M.Com. (Business Management) / The objective of this study is to provide a programme for the management of small ventures. This model must provide guidelines to large companies to successfully establish an environment that will support intrapreneurial activity. It must further provide guidelines to potential intrapreneurs on how to become intrapreneurs and how to execute a small venture project. The programme was set up by doing a literature study to determine the characteristics of potential intrapreneurs as well as define the concept small venture. The steps in such a programme for the management of small ventures, as well as potential problems were then deterrnined.. The contribution of the programme is to provide a vehicle for large South African companies for increased growth and competitiveness.

A research project was undertaken to thoroughly examine the underlying difficulties in the retail operation of the U.B.C. Bookstore and to resolve the question of optimal store location. Merchandising policy was examined and analyzed on the basis of data obtained from interviews with the store's management staff. At the same time three possible store sites were evaluated by collecting data relevant to the operation of a distance decay simulation model which was used to estimate the value of the sites in terms of total sales. The existing site was found to be the most suitable while the problems in retail management were diagnosed as more far-reaching than simply the function of space limitations. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Queensland, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references.

In this thesis, we corroborate that the optimality in discounted profit setting is attained by a threshold policy which consists of base stock level and price switch thresholds. And we prove that the optimality and the structured properties of the optimal policy are inherit to the average profit setting. Furthermore, we find that the optimal policy in average profit setting is a piece-wise constant, left continuous and increasing function of the contractual sales rate, and the optimal average profit is a concave function about the contractual sales rate. More importantly, we evaluate the long-term contract with average profit criterion and provide an optimal supply curve, which is a strictly increasing function of contractual sales price. Manufacturer can use the curve as a baseline to negotiate a contract with contractual customer, who may present a demand curve. In addition, we extend the main results to an emergent supply mode, and we find that the optimal average profit is not only a concave function of contractual sales rate, but also an increasing concave function of the sales rate when the contractual purchase price is postulated to be higher than the additional penalty cost. / Keywords. Make-to-stock production mode, Capacity allocation, Production control, Retailing system, Demand process management, Dynamic pricing, Contract evaluation, Finished goods inventory management, Demand curve, Supply curve, Poisson process. / This thesis investigates a situation in which a manufacturing system produces a single item in make-to-stock mode with controllable production capability and sells the product through two independent marketing channels: a long-term contractual sales channel with constant prices and sales rate pre-specified by primary negotiation, and another retail market with dynamic prices specified by the manufacturer. In this setting, maximizing the long run average (or total) profit not only depends on joint management of the finished goods inventory and demand processes, but more importantly, depends on capacity allocation between these two sales channels. / Chen Liuxin. / "August 2006." / Adviser: Yonyi Feng. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-03, Section: B, page: 1909. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 110-117). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

Lei, Tian. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 91-97). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / Acknowledgement --- p.v / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Background and Motivation --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Objectives and Contribution --- p.5 / Chapter 1.3 --- Thesis Organization --- p.6 / Chapter 2 --- Literature Review --- p.8 / Chapter 3 --- Mathematical Model --- p.15 / Chapter 3.1 --- Stock-out Based Substitution --- p.15 / Chapter 3.1.1 --- Customer Response to Stock-out --- p.15 / Chapter 3.1.2 --- Patterns of Substitution --- p.17 / Chapter 3.1.3 --- Demand Models under Substitution --- p.18 / Chapter 3.2 --- Model Description and Formulation --- p.23 / Chapter 3.2.1 --- Model Description --- p.23 / Chapter 3.2.2 --- Customer Demand Model --- p.25 / Chapter 3.2.3 --- Substitution Model Formulation --- p.27 / Chapter 3.3 --- Information Availability --- p.29 / Chapter 3.4 --- Summary and Discussion --- p.32 / Chapter 4 --- Parameter Estimation --- p.36 / Chapter 4.1 --- Preliminaries --- p.36 / Chapter 4.2 --- Estimation of Initial Probabilities --- p.38 / Chapter 4.3 --- Estimation of Substitution Probabilities --- p.41 / Chapter 4.3.1 --- Case I: Only One Product Unavailable --- p.41 / Chapter 4.3.2 --- Case II: Two Products Unavailable --- p.44 / Chapter 4.3.3 --- Case III: More than Two Products Unavailable --- p.47 / Chapter 4.4 --- Summary --- p.51 / Chapter 5 --- Numerical Examples --- p.53 / Chapter 5.1 --- Examples Based on Simulated Data --- p.54 / Chapter 5.1.1 --- Preliminary Numerical Example --- p.54 / Chapter 5.1.2 --- Performance under Different Substitution Forms --- p.63 / Chapter 5.1.3 --- Effects of Service Level --- p.67 / Chapter 5.1.4 --- Effects of Data Volume --- p.70 / Chapter 5.2 --- Real Case from Retail Industry --- p.72 / Chapter 5.2.1 --- Data --- p.72 / Chapter 5.2.2 --- Estimation Results and Further Discussion .. --- p.74 / Chapter 6 --- Concluding Remarks --- p.79 / Chapter Appendix A --- Data Sets for the Retail Market Example --- p.83 / Chapter Appendix B --- Conference Presentations --- p.90 / References --- p.91

