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

This dissertation examines task specialization in the public administration profession through studying the job tasks that a public procurement practitioner performs, manages, and both performs and manages. The purpose of this dissertation was to establish a baseline to benchmark what these practitioners actually do on their jobs. Factor analysis was used to study a data set of 2,549 respondents that were administered a survey by the Universal Public Procurement Certification Council (UPPCC) in 2012. The research question to be answered involved addressing what job tasks public procurement practitioners perform, manage, and both perform and manage. Hypotheses were examined that predicted task specialization existing within public procurement to the extent that practitioners in more senior job positions display more task specialization and that practitioners from larger organizations also display more task specialization. A review of literature discusses the alternative perspectives on what constitutes professionalism in the public sector. The reasons for focusing on public procurement professionalism were subsequently presented through the literature. The various views of what entails professionalism in public administration were discussed as to responsibility (Stivers, 1994), sociological issues (Simon, 1947), constitutional issues (Lowi, 1995; Rohr, 1986), technical specialization and empirical rigor (Parsons, 1939), as means of contextualizing the nature of public administrators’ roles and responsibilities in conjunction with the job tasks that are executed. Factor analysis was conducted on 75 job tasks in order to identify relationships between practitioner job tasks for the purposes of finding out what it is that public procurement practitioners actually do for their work. The job tasks found to share relationships may be grouped together for further inquiry into the nature of the relationships between job tasks and overarching competency areas of related job tasks. Additionally, factor analyses were conducted to identify relationships between job tasks in public procurement and control variables such as organization size and job position, which were predicted to impact whether or not practitioners perform, manage, both perform and manage, or do neither, for each of the job tasks surveyed. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2016. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Wong, Chun Hung Eliphas. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 74-78). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / Acknowledgement --- p.v / Thesis/Assessement Committee --- p.vi / List of Figures --- p.xi / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Literature Review --- p.13 / Chapter 1.2 --- K-Convexity --- p.16 / Chapter 1.2.1 --- "The (s, S)policy and cardinal optimality equation form" --- p.17 / Chapter 2 --- Inventory Problem --- p.25 / Chapter 2.1 --- Two-channel Inventory Model --- p.26 / Chapter 2.1.1 --- Model Formulation --- p.27 / Chapter 2.2 --- The total expected cost and constraints --- p.34 / Chapter 2.3 --- The optimality equation --- p.37 / Chapter 3 --- The two phase optimal policy --- p.40 / Chapter 3.1 --- Deviation of two phase optimal policy --- p.41 / Chapter 3.1.1 --- "First phase optimization - The (s, S, s') policy" --- p.42 / Chapter 3.1.2 --- Second phase optimization --- p.46 / Chapter 3.2 --- More about the optimal policy --- p.60 / Chapter 4 --- Further discussion and conclusion --- p.64 / Chapter 4.1 --- Multi-period problem --- p.65 / Chapter 4.1.1 --- Model formulation --- p.65 / Chapter 4.1.2 --- The challenges in extending the optimal policy --- p.67 / Chapter 4.2 --- Conclusion --- p.69 / Bibliography --- p.74

Thesis (MBA.) -- University of Limpopo, 2015 / Refer to document

Raw material resources in Taiwan are limited; moreover, Taiwan has a small market scale, so Taiwan¡¦s enterprises must develop toward globalization. This research regards passive component industry of Taiwan as research object and examines how the requirements of the global supply chain are when the local industries transform into the global ones through the secondary data. This research also utilizes an innovation model to analyze the change in business model and the core component of IT architecture. What information technology and core capability should the enterprises possess to overcome the challenges of globalization? This research has found that the enterprise has significant changes both in core capability of the IT architecture and business model while it transforms the local business into the global business. Globalization for the Corporation is a radical innovation. This research finally concludes that the passive component industry for global supply chain has to possess 5 capabilities of business model management and 5 IT abilities to promote the competitiveness of globalization.

