M.Comm. / The South African economy is currently in a dynamic phase of change. In seeking a solution to rebuilding the economy and attaining a growth rate which is capable of creating jobs and sustaining economic development, it is widely recognized that a competitive platform needs to be created for a powerful expansion by the tradable goods sector. Many South African products cannot compete in international markets because of high unit costs and the consequential high prices offered to consumers. One of the primary reasons for product uncompetitiveness can be described as supply chain inefficiencies.q The supply chain is defined as the network of organisations that are involved in the various processes and activities that produce value in the form of products and services in the hands of the ultimate consumer. This study analyzes a single stand-alone component of the supply chain organisation, namely the public warehouse. The study recognizes that warehousing plays a vital role in enhancing end-user value by providing time and space utility and suggests that in order for the warehouse to fulfil a valueadding role, it must adjust its functioning to meet the supply chain's requirements. The study shows that conventional techniques are incorrectly focused and are thus inappropriate in an organisation aiming to achieve competitiveness and profitability, optimise the logistics trade-off between cost and quality and simultaneously supply the customer with a high level of service performance. The use of conventional costing and management techniques are shown to lead to the incorrect calculation and misallocation of costs which in turn result in inaccurate product (service) costing. This has made the public warehouse analyzed uncompetitive in the market and as a result unable to add any additional value to the customer. It is suggested that a completely new and differently focused system needs to be implemented if supply chain objectives are to be realised. It is suggested that activity-based management is capable of achieving supply chain goals. Activity-based management (ABM) is a system or discipline which focuses on the management of activities as the route to improving the value received by the customer and the profit achieved by providing this value. The study shows that ABM, as applied to the public warehouse, was able to achieve cost reductions, better and more effective management, enhanced strategic positioning, and, most importantly, competitiveness in the market place, a prerequisite for adding value to the supply chain. The study recognizes that supply chain management and activity-based management are relatively new fields of expertise, and that these are not yet recognized as a fully fledged profession in South Africa. Supply chain management needs to be established and promoted as a formal profession. Finally it is recognized that more research is necessary before ABM and supply chain management can become the standard in South African organisations. Information needs to be obtained regarding key South African performance indicators and information needs to be recognized as a strategic asset. Once this recognition is achieved strategic information plans can be designed and used to enhance the competitiveness of South African products.

Thesis. 1978. M.S.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Alfred P. Sloan School of Management. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND DEWEY. / Bibliography: leaf 101. / M.S.

Physical distribution is one of the key functions in logistics systems, involving the flow of products from manufacturing plants or distribution centers through the network of transportation to consumers. The function is very costly, especially for the distribution industries. During the past decades, the significance of physical distribution has increased enormously in both economic and managerial aspects. Several firms have realized that an efficiency improvement and a cost control of physical distribution would provide a potential for cost reduction and hence profit improvement. However, the customer satisfaction cannot be disregarded, since the focus on reducing cost often decreases the customer service level in many cases. A compromised strategy which lowers the cost of physical distribution and accounts for customer satisfaction must be sought. In this research, an effort to improve distribution strategies and reduce the distribution cost for the multi-product, multi-depot periodic distribution problem is made, while maintaining the desired customer service levels. In industry practice, distribution centers typically operate independently within their own territories only. However, it may be beneficial to allow those distribution centers to operate interdependently, particularly when the product supplies are limited at some distribution centers. In such cases, the distributors may satisfy customers' requests by delivering products from other distribution centers that hold more supplies. The interaction of interdependent operations among distribution centers, which have not been used in the industrial applications so far, is investigated. A mixed-integer linear programming model is formulated to represent this multi-product, multi-depot periodic distribution problem. Three tabu-search heuristics with different applications of long-term memory are developed for solving the problem. The performance of the heuristics is evaluated by comparing the solutions obtained with the optimal solutions or lower bounds from the regular branch-and-bound method and fast lower-bound finding techniques developed in this research. The heuristics provide good-quality solutions in a much shorter time than those methods. The performance of the three tabu-search heuristics is compared using statistical experiments based on the randomized complete block design and Tukey's Honestly Significant Differences. The experimental results show that the tabu-search heuristic with the use of long-term memory for diversification process outperforms the others. The heuristic is further applied to investigate the impact of interdependent operations among distribution centers. The results reveal that the interdependent operations among distribution centers provide a significant cost saving over the independent operations among distribution centers, especially for large-size problems. / Graduation date: 2004

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No description available.

published_or_final_version / Real Estate and Construction / Master / Master of Science in Construction Project Management

Thesis (Ph.D)--Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2006. / McGinnis, Leon - Committee Chair, Griffin, Paul - Committee Member, Hackman, Steve - Committee Member, Parsons, Len - Committee Member, Sharp, Gunter - Committee Member. Part of the SMARTech Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Collection.

Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 2012. / The storage and distribution of goods in warehouses have been around for centuries. Information systems and technology have enabled business to run various different functions, like accounting, successfully. Companies soon realised the additional benefits technology can bring to their operations. Increase in product throughput and increase in product range are some of the examples that add additional complexity to the warehousing and distribution functions. In order to cater for the additional complexity, to gain improved customer service levels and gain a strategic advantage in delivering the right product, in the right place at the right time, companies are implementing warehouse management systems (WMS). However, the WMS implementations are complex and involve various different stakeholders. Failed WMS implementations can negatively affect the operations. There are many risks associated with the WMS implementations and many companies have had to issue profit warnings in the past due to failed implementations. Various viewpoints on project success exist but this research report has aimed to provide a framework of key success criteria which organisations can use to evaluate the success of their implementation. Since WMS are generally rolled-out across various sites within a specific supply chain, measuring and evaluating the success of the first project can guide the project team to achieve more project success in the future, eliminating the risks associated with failed implementations. This study clearly defines the difference between project success, project management success, critical success factors and key success criteria. Literature on the topic is limited and therefore this study looked at various sources like peer-reviewed literature, popular literature and case studies. The findings of the report indicate that there is a list of ten different key success criteria which organisations can focus on in order to measure and improve their project success. Taking ownership, change management, managing stakeholder expectations, communication, training and testing are some of the key success criteria that were identified. This study concludes by presenting a framework which organisations can use to measure the success of their WMS implementation.

Automated storage and Retrieval (AS/R) systems have had a significant impact on storage and retrieval of finished goods, work-in-process, and raw materials and supplies. A microcomputer-based simulation model was developed to evaluate different unit load AS/R systems serving multiple input sources and output destinations. The simulation results were statistically analyzed on different performance measures including throughput, mean waiting times maximum waiting times and rejects. The results showed that for single-dock, square-in-time layouts, the class based arrangement produced significantly higher throughput for all scheduling policies. Among the scheduling policies, the relief nearest neighbor produced consistently higher throughput. Comparing square-in-time versus non-square-in-time layouts, the square-in-time layout performance was better; the performance deteriorated as deviations from square-in-time increased. For the two dual-dock layouts, at lower arrival rates the dedicated layout produced higher throughput; there was no significant difference between the two layouts at higher arrival rates. / Graduation date: 1992

Automation provides the opportunity for many tasks to be done more effectively and with greater safety. However, these benefits are unlikely to be attained if an automated system is designed without the human user in mind. Many characteristics of the human and automation, such as trust and reliability, have been rigorously examined in the literature in an attempt to move towards a comprehensive understanding of the interaction between human and machine. However, workload has primarily been examined solely as an outcome variable, rather than as a predictor of compliance, reliance, and performance. This study was designed to gain a deeper understanding of whether workload experienced by human operators influences compliance with and reliance on an automated warehouse management system, as well to assess whether age-related differences exist in this interaction. As workload increased, performance on the Receiving Packages task decreased among younger and older adults. Although younger adults also experienced a negative effect of workload on Dispatching Trucks performance, older adults did not demonstrate a significant effect. The compliance data showed that as workload increased, younger adults complied with the automation to a greater degree, and this was true regardless of whether the automation was correct or incorrect. Older adults did not demonstrate a reliable effect of workload on compliance behavior. Regarding reliance behavior, as workload increased, reliance on the automation increased, but this effect was only observed among older adults. Again, this was true regardless of whether the automation as correct or incorrect. The finding that individuals may be more likely to comply with or rely on faulty automation if they are in high workload state compared to a low workload state suggests that an operator's ability to detect automation errors may be compromised in high workload situations. Overall, younger adults outperformed older adults on the task. Additionally, older adults complied with the system more than younger adults when the system erred, which may have contributed to their poorer performance. When older adults verified the instructions given by the automation, they spent longer doing so than younger adults, suggesting that older adults may experience a greater cost of verification. Further, older adults reported higher workload and greater trust in the system than younger adults, but both age groups perceived the reliability of the system quite accurately. Understanding how workload and age influence automation use has implications for the way in which individuals are trained to interact with complex systems, as well as the situations in which automation implementation is determined to be appropriate.