Bakgrund: Det senaste decenniet har allt fler stormarknader och lågprisbutiker öppnat vilket har lett till att de mindre livsmedelsbutikerna blivit utsatta för större konkurrens. Parallellt med att stormarknaderna tagit marknadsandelar i dagligvarubranschen har även större fokus riktats mot ökat samarbete och informationsdelning i försörjningskedjan, så kallat Supply Chain Management (SCM). Inom dagligvarubranschen har Efficient Consumer Response (ECR) utvecklas ur samma idéer som SCM men med fokus på livsmedel och dess försörjningskedjor. I grund och botten handlar ECR om företagens gemensamma arbete för att integrera verksamheter, minska kostnader samt producera största möjliga nytta för slutkonsumenten. Med tanke på den ökade konkurrensen i dagligvaruhandeln samt det faktum att det finns ont om tidigare forskning om små och medelstora företag (SME:s) relaterat till SCM/ECR, är det intressant att undersöka hur dessa företag påverkas av samarbetet. Det går att ifrågasätta om SCM/ECR samarbetet i försörjningskedjan är väl anpassat för de små och medelstora butikerna längst ut i försörjningskedjan, samt om det lämnar något utrymme för dem att differentiera sig och i längden skapa hållbara konkurrensfördelar. Syfte: Syftet med studien är således att undersöka hur SCM och ECR i dagligvarubranschen påverkar SME:s längst ut i försörjningskedjan. Mer specifikt syftar uppsatsen till att undersöka om SCM/ECR samarbetet är anpassat för de små och medelstora företagen. Syftet är även att undersöka om samarbetet lämnar utrymme för dessa företag att differentiera sig? Metod: Studien har utförts med en kvalitativ ansats, varvid sex semistrukturerade besöksintervjuer har genomförts med tre ICA – och tre Hemköpshandlare, vilka alla kan anses driva SME:s i dagligvarubranschen. Slutsats: I studien har det identifierats att SCM och ECR har haft stor påverkan på små och medelstora butiker i livsmedelsbranschen. Samarbetet tycks ha haft positiv men också negativ påverkan på butikernas dagliga verksamhet samt långsiktiga styrning. Vidare har det konstaterats SCM och ECR har minskat de små och medelstora butikernas lokala differentieringsmöjligheter.

<p>Firms' inventory or production decisions are influenced by a variety of factors, including both the selling price of the end products and the purchasing cost of raw materials. In most cases, there is a strong connection between purchasing costs and selling prices. In my dissertation, I study the impact of prices on a firm's inventory</p><p>decisions, particularly in systems with delivery lead time and environmental concerns. The findings are reported in three studies. The first study analyzes the joint inventory and pricing problem with lead time, which is known to be difficult to solve due to its computational complexity. We develop a simple heuristic to resolve</p><p>the computational issue and reveal the impact of lead time on the joint decisions. In the second study, we extend the heuristic approach in the previous study to systems with both positive lead time and fixed ordering costs. The effectiveness of the heuristic in both studies are verified through both theoretical bounds and numerical experiments. In the third study, we examine the effect of the procurement cost and its volatility on a firm's profit. This allows us to study under what conditions a firm can profitably operate an eco-friendly supply chain. Our study also helps the firms to understand what type of products would better absorb the higher costs associated with an eco-friendly production system.</p> / Dissertation

The purpose of this thesis is to point out how a company can gain a better process by using PM in an effective way. The report concludes that the existence in practice of theoretically important aspects are different, also that the most correct way of leading the aspects are through the creation of a PM process. During this thesis work the benefits with performance measurements have been analyzed. Since the genesis of the industrialisation there have been growing needs to identify ways of understanding how a company functions. One of the main events historically leading to the broad adoption of PM was the introduction of the DuPont model. The DuPont model developed by DuPont and General Motors during the beginning of the 20th century quickly became the industry standard in the US for financial analysis. The Dupont model gave PM a central role in evaluating the performance of a company. Companies are today driven towards a higher level of responsiveness and flexibility in order to remain competitive. In order to measure the advancement towards these objectives, an increasingly complex set of activities collection of PM to monitor performance satisfactorily. Often however, PM are still developed around traditional, functional metrics focusing on departmental issues, rather than on the whole value stream. There has also been analyzed how a manufacturing company can use PM in an effective way. Under this thesis it emerged that the most crucial factor affecting the companies PM was that it was hard to understand how to use it correctly. When a company use it correctly it determines where the company stands, if they want to be competitive in the future and a method to maintain a good value stream flow. The economical factors for the company are at least important because all decisions always include costly investments. At the same time a company’s PM must be as efficient as possible and generate a good investment. Also other factors have been presented in this thesis but do not affect the effectiveness of the PM. The most important factors found to a more effective PM were; does the PM fulfil its purpose, is the performance attained, to make the purpose explicit and at last boost the education around the subject. The whole research has been carried out over a twenty-week period, during that period data collection has been performed via case studies. The rest of the data collection has been collected through a literature review by examining relevant data to answer the two research questions. This thesis have led to a better understanding regarding how to use PM and the benefits of it. This are based on the collected data from the case studies and from the theoretical findings, the empirical data were analyzed in a way that the company understood what was wrong with today´s PM.

