed for suitability in such a system by tracking their IR response stability in the presence of solar UV radiation and over time. As well, the feasibility of varying polymer concentration, and subsequently identification of concentrations by DRIFT spectroscopy was explored by constructing response curves between polymer concentration and peak absorbance, and assessing associated error. Seven polymers were identified and assessed. Only two of these polymers were found to be sufficiently stable for use in the context of the forest industry, and of those two, only one behaved in a manner that would allow peak absorbance to be used as an identifiable chemical variable. Although only one of the seven polymers was suitable for use in the "Chemi-Code" system, the study did demonstrate the validity of the concept by showing that polymers can be exploited for use in such a system. / Forestry, Faculty of / Graduate