This thesis is about the effects of fertilizing and thinning on furniture timber from redwood. Interviews of furniture manufactures have been made and observing of timber from the Swedish fertilizing and thinning trails. The result from the interviews showed which properties that is important for the furniture manufactures and then the result from the observation showed which type of management of the forest that gave the most timber that had those properties.

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The purpose of this study is to examine apparel manufacturers' inventory performance, which is one of the major performance indicators of supply chain management (SCM) with the consideration of company characteristics. The objectives of the study are (a) to identify the level of SCM activities of apparel manufacturers, (b) to examine the differences of apparel manufacturers' characteristics (i.e., product characteristic, production system, fabric suppliers, retail customers) according to the level of SCM activities, and (c) to illustrate how the SCM activities and apparel manufacturers' characteristics relate to the inventory management performance in terms of levels within the type (i.e., raw material, work-in-process, finished goods). Through an intensive literature review six SCM dimensions and 26 SCM activities were identified and four company characteristics selected for the study were found to influence the company performance. Inventory levels within the type were compared as a result of levels of SCM activities and company characteristics. Data were collected via a self-administered mail questionnaire sent to a random proportional stratified sample of 1,195 US apparel manufacturers in SIC 231 to 234. In the data analyses, 93 returned surveys were used with the adjusted response rate of 9.49%. Cluster analysis was used to identify the SCM activity groups who showed different levels of SCM activities. Factor analysis was used to determine the number of SCM dimensions and SCM activity scales, and to identify the SCM activity level of each cluster. ANOVA, Chi-square, Tukey-test, matched sample t-test, t-test, regression, and correlation were employed to determine the relationships between SCM activity level, company characteristics and inventory levels within the type. Statistical analyses supported the research hypotheses. Apparel manufacturers' SCM activity level differs and company characteristics are significantly related with the SCM activity level. Company characteristics and SCM activity level are significantly related with the inventory performance. Findings imply that basic goods manufacturers are more likely to see the benefits of SCM activity implementation in inventory performance. Lead-time for fashion goods procurement, production, and delivery takes longer than basic goods and is hard to be shortened. Limitations of the study and suggestions for future study were discussed. / Ph. D.

The purpose of this study was to develop a typology of small apparel manufacturers (SAMs), firms classified between SIC 2310 to 2389 and less than 50 employees. The objectives were to (a) determine if distinct manufacturing strategies existed among SAMs, (b) develop a profile of these groups using environmental factors known to affect the apparel industry and small businesses (i.e., customer service, operations, barriers, assistance, customer size, customer location, competitor size, competitor location), (c) develop a profile of SAMs based on demographics (i.e., SIC, end-use for products, manufacturing process, type of firm, fashion position, employee size, manufacturing strategy, marketing strategy, annual gross revenue), and (d) determine the existence of a relationship between SAMs use of market strategies and manufacturing strategies. Data were collected from 146 SAMs, which represented 15 states with the highest number of SAMs. Factor analysis was used to identify manufacturing strategy factors (i.e., flexibility, environmental consciousness, product attributes, lot sizes), which were used to cluster respondents; and environmental factors (i.e., customer service, education/industry awareness, flexibility, timing, unit costs, production resources, technology/automation, consistency in sales, investment capital, import reductions). Four clusters of manufacturing strategies emerged and were profiled according to environmental factors and demographic variables (i.e., products, product classification, manufacturing processes, type of firm, type of fashion, manufacturing strategies, marketing strategies, firm's employee size, annual gross revenues). Significant differences occurred among the four manufacturing strategy groups and environmental factors. Significant differences occurred among the four manufacturing strategy groups and demographic variables. No relationship existed between manufacturing strategy groups and their marketing strategy. / Ph. D.

