A B S T R A C T Deregulation of the South African fruit export industry in 1997 caused fragmentation in the supply chain. This led to significant inefficiencies and difficulty in responding to increasingly stringent legal and traderelated traceability requirements. Currently, the South African fruit export industry does not provide a sufficient level of traceability at supply chain level. The consumer packaged goods industry has developed e-commerce building blocks based on global standards. These building blocks offer automated traceability of fruit exports, as well as significant benefits impacting the bottom line, to companies of all sizes. The e-commerce building blocks also provide solutions to the two main challenges faced by the fresh produce supply chains, namely traceability requirements and the need for additional efficiencies. The e-commerce building blocks are available to the South African fruit export industry to enable traceability, as well as to provide significant efficiency benefits. It has been found that early adoption of the e-commerce building blocks will result in a strategic advantage over the southern hemisphere competitors and that automated traceability is feasible for the South African fruit export industry. This article describes the cohesiveness, willingness to participate and supportive thinking of representatives from the important fruit export industry in South Africa, which are necessary to create the critical mass for the implementation of such an automated traceability system.

In the current era of globalization in supply chain, business continuity planning should play an even more important role than previously. Business continuity planning provides company with an analysis of potential business threatening situations, everything from natural disasters to supply shortages, and ensures that actions are taken in order to mitigate the probability that those risks will become reality. Business continuity planning does not come without a cost, since companies will in some cases have to spend money in actions like redundancies (e.g. supplier). In the Semiconductor industry, supply chains might are extremely complex and globalized. These supply chains can go from having suppliers in the United States, to front-end manufacturing in Europe, to back-end manufacturing and packaging in Asia. Raw materials for semiconductor manufacturing, for example raw wafers, can be found for above $500 per wafer. It is due to not only the complexity of the supply chain in semiconductors, but also due to the high costs of raw materials and manufacturing, that it is crucial for companies in this particular industry to ensure business continuity planning is taken seriously, and adequate measures are taken to mitigate as many risks to their supply chain as possible. / text

Avregleringen av Sveriges järnväg ledde till att Statens Järnvägar delades upp i olika företag, SJ AB bildades som har i uppgift att bedriva lönsam persontrafik. Avregleringen har haft en stor påverkan på hur SJ bedriver sin verksamhet idag samt lett till att komplicerade ägarförhållanden har uppstått i Hagalund. Hagalund är SJ’s största depåanläggning för underhåll av fordon. I samråd med SJ’s Division Fordon och Divisionen för Planering och Trafikledning har vi fått i uppdrag att undersöka hur SJ påverkas om de införskaffar en depå i egen regi. Vi har valt att undersöka SJ ur ett värdekedjeperspektiv. Studien bygger sedan på hur SJ’s värdekedja påverkas om en ny depåanläggning införskaffas. Vi har använt Porters värdekedja som grund till vår studie, det är en analysmetod som kartlägger en organisations värdeskapande aktiviteter. Vi har även tagit del av forskning som gjorts på Porters värdekedja med fokus på resurshantering och informationsprocesser. För att kunna undersöka problemområdet har vi även undersökt och analyserat forskning inom det teoretisk omtrådet vertikal integration. Vertikal integration innebär att en organisation införskaffar en verksamhet till egen regi. Den här studiens syfte är att undersöka hur en organisations värdekedja påverkas om en vertikal integration utförs. För att besvara syftet har vi undersökt hur de sekundära aktiviteterna i SJ’s värdekedja påverkas om en primär värdeskapande aktivitet vertikalt integreras. Vi har även i delsyfte att undersöka vilka effekter den nya depåanläggningen skulle ha på SJ’s produkt tågresor som säljs till kund. Vi besvarar både syftet och delsyftet genom en deduktiv kvalitativ undersökning. Vi använde oss av en semistrukturerad intervjumetod där vi intervjuade respondenter från SJ’s Division Fordon och Divisionen för Planering och Trafikledning. Vår övergripliga slutsats av studien är att en vertikal integration har en inverkan på SJ’s värdekedja. Den vertikala integrationen medför en förbättrad kommunikation samt kontroll av depåverksamheten och dess resurser. SJ’s depåverksamhet blir mer flexibel vilket kan leda till snabbare reaktioner vid oväntade händelser. Kvalitén av produkten tågresor påverkas även positivt. Förutsättningen till dessa fördelar är att SJ har en god kommunikation med nya depån samt införskaffar de resurser som krävs.

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This thesis summarises research focused on the requisites required to implement improvement initiatives successfully. Processes used to enhance supply chain performance initiatives are examined. The core hypothesis is that a preconditioning programme provides support for progressive organisations, irrespective of size or position in the supply chain. An interpretation matrix developed as a result of action research with M E Ltd was tested with NP Ltd and its suppliers. During search conferences the matrix was found to add value by serving as a common platform to record then compare observations and agree a common understanding between participants. Based on qualitative descriptions of training and learning in organisations from the 1950s to the 1970s, Barrington's model has three levels: 'systematic approach' predominating in the 1950s, 'appraisal approach' developed extensively in the 1960s and an 'attitude to continuous improvement' that was promoted after the 1970s fuel crises. This model was used as the basis for selecting collaborating establishments. The literature review concludes that conventional supplier development has the attributes of the systematic approach, which is considered the least effective level. M E Ltd was considering introducing appraisal, had few attributes of the systematic approach, and had an attitude for continuous improvement. A company specific survey was undertaken that led to a series of remedial actions which were identified as a preconditioning programme prior to supplier development. NP Ltd selected leaders by attitude, had institutionalised appraisals and once the core group was established, trained employees with systematic techniques. AAP Ltd had the attitude and systematic techniques, yet did not have appraisal systems. Principal conclusions of this are: · These case studies suggest companies can have any two of Barrington's levels. As a result, an alternate depiction of Barrington’s model is suggested. · The cases indicate that preconditioning can occur within a company, from customer to suppliers and from suppliers to customer. · The cases suggest product development roadmap stability as a root cause for negative effects to the relationship between customer and supplier.