In this thesis, we study the statistical issues in lost sales inventory systems, focusing on the complexity arising from the stochastic demand. We model the demand by the Zero Inflated Poisson (ZIP) distribution. The maximum likelihood estimator of the ZIP parameters taking censoring into account are derived separately for the newsvendor and the (s, S) inventory systems. We also investigate the effect of the estimation errors on the optimal policies and their costs. We observe from a simulation study that the MLE taking censoring into account performed the best in terms of cost as well as policy among various estimates. We then proceed to develop a Bayesian dynamic updating scheme of the ZIP parameters. It is applied to the newsvendor system. We perform a simulation study to investigate the advantage of the Bayesian updating approach over the traditional MLE approach. We conclude that the Bayesian pproach offers a better learning technique when one lacks of good understanding of the demand pattern in the first few periods. Since inventory policy affects the information acquisition and-the demand distribution updating process, how to determine the optimal inventory policy when the demand distribution is yet to be learned is the focus of the latter part of the thesis. We investigate the effect of demand censoring on the optimal policy in newsvendor inventory models with general parametric demand distribution and unknown parameter values. We provide theoretical proof of the conjecture that it is better off to adopt a higher than the myopic optimal policy in the initial periods when demand is learned in a censoring system. We show that the newsvendor problem with observable lost sales reduces to a sequence of single-period problems while the newsvendor problem with unobservable lost sales requires a dynamic analysis. We explore the economic rationality for this observation and illustrate it with numerical examples.

M.B.A / "Geesteswetenskaplike navorsing is 'n gemeenskaplike aktiwiteit waardeur 'n bepaalde verskynsel in die werklikheid op 'n objektiewe wyse bestudeer word, ten einde 'n geldige begrip van die verskynsel daar te steI." (Mouton en Marais, 1989:7) "Dit is 'n natuurIike strewe van die mens om die werklikheid waarvan hy deel vorm, te probeer begryp. Die belangrikste wyse waarop die mens sy ervaringe en belewinge vasgryp, is in uitsprake oor die werklikheid. Die maak van uitsprake, formulering van stellings, is daarom 'n intrinsieke komponent van aIle betekenisvolle menslike ervaring. In die mate waarin menslike kommunikasie noodsaakIik is vir sinvolle sosiale interaksie, so is die maak van stellings ook 'n onlosmaakIike dimensie van ons menswees" (Mouton en Marais, 1989: 7) Praktiese navorsing in hierdie studie is in samewerking met die Wickes-groep gedoen. Wickes is 'n Europese winkelgroep wat onlangs in Suid-Afrika gevestig is en beoog om 'n groot aantal takke in Suid-Afrika te open. Hardeware, boumateriale, gereedskap, ingeboude kaste, badkamers en talle ander produkte word deur hierdie handelaars verkoop. Die eerste tak is op 28 Oktober 1995 in Boksburg, digby die East-Rand Mall geopen. Navorsing is gedeeltelik by hierdie tak afgehandel. Dit behels hoofsaaklik 'n uiteensetting van die produk, die verbruiker, die markgebied en besteding. Die mikro-analise wat in hoofstuk 4 ter sprake is, is dus gedeeltelik hier toegepas. Die doel daarvan was hoofsaaklik om beter insig te verkry in die rnikroaspekte van die betrokke handelaar. Daardeur kan swak en sterk punte uitgelig word, en daarna kan moontlike strategiee geformuleer word om hierdie swak punte aan te spreek soos in hoofstuk 7 gedoen is. Verdere navorsing is gedoen deur 'n demografiese analise te doen vir die ontwikkeling van 'n nuwe Wickes-tak in Ferndale, Randburg. Hier is hoofsaaklik op die makroaspekte gefokus deur 'n analise (wat oorwegend demografies van aard is) te doen op die potensiele markgebied van 'n ligging waar Wickes 'n tak sal open...

M.Com. (Business Management) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

M.B.A. / Please refer to full text to view abstract

In this thesis, we study the statistical issues in lost sales inventory systems, focusing on the complexity arising from the stochastic demand. We model the demand by the Zero Inflated Poisson (ZIP) distribution. The maximum likelihood estimator of the ZIP parameters taking censoring into account are derived separately for the newsvendor and the (s, S) inventory systems. We also investigate the effect of the estimation errors on the optimal policies and their costs. We observe from a simulation study that the MLE taking censoring into account performed the best in terms of cost as well as policy among various estimates. We then proceed to develop a Bayesian dynamic updating scheme of the ZIP parameters. It is applied to the newsvendor system. We perform a simulation study to investigate the advantage of the Bayesian updating approach over the traditional MLE approach. We conclude that the Bayesian pproach offers a better learning technique when one lacks of good understanding of the demand pattern in the first few periods. Since inventory policy affects the information acquisition and-the demand distribution updating process, how to determine the optimal inventory policy when the demand distribution is yet to be learned is the focus of the latter part of the thesis. We investigate the effect of demand censoring on the optimal policy in newsvendor inventory models with general parametric demand distribution and unknown parameter values. We provide theoretical proof of the conjecture that it is better off to adopt a higher than the myopic optimal policy in the initial periods when demand is learned in a censoring system. We show that the newsvendor problem with observable lost sales reduces to a sequence of single-period problems while the newsvendor problem with unobservable lost sales requires a dynamic analysis. We explore the economic rationality for this observation and illustrate it with numerical examples. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate