Sustainability has become a prevalent societal value and is ubiquitous in public discourse. Securing sustainable economic growth on increasingly globalized markets is perceived by many as one of the greatest challenges of our time. Supply chains have become globally dispersed and are increasingly complex to manage. Companies are experiencing higher expectations from their stakeholders in terms of their sustainability performance. They can no longer renounce responsibility for the actions of their suppliers and need to manage their sourcing activities so as to ensure sustainable supply chains. This poses a challenge but can at the same time present a business opportunity. There have been attempts to identify a business justification and rational for pursuing sustainability in sourcing. However, previous research has been primarily theoretical and has lacked practical applicability. The current study seeks to investigate the key features of the business case for sustainability. It also seeks to identify how the business case can be realized in sourcing activities. The current study has an exploratory design and revolves around a single case company. It utilizes both primary- and secondary data as well as a rigorous literature review. The primary data consist of a pre-study as well as interviews whereas the secondary data consist of a review of the current sustainability- and sourcing processes of the case company. The study culminates in a thematic analysis of the empirical data as well as a subsequent discussion. The empirical data indicates that the market is exhibiting an increasing demand for products with a strong sustainability profile. Additionally, it indicates that sustainable sourcing will become increasingly important for complying with regulations, attracting employees and reducing risk throughout the supply chain. Currently, suppliers’ sustainability performance is predominantly managed through the screening process and there is no functional metric available for practitioners to quantitively evaluate it. Rather than relying solely on sustainability requirements, the empirical data indicates that it is through cooperation and joint initiatives the greatest results can be achieved. We conclude that there is business case for pursuing sustainability as it: reduces risk and costs; increases companies’ ability to retain and recruit employees; cost efficiently comply with regulations; retain and attract customers and increase overall competitiveness. In order to realize the business case, it is imperative for companies to formulate clearly defined goals and subsidiary objectives to follow up on established trajectories. Since there is no metric suitable for measuring sustainability performance it is advisable to adopt a reductionist approach. The screening process should be devoted to binary variables while the evaluations process should be concerned with those who can be quantifiably evaluated. Companies should work closely with suppliers by identifying opportunities for synergistic value creation and engage in joint initiatives. Finally, companies need to communicate their efforts and achievements to all concerned stakeholders.

As companies find better ways of dealing with creating value and cost efficiencies in their Procurement areas, one key trend is the concept of Category-led Supply Management (CLSM). CLSM is a concept that takes a cross-functional team that leads a category of services and/or products towards developing sourcing strategies that comply with the corporate objectives through the logical grouping of similar expense items. Each group is driven to satisfy the unique sourcing, contract, payment, performance, and attributes of each spending category. In this process, CLSM creates a strong partnership with suppliers and an ongoing Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) that will satisfy business needs while maximizing the value delivered through the supply base. Considering that the Supplier is always one critical factor present from the start to the end of the ongoing Strategic Sourcing process, seeing the Supplier as a Lifecycle Management process can help companies recognize their suppliers as a prime source of value to the organization that plays a central row in the success of the Procurement Strategy.The following thesis will analyze, in a research method of a case study, a specific Category in a company and explore the relationship that existed between the supplier and the company to illustrate the importance of Strategic Sourcing and how it is implemented in practice by companies. The case study helped understand the importance of involving Supplier Relationships in a Strategic Sourcing process. Finally, the Case study enlightened how having a milestone-by-milestone methodology helped understand how a business operates and how procurement activity impacts upon them when capturing savings by managing a Category.

Lithic source analysis, or “sourcing,” is a geochemical compositional analysis of lithic materials for both major and trace elements. Sourcing analysis assigns lithic sources to geochemical groups according to distinct geochemical compositions, where unique elemental signatures represent separate lithic sources. In archaeological research, sourcing informs upon mobility strategies, trade and exchange networks, and lithic conveyance studies. While obsidian sourcing is a relatively reliable and popular technique, chert sourcing is more difficult and historically less successful largely due to variability in chert formation processes. X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF) offers a possible sourcing technique, and is non-destructive, as well as time and cost-effective. In this thesis, I test the reliability of XRF in determining the geochemical characterization of Tosawihi Quarries chert, a unique chert source located in the Humboldt River Basin of north-central Nevada. The Tosawihi Quarries archaeological district (26EK6624) is a significant lithic resource that has hosted human occupation and activity for millennia. The Tosawihi Quarries offers a high quality toolstone that was intensely used, as indicated by numerous quarry locales and biface tool caches. Additionally, the Tosawihi Quarries is a social identity marker for the Tosawihi band of Western Shoshone, also serving as a source of spirituality and medicine. Tosawihi chert is a distinct, white lithic material type that also has a characteristic fluorescence pattern when exposed to ultraviolet light. While these are defining attributes, they are not unique to Tosawihi chert, as they occur in other Great Basin white chert sources. Identifying Tosawihi chert has been problematic, and misidentifications may have led to erroneous interpretations of the archaeological and ethnographic records. If successful, a geochemical characterization by XRF would provide an elemental signature specific to Tosawihi chert, thus eliminating discrepancies in visual and ultraviolet fluorescence readings and permitting archaeologists to accurately asses the distribution and use of this sacred material. In this thesis research, I first conducted an XRF analysis of a source standard collection of Tosawihi Quarries chert, which yielded a preliminary methodology for identifying Tosawihi chert. This protocol was tested against two comparative collections of other Great Basin white cherts: Mono Lake Spillway located in western Nevada and Pahute Mesa (26NY1408) located in southern Nevada. The methodology, now refined, was then run against the archaeological collection, where five collections of white chert artifacts were tested for the presence of Tosawihi chert. Incorporating both the qualitative and quantitative data from XRF analysis, the results show that this proposed methodology can successfully discriminate between Tosawihi chert and other Great Basin white cherts based on its XRF signature.