Supply Chain Management (SCM) is becoming increasingly important in the modern business world. In order to effectively manage and integrate a supply chain (SC), a deep understanding of overall SC operation dynamics is needed. This involves understanding how the decisions, actions and interactions between SC members affect each other, and how these relate to SC performance and SC disruptions. Achieving such an understanding is not an easy task, given the complex and dynamic nature of supply chains. Existing simulation approaches do not provide an explanation of simulation results, while related work on SC disruption analysis studies SC disruptions separately from SC operation and performance. This thesis presents a logic-based approach for modelling, simulating and explaining SC operation that fills these gaps. SC members are modelled as logicbased intelligent agents consisting of a reasoning layer, represented through business rules, a process layer, represented through business processes and a communication layer, represented through communicative actions. The SC operation model is declaratively formalised, and a rule-based specification is provided for the execution semantics of the formal model, thus driving the simulation of SC operation. The choice of a logic-based approach enables the automated generation of explanations about simulated behaviours. SC disruptions are included in the SC operation model, and a causal model is defined, capturing relationships between different types of SC disruptions and low SC performance. This way, explanations can be generated on causal relationships between occurred SC disruptions and low SC performance. This approach was analytically and empirically evaluated with the participation of SCM and business experts. The results indicate the following: Firstly, the approach is useful, as it allows for higher efficiency, correctness and certainty about explanations of SC operation compared to the case of no automated explanation support. Secondly, it improves the understanding of the domain for non-SCM experts with respect to their correctness and efficiency; the correctness improvement is significantly higher compared to the case of no prior explanation system use, without loss of efficiency. Thirdly, the logic-based approach allows for maintainability and reusability with respect to the specification of SC operation input models, the developed simulation system and the developed explanation system.

Examensarbetet Koordinering av materialflöden och verksamhetsflöden vid FUS i Linköping genomfördes för att ge stöd åt beslutsfattande gällande flödet av byggnadsmaterial från den norra godsmottagningen av sjukhuset till den östra utbyggnaden under året 2015.

With its core competence on bus chassis, Scania determined in the mid-2000s to co-produce coach products with two external bus body manufacturers, Lahden Autokori and Higer. However, after a decade’s cooperation, well-functioning work processes were not established and problems still existed. With this study, problems within Scania’s operations system and Scania’s supply chain management strategies towards these two partners have been identified and illustrated, by applying an abductive research method. With this study it has been evidenced that Scania’s bus operations management is affiliated with truck and the truck operations system does not fit the request from the collaborations with Lahden Autokori and Higer. Moreover, it has also been shown that even though the relationship with these two partners is by nature long-term, Scania’s attitude has been characterized by short-term thinking. This ambiguous supply chain management strategy has been causing problems. Furthermore, aside from problems within operations system and supply chain management, the third studied area is organizational identity. Due to the fact that some organizational identity issues caused by reorganization have largely influenced both of the collaborations, the formation of these identity issues as well as the impacts on the cooperation has been studied. Finally, some recommendations for improvements have been made based on the findings of this study.

Supply chain management (SCM) has become one of the most popular and fastest growing areas in management. One major issue of SCM is the proper design of supply chains to serve customers effectively (high customer service) and efficiently (at low costs). This is particularly difficult as companies nowadays face a series of challenges like shrinking product life cycles, the proliferation of product variants (mass customization), and increasing uncertainty on both the demand and the supply side. Dealing efficiently with uncertainty is one of the most crucial points in supply chain design. According to Lovejoy (1998) a company has three generic possibilities to address uncertainty: it can either hold safety inventory, hold safety capacity, or reduce variability by using enhanced information. These three strategies constitute the so-called Operations management (OM) triangle. This study will analyze whether and how variability can be reduced in supply chains and thereby improve process performance of supply chains. This means that the concept of OM triangle is extended and linked to concepts from SCM, with a special focus on the analysis of the role of information and its capability for reducing variability. As one result of this study a new variability framework is presented, organizing the different types of variability in supply chains. Second, the extended OM triangle is eveloped, linking concepts from SCM to the OM triangle. Finally, it can be stated that handling variability within the supply chain is major challenge for every supply chain manager, as there is always some kind of uncertainty or variability. This study may help to organize this broad field of action within supply chains. (author's abstract)

