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Business Administration, Business Process & Supply Chain Management, Degree Project (Master), 30 higher education credits, 5FE02E, Spring 2012   Authors: Kateryna Zubova and Olga Arikainen   Tutor: Åsa Gustavsson Title: Procurement Process Integration in Swedish and Ukrainian Companies Producing Machinery and Equipment Background: Although the science of economics and logistics comprises a great amount of literature on supply chain integration, there is a lack of information on procurement process integration. Procurement process is one the supply chain processes and is one of the most important processes for manufacturing companies. Purpose: To describe the level of procurement process integration (PPI), tools of PPI and barriers to PPI from buyers’ perspective in Swedish and Ukrainian companies producing machinery and equipment, and then to test if there is a significant difference in them between respondents of two countries. Method: Web-based questionnaire was created and sent out to 500 companies producing machinery and equipment in Sweden and to 500 companies in Ukraine.  73 responses were received from Swedish companies and 49 responses from Ukrainian companies. T-test was performed in order to test the differences in procurement process integration between Swedish and Ukrainian companies in terms of levels of integration, tools of integration and barriers to integration. Results, conclusions: There is no significant difference in the level of integration between Swedish and Ukrainian companies. In both countries the average level of integration is medium that means long-term relationships which are reviewed periodically. However, significant differences were found in the tools and barriers to procurement process integration between Swedish and Ukrainian companies.

Logistik kan bidra till kostnadsbesparingar bland företag vid användning av resurser, utöver det så kan en framgångsrik logistik ge företag fördelar när det handlar om att skapa värde åt kund. Vid marknadsföring så kan logistik även ha en stor inverkan på hur bra slutresultatet blir (Fuller et al., 1993). Hur bra kvalitén är på logistiktjänsterna är därför en viktig faktor inom marknadsföring för att skapa kundtillfredsställelse. För att effektivt kunna använda logistik som ett hjälpmedel för att få ett konkurrensmässigt övertag så krävs det ett samspel mellan företagets marknadsavdelning och de som arbetar med logistiska frågor (Mentzer et al., 2004).   Syftet med denna undersökning är att utveckla och testa en modell för analys och förbättring av försörjningskedjor med hänsyn till ett supply chain- och marknadsperspektiv. Modellen har skapats med stöd av litteraturstudier och empiri i form av dokument och intervjuer från företaget, även möten med handledare. Målsättningen är att modellen ska vara generellt utformad, vilket gör att andra företag ska kunna använda sig av den. Den teori som vi har använt oss av och som återfinns i den teoretiska referensramen är främst insamlad via böcker och vetenskapliga artiklar.   GLT-Laserstans är ett företag som befinner sig i Sandviken, de kan beskrivas som en legoverksamhet inom plåtindustrin som arbetar mot kundorder. Utöver legoverksamheten har de även en egen produktserie av tejphållare som de tillverkar. Dessa tejphållare anses som väldigt attraktiva på marknaden och de förekommer i många olika typer av varianter. Företaget vill ha hjälp med att undersöka vad de har för sorts kunder, vilka eventuella konkurrenter som finns och hur stark produkternas position är på marknaden.   Resultatet av denna undersökning blev till slut en handlingsplan i punktform som företaget kan använda sig av vid det kommande förbättringsarbetet. Denna handlingsplan består av förbättringsförslag som är framtagna med hjälp av modellen och företaget kan sedan välja vilka punkter som man väljer att arbeta vidare med. Modellen applicerades med goda resultat vid denna studie.   En slutsats som kan dras är att både logistik och marknadsföring syftar till att skapa värde för kund. Det som skiljer de två begreppen åt är de metoder som används för att skapa detta värde. Utan ett samspel mellan logistik och marknadsföring kan det vara svårt för organisationer att skapa hållbara förändringar.