Because of the globalization, oil/energy crisis, divergent political senses, conflicts between economy development and eco strategy, local protest, and China¡¦s open economical strategy, the economy in Taiwan is beaten heavily, especially petrochemical industry. Since Mai-Liao No.6-Naphtha Cracking prject was finished, the manufacturers who supply the equipments are seriously damaged. They can only try to earn orders from international markets. Fortunately, Middle-east, Thailand and China constructing new petrochemical industrial areas in the recent years, and this gives Taiwan manufacturers a slim chance to survive. Certainly, they are facing more difficulties include the business scale, closeness, material-specialty, and the specific request of clients. To the traditional engineering-service industry, no matter to F-company or others, global marketing is the way they must go ahead. Therefore, through the questionnaire which directs to the key factors of success global marketing of petrochemical equipment manufacturers, and analyzed by AHP method, I advance the following opinions: A.In the key factors of success global marketing of petrochemical equipment manufacturers, the internal process is the most important, the secondary are relationship marketing and customer management, and organization and human resource. B.All key factors of global marketing in order are: 1. Match the quality requested by customer. 2. Price with competition. 3. Date of delivery with competition. 4. Promotion of customer-value, satisfied and reliable products/services. 5. Build and maintain good customer relationship. 6. Collaboration of up-down stream (strategy alliance) 7. Attitude and enthusiasm of employees. 8. Promotion of employees¡¦ skill (training) 9. Knowledge management of core competition. 10. Brand image (Complementary Asset.) 11. Corporation of organization and system. 12. Excellent marketing brain. 13. Ability of global marketing. 14. Analysis of customer request and self-SWOT. This research may be referred to petrochemical equipment manufacturers, and help them to learn and bring their own character and successful factors into play to achieve the success of global marketing.

The story of private brands begins in Great Britain in 1928, when Marks & Spencer launched their private brand St Michael. In Sweden, the first private brand was developed during the 1920’s; a coffee named Prinsess Kaffe produced for ICA. Until 1980, private brands were just a cheap alternative to manufacturer owned brands. During the years, it gained more and more market shares. Because of the introduction of private brands, the retailers have gained an increased power over manufacturers and they now also have to handle the competition between manufacturer brands, private brands and customer’s demand. In the Swedish every day commodity trade, private brands represent ap-proximately 15% of the total assortment. A problem that has arose concerning the competition during the latest years, is that the trade constantly increases in the direction of effort on private brands. Private brands are one way for the supermarket chains and the retailers to increase their power over the shelf space, marketing and price setting. Due to the increased competition concerning the shelf space in the stores, the authors found it interesting to investigate how private brands are dealt with. The authors made the research from the retailer’s perspective and their view of private brands and how they compete. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how private brands are regarded and dealt with, according to the retailer. This study is accomplished with a qualitative method. The authors wanted to gain a deeper understanding for how the private brands influence and compete with manufacturer brands. The authors chose to do a descriptive study since it was in line with the qualitative approach that was used. Fur-ther on, the authors used the basic qualitative research which refers to that data is collected through interviews and observations. Eight retailers were interviewed from ICA, Axfood and Coop. The result of this study gives an explanation of how private brands are dealt with. Private brands receive premium shelf space in the store, but in the end it is up to the customer to decide upon the future of private brands. Dem-onstrations are the most common way to promote the private brands in stores. In the future the retailers claim that private brands will be developed into both niche products as well as low price products.