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Introducing event sourcing to a system that is based on a model following Create, Read, Update and Delete (CRUD) operations can be a challenging task and requires an extensive rework of the current system. By introducing coarse-grained events it is possible to persist the structure of the data in a CRUD model and still gain the benefits of event sourcing, avoiding an extensive rework of the system. This thesis investigates how large amounts of data can be handled with coarse-grained events and still gain the benefits of event sourcing, by comparing with the conventional way of using fine-grained events. The data to be examined is trade data fed into a data warehouse. Based on research, an event sourcing application is implemented for coarse-grained as well as fine-grained events, to measure the difference between the two event types. The difference is limited to the metrics, latency and size of storage. The application is verified with an error handler, using example data and a profiler to make sure that it does not have any unnecessary bottlenecks. The resulting performance of the two cases show that fine-grained events have excessively larger latency than coarse-grained events in most cases whereas the size of storage is strictly smaller for fine-grained events. / Att introducera event sourcing i ett system baserat på en model som använder Create-, Read-, Update- och Delete-operationer (CRUD) kan vara en utmanande uppgift och kräver en omfattande omstrukturering av det nuvarande systemet. Genom att introducera grova händelser är det möjligt att bevara hela strukturen på datan i en CRUD-modell och ändå få fördelarna med event sourcing, för att därigenom undvika en omfattande omarbetning av systemet. Detta arbete undersöker hur stora datamängder kan hanteras genom grova händelser och ändå ge fördelarna med event sourcing, genom att jämföra med det konventionella sättet att använda fina händelser. Datan som undersöks är transaktionsdata på finansiella derivat som matas in i ett datalager. Baserat på forskning implementeras en event sourcing-applikation för både grova och fina händelser, för att mäta skillnaden mellan dessa två händelsetyper. Skillnaden är avgränsad till latens och lagringsutrymme. Applikationen verifieras genom felhantering, exempeldata och profilering för att säkerställa att den inte har några onödiga flaskhalsar. Den resulterande prestandan visar att fina händelser har betydligt större latens än grova händelser i de flesta fallen, medan lagringsutrymmet är strikt mindre för fina händelser.

The purpose of this study is to explore possibilities for textile companies in European high-cost countries to relocate production to low-cost countries in North Africa by performing a case study on Sweden and Morocco. The study will thereby contribute to increased understanding of nearshoring opportunities in low-cost countries. Sweden is seen as an example of a European high-cost country and Morocco is seen as an example of a North African low-cost country. By investigating nearshoring from a European high-cost country to a North African low-cost country, the authors conclude the advantages and disadvantages of nearshoring. Through a case study with a qualitative approach, observations and semi-structured interviews with industry professionals were conducted. The interviews were designed to investigate the advantages and disadvantages of relocation of production from both the production country perspective and from the outsourcing country perspective. The authors identified disadvantages that include increased labor and production costs, financial assistance for environmental standards, human rights issues and bad supplier relationships. Despite challenges, nearshoring offers advantages like increased flexibility and potential sustainable development, enhancing brand image and potentially increasing revenue. The findings emphasize the need for future research on differentiating nearshoring from traditional offshoring, assessing the environmental implications of various sourcing locations, and exploring the supplier-customer relationship for successful nearshoring implementation.

Poverty Point is a monumental earthwork center dating to the Late Archaic Period (ca. 3700-3100 Cal BP). The site is well known for its diverse collection of foreign lithic materials indicative of a wide-ranging acquisition network. Among the extra-local items recovered from the site are lithic raw materials that were used for bifaces in the form of projectile points and/or knives (PP/Ks). Here, I determined the atomic and molecular composition of 847 bifaces from the Alexander Collection using Visible/Near-Infrared Reflectance (VNIR) and Fourier-Transform Infrared Reflectance (FTIR) spectroscopy. The combined wavelength spectra datasets were compared to a raw material database to determine the location of the parent formations from which the raw materials were obtained. The PP/K raw materials analyzed were sourced to outcrops stretching across the Southeast, Mid-South and Mid-West.

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