Recent years, foreign manufacturers have extended their manufacturing footprint to include China. According to the World Bank China has overtaken Japan as the world’s second-largest economy since 2010. China’s growth is largely funded by a continuous manufacturing boom where both domestic industries and infrastructure have developed extensively, facilitating foreign-owned manufacturing companies to locate production in China. An important issue of common interest to all manufacturing companies in the course of localising production to China is how to develop an efficient supply base.The purpose of the thesis is to identify the factors related to local supply base development that affect production localisation in China. An identification and analysis of factors for foreign manufactures to consider when developing the supply base for their China production facilities is presented.The thesis work is executed based on a comprehensive literature study and interviews with twelve manufacturing firms (comprising eight foreign manufacturers and four local supplier companies) in China from April to July, 2012. The thesis investigates factors of importance to supply base localisation in China. The analysis of the empirical and theoretical findings constitutes the bases for increased understanding supporting foreign manufactures, especially for those small and medium firms, in their development of a supply base and sourcing strategy for production in China.

In this study, a model is developed to assess risk to a municipal water supply system under the influence of population growth and climate change. To incorporate the uncertainly in water use, a model which combines time series Monte Carlo simulations and a deterministic artificial neural network (ANN) is developed to simulate the daily water demand under climate variability. The model is then expanded in two directions. One direction is to estimate the effects of demand management programs and system expansion on the reliability, resiliency, and vulnerability of the water supply system. Another direction is to capture the possible impacts of climate change on the risk of a water supply system. Twenty-six scenarios generated from different combinations of demand management programs, system expansions and Global Climate Model (GCM) scenarios were set to illustrate the risk indices: reliability, resiliency, and vulnerability. To illustrate the effects of a change of precipitation frequency and a higher population growth, twenty-five additional scenarios were evaluated.

Supply chain management is the set of tasks through which businesses acquire, process, and move raw materials and final products from suppliers through factories and distribution points to customers. The mathematical problems encountered in supply chain optimization models are difficult to solve. Free Trade Agreements can simplify the models of inter-company trade between countries. Another way to make these models more tractable is to decompose the complete supply chain into a set of small, manageable units representing businesses or business processes and optimize the system by controlling the interactions between these units. We illustrate such a model and optimize it with genetic-algorithm-controlled Multidisciplinary Design Optimization

Nanofibres are useful in a broad range of applications in areas such as medical science, food science, materials engineering, environmental engineering, and energy and electronics due to their outstanding characteristics: their small size, high surface-to-volume ratio, high porosity, and superior mechanical performance. Recently, controlled drug delivery systems have gained significant attention, especially with respect to the use of polymer nanofibres. For these systems, the ability to control of the length of the polymer nanofibre is important because the amount of drug released depends on the length of the fibre. Electrospinning is the simplest and most cost-effective method of fabricating polymer nanofibres. In the process, a high voltage is used to create an electrified jet which will eventually become a nanofibre. The electrified jet ejects when a high voltage is applied to the electrospinning setup. On the other hand, the jet does not eject when the applied voltage is below the threshold voltage. It is therefore possible to fabricate and chop nanofibres by controlling the values of the voltages applied and a special high-voltage pulsed power supply has been developed for this purpose. In this research, an IGBT-based pulsed power supply has been designed and built to be used for non-continuous-mode electrospinning. The IGBTs are connected in series to deliver high voltage pulse voltages to an electrospinning setup. The IGBT-based pulsed power supply is capable of producing controllable square pulses with a width of a few hundred microseconds to DC and amplitudes up to 10 kV. The technique of non-continuous-mode electrospinning was tested using the pulsed power supply designed in this work. The new system was able to fabricate and chop nanofibres with PEO and alginate/PEO solutions. It was concluded that the minimum pulse width that can initiate an electrified jet is approximately 80 ms for the parameters used in this study. A longer period produces a more constant jet during the pulse-on voltage when the duty ratio is the same value. It is also highly likely that a jet is always ejected during the pulse-on voltage when the duty ratio is more than 40 %.

Logistics Transportation is an indispensable step that connects production, storage, and the final customers. Plenty of previous research has been done to achieve the goals such as low cost, high accuracy in timing, good customer service, and low damage rate, within the transportation system. However, most of those improvements are on the operational level. There are few supply chain collaborations that try to optimize logistics transportation from a strategic level. This thesis proposes a new collaboration policy, Carrier Managed Transportation (CMT). It is a coordinated relationship between the carrier and the clients in a supply chain. As opposed to the traditional approach, where the client decides when to request shipments of the products, in CMT, the carrier will make these decisions on their behalf through information sharing. Due to the complexity in relationships and responsibilities of chain members, we divide the business scenarios into four cases and discuss the impact of CMT on each case. Comparisons and numerical examples across cases are also provided, along with some conclusions regarding the implementation of CMT.