Linnaeus University, School of Management and Economics, 5FE00E, Spring 2010 Author: Hana Hulthén Tutor: Helena Forslund Title: Information integration between retailers and manufacturers in Swedish food retail supply chains; The manufacturers’ perspective.  Background: According to study conducted by Brege in 2007, in Swedish food retail supply chains there is lack of external integration between retailers/wholesalers and manufacturers. This fact indicates that there are gaps in information integration between them which have consequences mainly for the manufacturers. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to describe gaps, from the manufacturers´ perspective, in the information integration between Swedish retailers/wholesalers and manufacturers, and analyze what are the consequences of these gaps for manufacturers as well as propose how these gaps can be alleviated. Method: Multiple - case study as research method has been applied. Specifically, three case companies, Swedish meat manufacturers, have been selected. Three one-hour long focused interviews combined with open-ended interviews have been conducted with two sales managers and one sales representative. The empirical evidence has been analyzed by using cross-case analysis method and pattern-matching method.   Results, conclusion: Firstly, Swedish meat manufacturers do not have access to real-time demand or POS data on store level. Instead, they receive orders from retailers based on updated demand forecast. As manufacturers do not have perfect demand information it leads to information asymmetry between retailers and manufacturers. As a consequence of inaccurate demand signal processing a Bullwhip effect can occur. Implementation of integrated information systems using EDI for exchange of POS data could solve the gap. However, small-scaled manufacturers have neither enough resources nor incentives to invest in an expensive business-to-business system. Furthermore, manufacturers with restricted production flexibility cannot utilize provided information on very detailed level; such as POS data. Thus, in these cases implementation of integrated information systems seems not to be reasonable. Secondly, it has been found that information integration between retailers and manufacturers has been significantly improved the last three or four years. The Swedish retailers are willing to provide information to manufacturers. Future Work: The result of this thesis is based only on findings from meat manufacturers. Other sectors could be also included as well as opinion of retailers and wholesalers to identify common problems related to information integration in Swedish food retail supply chains.

The unpredictability of Semiconductor Industry Cycle and high business risk from high Capital Expenditure (in short Capex) result in IDM¡¦s (Integrated Devices Manufacturer) preference in ¡§Asset Lite¡¨ strategy. The key approaches are reducing Capex in in-house facilities, joint-venture Fab with other semiconductor companies, sell production facilities to foundry or SATS (Semiconductor Assembly and Test Service), spin-off part of semiconductor division to have better differentiation and even joint-venture with SATS, in one word, the structure of semiconductor industry is in transition stage. This study is to review the evolution process of semiconductor industry from only IDM in 60 year ago to the rise of Fabless company who is playing a very key role in some semiconductor devices. IDM had started to do outsource business and decided to increase the business volume. We are going to understand what influence Fabless had caused in the industry and how IDM could adjust itself toward outsourcing strategy.

<p>The story of private brands begins in Great Britain in 1928, when Marks & Spencer launched their private brand St Michael. In Sweden, the first private brand was developed during the 1920’s; a coffee named Prinsess Kaffe produced for ICA. Until 1980, private brands were just a cheap alternative to manufacturer owned brands. During the years, it gained more and more market shares. Because of the introduction of private brands, the retailers have gained an increased power over manufacturers and they now also have to handle the competition between manufacturer brands, private brands and customer’s demand.</p><p>In the Swedish every day commodity trade, private brands represent ap-proximately 15% of the total assortment. A problem that has arose concerning the competition during the latest years, is that the trade constantly increases in the direction of effort on private brands. Private brands are one way for the supermarket chains and the retailers to increase their power over the shelf space, marketing and price setting. Due to the increased competition concerning the shelf space in the stores, the authors found it interesting to investigate how private brands are dealt with. The authors made the research from the retailer’s perspective and their view of private brands and how they compete.</p><p>The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how private brands are regarded and dealt with, according to the retailer.</p><p>This study is accomplished with a qualitative method. The authors wanted to gain a deeper understanding for how the private brands influence and compete with manufacturer brands. The authors chose to do a descriptive study since it was in line with the qualitative approach that was used. Fur-ther on, the authors used the basic qualitative research which refers to that data is collected through interviews and observations. Eight retailers were interviewed from ICA, Axfood and Coop.</p><p>The result of this study gives an explanation of how private brands are dealt with. Private brands receive premium shelf space in the store, but in the end it is up to the customer to decide upon the future of private brands. Dem-onstrations are the most common way to promote the private brands in stores. In the future the retailers claim that private brands will be developed into both niche products as well as low price products.</p>