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This study is based on the strategic and logistical challenges of having a complex distribution network, which can make it difficult to get a holistic view over the distribution costs. The costs are often aggregated for many products, which makes it challenging to use as decision support on a product level. Many companies lack a tool to handle this complexity, since the costs and profitability varies between the channels and intermediaries used. This makes it problematic to determine the profitability on a product level. In the different parts of the distribution chain, there are elements that drive the costs for each activity, called activity drivers. When these activity drivers have been identified, they can be used to allocate the distribution costs to the different products. The aim of this study is to develop a tool that can be used to categorize distribution costs and to determine which activity drivers that result in the fairest cost allocation. The fairest cost allocation is a complex expression, and is briefly defined as the allocation key that result in a costs allocation that represent each products level of resource consumption. This means that products that have consumed a large amount of resources should carry a larger part of the costs compared to the products that have consumed a smaller amount of resources. Sometimes it is not obvious which allocation key that represents the reality in the fairest way, and in that case, the allocated costs are compared to the products sales values. The sales value often differs between the products. The determined allocation key is the one that result in the most even allocation when comparing the allocated cost to the sales values. The case company Swedish Orphan Biovitrum (Sobi) is located in Stockholm, Sweden. They find it difficult to get a view over the costs for the different parts of the distribution chain, and to allocate the costs fair between the products. This study have investigated the distribution from Sobi’s central warehouse in the Netherlands to the end customers in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom via the local storages in each country, as well as Sweden and Estonia. This was done by categorizing the costs for each activity in the invoices from the local storages, into different cost categories. After this, the costs were allocated with different allocation keys that thereafter were compared, to find the most fair allocation key per category. In the end of this study, the lessons learned and methods used have been written down, and an allocation tool has been developed. Any company that wants to make strategic decisions on a product level can use this tool. Throughout the study, the five steps that make up the allocation tool have been followed. The tool is divided into the following steps; determination of cost categories, choice of activities, selection of activity drivers, categorization of costs and analyzing activity drivers. When choosing allocation key, it is essential to find the balance between an even allocation of the costs between the products, and to make sure that the allocation represent each products level of resource consumption. If the allocation is unfair, it can make products look unprofitable, even though they actually are profitable and necessary in reality. The difficulties to find a balance show the complexity in the determination of the most fair allocation key, since it is not always obvious. If the cost categories had been divided into smaller categories with more similar activity drivers, the dilemma of choosing allocation key might have been solved. However, it is important to bear in mind that when using more cost categories, the categorization and allocation becomes more time consuming. The tool has been created as a result of this study, and is based on a complex situation, which means that assumptions and simplifications have been made to be able to draw general conclusions. It is important to bare these simplifications in mind, when applying the tool to other situations than the one investigated in this study. The allocation tool can be used to draw strategic conclusions on a product level, since it makes it possible to be aware of the profitability of the products and, if necessary, exclude unprofitable products from the product assortment.

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Interest in the supply chain management concept by the construction research community arose from the successful implementation by manufacturing sectors to resolve firm and industry performance problems. Construction industry policymakers have appropriated the concept. Researchers tend to develop normative models to improve industry performance through supply chain integration. Such models are based upon the assumption of an homogeneous industry which is fragmented and composed of numerous small to medium sized enterprises. Policymakers are seeking positive economic models however policies are not based upon an explicit detailed understanding of the nature of the industry nor an explicit model of firm and industry performance. The positive economic model accepts that the industry is specialised and heterogenous with varied structural and behavioural characteristics across individual markets. The greatest difficulty with supply chain management in terms of construction research theory and practical application is that currently too little is known about these characteristics and how to describe them. / Procurement modelling across the supply chain is fundamental to describing the underlying structure and behaviour of the industry. The industrial organisation economics theory was examined for its contribution and the structure-conduct-performance methodology was modified to develop a project oriented industrial organisation economic model for procurement in the construction supply chain. The model defines entities such as firms, projects, markets and firm-firm relationships and their relative associations. The model was static and nomothetic in approach and lacked the capacity to represent the duality of structure and behaviour of entities and individual procurement and project scenarios. The object-oriented methodology was used to address this and reinterpret the construction supply chain using the Unified Modelling Language. The model is interdisciplinary and merges industrial organisation economics and object-oriented methodology. Structural and behavioural model views of real world procurement in construction supply chains were developed based upon six major building projects in an Australian city. On thousand two hundred and fifty three procurement relationships were mapped using data collected from forty seven structured interviews and forty four questionnaires. / The data analysis was qualitative and quantitative. Data display techniques were used to describe common themes and differences to develop an ideographic view of procurement. A statistical categorical data analysis provided a nomothetic view by comparing observed procurement results versus likelihood of expected results. The findings indicate that classifications of objects within the supply chain procurement model provides clues to structure and behaviour. Eight structural organisation maps of key construction industry commodities describe typical channels according to the type of commodity and the major groupings within the commodities. Supply chains can be classes according to attributes including uniqueness, property sector, importation and specialisation. Supplier firms can be classed by: commodity significance and countervailing power. The procurement relationships between firms can be classified based upon risk and expenditure, transaction significance and negotiation attributes. There are patterns of behaviour in the industry reliant upon a set of “if / then” type rules. This study concludes that the perception of the industry as fragmented, unstructured, unpredictable and high risk is a simplistic view of what is in reality a complex set of varied and numerous markets with degrees of predictability. Contrary to the traditional view, procurement is a strategic activity. This study highlights numerous research opportunities particularly in the area of interdisciplinary construction industry studies.

M.Com. (Business Management) / In articles, research papers and books, the concept of managing logistics as an intergral part of total business - an interconnected pipeline of information, activities and materials from source to final destination - has been widely touted as an idea whose time has come. Integrated logistics management, provides senior executives with the tool to supervise and manage the logistics activities as an intergrated system that spans traditional organisational lines. This study provides an overview of logistics with emphasis on the intergrated logistics management concept and how to administer it. It concludes with a case study, using the concept to optimize an export logistics chain.