In times of demand shocks, when quantitative forecasting based on historical time series becomes obsolete, the only information about future demand is "advance demand information", i.e. interpreting early customer bookings as an indicator of not yet known demand. This paper deals with a forecasting method which selects the optimal forecasting model type and the level of integration of advance demand information, depending on the patterns of the particular time series. This constitutes the applicability of the procedure within an industrial application where a large number of time series is automatically forecasted in a flexible and data-driven way. The architecture of such a planning system is explained and using real-world data from a make-to-order industry it is shown that the system is flexible enough to cover different demand patterns and is well-suited to forecast demand shocks. (authors' abstract)

In today’s competitive market, survival and response to customer needs and expectations are enabled through high-quality products for low costs – quality products provided by suppliers fulfilling today’s quality-requirements for a low price. Companies have until recent years selected suppliers only according to a pricing structure, leaving other criteria’s, such as quality, behind. The purpose of this master thesis is therefore to investigate quality aspects that must be considered from a supplier evaluation perspective and design a simple evaluation tool for first-time supplier selections. Both new and existing suppliers will be tested with the tool according to information given during a case study made at Flexit AS, a Norwegian ventilation-systems company looking to introduce a structured approach for selecting suppliers. Through an extensive literature- and empirical study, where a survey, of which evaluation criteria’s to be included in the evaluation tool, was conducted together with several both semi-structured and unstructured interviews, a foundation for the design of the tool was presented. Quality management systems and quality performance measurements, such as rejection rate and delivery precision, are considered as fundamental aspects to consider when assessing a supplier. Acceptance levels of approval are set according to in-house objectives. If any evaluation tool including quality should be usable, an in-house quality system must therefore first be implemented by the in-house company – a notable improvement recommended to the case company. The design of the tool given from the thesis provides the evaluator with an opportunity to visualize and compare existing suppliers according to five criteria’s including cost, together with an additional spreadsheet for evaluation of new suppliers put forward as a foundation and an indicator if new suppliers are considering quality on a basic level.

The objective of the study was to develop a management framework for internal logistics in the Department of Education in Gauteng. For the purpose of this study internal logistics was defined as the complete process of obtaining goods and services from the compiling and processing of requisitions to the payment of invoices and the record keeping of all transactions to achieve organisational objectives. Internal logistics entails purchase planning, specification development, supplier research, contract administration and quotations, ordering and inventory control. The management of internal logistics can enhance productivity and performance within the value chain, improving service delivery, the outcome of the audited financial statement and ultimately the optimal spending of the allocated budget per financial year. For three consecutive financial years (2006/2007, 2007/2008, 2008/2009) GDE received a qualified audited financial statement. For financial years 2009/2010 and 2010/2011 GDE succeeded to receive an unqualified audited financial statement. To maintain this achievement and ultimately receive a clean audit financial statement, it is necessary to evaluate all the business processes, specifically within supply chain management, contributing to the audit findings. Supply Chain Management (SCM) is in some way the completion of the circle of financial management. It is important for GDE to develop a uniform internal logistics framework that would enable them to also gain the maximum from its annual allocated budget. It is also critical that the internal logistics are attended to as soon as possible to have a positive input towards the audited financial statement. A literature study was done on the concepts of the value chain, supply chain management and the management of knowledge. A questionnaire was designed, based on the findings in the literature, and used to measure the efficiency of the internal logistics in the District offices. The state of the internal logistics at the District offices was assessed through survey questionnaires to extract the data. It became evident that certain gaps and problems exist in relation to internal logistics at the District offices and that knowledge management is related to these gaps and problems. Internal logistics has a link with the elements of supply chain management as investigated in the literature study. The elements of supply chain management can to be broken down into clear activities for the management of internal logistics. The key area of concern is that the internal logistics within SCM are not acknowledged and therefore not properly managed in the District offices. The result of this is that the allocated budget is not optimally utilised and also receives qualifications from the audited financial statement. A practical framework to manage internal logistics is proposed for the Department of Education to assist with the problems, and to bridge the gaps found after analysing the questionnaires. The findings of the empirical study were used as the basis of the framework. Finally, conclusions and recommendations are drawn and rendered in order to improve the logistics management of the Department of Education in Gauteng. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.