Reliability of products is becoming increasingly important due to rapid technological development and tough competition in the product market. One effective way to ensure reliability of sold product/asset is to consider after sales services linked to warranty and service contract. One of the major decision variables in designing a warranty is the warranty period. A longer warranty term signals better reliability and provides higher customer/user peace of mind. The warranty period offered by the manufacturer/dealer has been progressively increasing since the beginning of the 20th Century. Currently, a large number of products are being sold with long term warranties in the form of extended warranty, warranty for used product, long term service contracts, and lifetime warranty. Lifetime warranties and service contracts are becoming more and more popular as these types of warranties provide assurance to consumer for a long reliable service and protecting consumers against poor quality and the potential high cost of failure occurring during the long uncertain life of product. The study of lifetime warranty and service contracts is important to both manufacturers and the consumers. Offering a lifetime warranty and long term service contracts incur costs to the manufacturers/service provider over the useful life of the product/contract period. This cost needs to be factored into the price/premium. Otherwise the manufacturer/ dealer will incur loss instead of profit. On the other hand, buyer/user needs to model the cost of maintaining it over the useful life and needs to decide whether these policies/service contracts are worth purchasing or not. The analysis of warranty policies and costs models associated with short-term or fixed term policies have received a lot of attention. A significant amount of academic research has been conducted in modelling policies and costs for extended warranties and warranty for used products. In contrast, lifetime warranty policies and longer term service contracts have not been studied as extensively. There are complexities in developing failure and cost models for these policies due to the uncertainties of useful life, usage pattern, maintenance actions and cost of rectifications over longer period. This thesis defines product's lifetime based on current practices. Since there is no acceptable definition of lifetime or the useful life of product in existing academic literatures, different manufacturer/dealers are using different conditions of life measures of period of coverage and it is often difficult to tell whose life measures are applicable to the period of coverage (The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, 1975). Lifetime or the useful life is defined in this thesis provides a transparency for the useful life of products to both manufacturers/service provider and the customers. Followed by the formulation of an acceptable definition of lifetime, a taxonomy of lifetime warranty policies is developed which includes eight different one dimensional and two dimensional lifetime warranty policies and are grouped into three major categories, A. Free rectification lifetime warranty policies (FRLTW), B. Cost Sharing Lifetime Warranty policies (CSLTW), and C. Trade in policies (TLTW). Mathematical models for predicting failures and expected costs for different one dimensional lifetime warranty policies are developed at system level and analysed by capturing the uncertainties of lifetime coverage period and the uncertainties of rectification costs over the lifetime. Failures and costs are modelled using stochastic techniques. These are illustrated by numerical examples for estimating costs to manufacturer and buyers. Various rectification policies were proposed and analysed over the lifetime. Manufacturer's and buyer's risk attitude towards a lifetime warranty price are modelled based on the assumption of time dependent failure intensity, constant repair costs and concave utility function through the use of the manufacturer's utility function for profit and the buyer's utility function for cost. Sensitivity of the optimal warranty prices are analysed with numerical examples with respect to the factors such as the buyer's and the manufacturer/dealer's risk preferences, buyer's anticipated and manufacturer's estimated product failure intensity, the buyer's loyalty to the original manufacturer/dealer in repairing failed product and the buyer's repair costs for unwarranted products. Three new service contract policies and cost models for those policies are developed considering both corrective maintenance and planned preventive maintenance as the servicing strategies during the contract period. Finally, a case study is presented for estimating the costs of outsourcing maintenance of rails through service contracts. Rail failure/break data were collected from the Swedish rail and analysed for predicting failures. Models developed in this research can be used for managerial decisions in purchasing life time warranty policies and long term service contracts or outsourcing maintenance. This thesis concludes with a brief summary of the contributions that it makes to this field and suggestions and recommendations for future research for lifetime warranties and service contracts.