Transportation is important in making supply chain decisions. With the careful consideration of transportation expenses, the performance of each supply chain member, as well as the entire supply chain, could be improved significantly. The purpose of this research is: 1) to explore and identify the various situations that relate to replenishment and transportation activities; and 2) to reveal the strength of the connection between purchase quantity and transportation discounts, and integrate the two discounts to enhance supply-chain coordination. The problem is analyzed and categorized into four representative cases, depending on transportation. To aid the supplier or the carrier to determine the discount that should be offered, in light of the buyer's reaction to that discount, decision models are proposed under three different circumstances. First, assuming a single product, we investigate the quantity discounts from the supplier's perspective, via a noncooperative game-theoretical approach and also a joint decision model. Taking into account the price elasticity of demand, this analysis aids a sole supplier in establishing an all-unit quantity discount policy in light of the buyer's best reaction. The Stackelberg equilibrium and the Pareto-optimal solution set are derived for the noncooperative and joint-decision cases, respectively. Our research indicates that channel efficiency can be improved significantly if the quantity discount decision is made jointly rather than noncooperatively. Moreover, we extend our model in several directions: (a) the product is transported by a private fleet; (b) the buyer may choose to offer her customers a different percentage discount than that she obtained from the supplier; and (c) the case of multiple (heterogeneous) buyers. Numerical examples are employed, here and throughout the thesis, to illustrate the practical applications of the models presented and the sensitivity to model parameters. Secondly, we consider a situation with a family of SKUs for which the supplier will offer a quantity discount, according to the aggregate purchases of the product group. Management of those items is based on the modified periodic policy. From the supplier's point of view, what are the optimal parameters (breakpoint and discount percentage)? For deterministic demand, we discuss the cases in which demand is both constant and price-sensitive. First as a noncooperative Stackelberg game, and then when the two parties make the discount and replenishment decisions jointly, we illustrate the impact of price-sensitivity and joint decision making on the supplier's discount policy. The third approach studies the case in which transportation of the goods by a common carrier (a public, for-hire trucking company) is integrated in the quantity discount decisions. In reality, it is quite difficult for the carrier to determine the proper transportation discount, especially in the case of LTL (less-than-truckload) trucking. This is not only because of the "phantom freight" phenomenon, caused by possible over-declaration of the weight by the shipper, but also due to the fact that the discount relates to both transportation and inventory issues. In this research, we study the problem of coordinating the transportation and quantity discount decisions from the perspectives of the parties who offer the discounts, rather than the ones that take them. By comparison of the noncooperative and cooperative models, we show that cooperation provides better overall results, not only to each party, but also to the entire supply chain. To divide the extra payoffs gained from that cooperation, we further conduct a coalition analysis, based upon the concept of "Shapley Value." A detailed algorithm and numerical examples are provided to illustrate the solution procedure. Finally, the thesis concludes with comprehensive remarks. We summarize the contributions of this thesis, show the overall results obtained here, and present the directions that our research may take in the future.

Design metrics such as area, timing and power are generally considered as the primary criteria in the design of modern day circuits, however, the minimization of power supply noise, among other noise sources, is appreciably more important since not only can it cause a degradation in these parameters but can cause entire chips to fail. Ensuring the integrity of the power supply voltage in the power distribution network of a chip is therefore crucial to both building reliable circuits as well as preventing circuit performance degradation. Power supply noise concerns, predicted over two decades ago, continue to draw significant attention, and with present CMOS technology projected to keep on scaling, it is shown in this work that these issues are not expected to diminish. This research also considers the management and on-chip detection of power supply noise. There are various methods of managing power supply noise, with the use of decoupling capacitors being the most common technique for suppressing the noise. An in-depth analysis of decap structures including scaling effects is presented in this work with corroborating silicon results. The applicability of various decaps for given design constraints is provided. It is shown that MOS-metal hybrid structures can provide a significant increase in capacitance per unit area compared to traditional structures and will continue to be an important structure as technology continues to scale. Noise suppression by means of current shifting within the clock period of an ALU block is further shown to be an additional method of reducing the minimum voltage observed on its associated supply. A simple, and area and power efficient technique for on-chip supply noise detection is also proposed.