This thesis intended to increase the understanding of bullwhip effect in electrical appliance industry in the Chinese market. In the supply chain management, the bullwhip effect is a phenomenon can never be ignored. The bullwhip effect has being defined as information distortion when orders move form downstream enterprises to the supplier (Lee et al 1997b). The distortion information was amplified step by step, and finally propagates to the enterprise marketing, logistics, manufacture and other fields. The existence of the bullwhip effect weakens the ability to add value and competitiveness of the supply chain. Hence, enterprises must collaborate and jointly mitigate the bullwhip effect to reach groups coexist. This work focus on the electrical appliance industry in China, and based on the successful experience of the case company, Haier Group, to formulate recommendations. Firstly, this research analysis the four causes of the bullwhip effect: demand forecast, price fluctuations, order quantity and short game (Lee et al 1997a). After analyze these causes, this study begins to identify the impacts which the bullwhip effect bring to the members of supply chains. The most obvious impacts can be defined as inaccurate forecasting, inadequate customer service and high inventory cost. Next, the paper evaluate the measures of Haier implement to dampen the bullwhip effect. Information sharing, the key point to solve the problem has been use in Haier. In addition to this, the Just in Time (JIT) strategy which include JIT purchase, JIT delivery and JIT distribution is another important measure for Haier to achieve the goal of mitigate the bullwhip effect.  Overall Every Control and Clear (OEC) management was created by Haier Group and aims to improve the supply chain management, is another countermeasure to deal with the bullwhip effect. Besides, the inventory management also have an important role in gaining the control of bullwhip effect. In summary, the successful experience on dampening the bullwhip effect of Haier can shine a light for electrical appliance industry in China on solving the similar problem. Information sharing is always the key point to mitigate the bullwhip effect, and related instructions should build to remove the barriers of sharing information.

Physical distribution networks are integral parts of modern supply chains. When faced with a question of which node in a network is more important, cost immediately jumps to mind. However, in a world of uncertainty, there are other significant factors which should be considered when trying to answer such a question. The integrity of a network, as well as its robustness are factors that we consider, in making a judgement of importance. We develop algorithms to measure several properties of a class of networks. To accelerate the optimization of multiple related linear programs, we develop a modification of the revised simplex method, which exploits several key aspects to gain efficiency. We combine these algorithms and methods, to give rankings of the relative importance of nodes in networks. In order to better understand the usefulness of our method, we analyse the effect parameter changes have on the relative importance of nodes. We present a large, realistic network, whose nodes we rank in importance. We then vary the network's parameters and observe the impact of each change.

Risk management is one of the critical issues in supply chain management. Supply chain disruptions negatively impact on the performance and the business continuity of a firm, and the disruptions should be managed proactively if possible. One of the approaches for supply disruption management is to raise the level of inventory: supply disruptions can be reduced by simply increasing the safety stock level. However, inventory costs will be increased at the same time. Therefore it is assumed that having extra safety stock when and where needed is better than keeping a high safety stock all of the time. In this thesis, the concept of dynamic inventory management by supplier behavior monitoring is suggested and explored. Key to the concept is the assumption that out-of-control situations at a supplier can be causal triggers for stockouts, and that these triggers can be potentially predicted by using statistical monitoring tools. In the suggested approach, the statistical process control approach of using run tests is employed to monitor and evaluate the supplier behavior. The supplier’s yield rate is monitored as the performance measure, and the receiver’s safety stock level is increased when the supplier’s performance is detected to be potentially out-of-control (or about to reach an out-of-control situation). The simulation results under different yield rates indicate that stockouts can be reduced by monitoring the supplier behavior and dynamically adjusting inventory policy when production capacity is relatively loose and enough variability can be seen in the performance measure.

This thesis studies the influence of horizontal competition on supply chain performance. Unlike most of the existing literature which focuses on horizontal competition between echelon levels, we look at both the supply chain and the individual company??s performance with the presence of supply chain to supply chain competition. Specifically, this thesis is composed of three individual research papers. The first paper deals with chain-to-chain horizontal competition and considers price competition among an arbitrary number of supply chains by comparing two cases. In the first case each supply chain is vertically integrated, while in the second, decentralised, case the manufacturers and retailers act independently. We explore the effect of varying the level of price competition on the profitts of the industry participants and demonstrate the important role played by the spread of underlying market shares. The coefficient of variation of these market shares determines whether decentralised supply chains can outperform integrated supply chains with an appropriate level of competition. The second and third papers focus on in-chain horizontal competition with capacity constraints. In the second paper, we look at a supply chain with one manufacturer and two downstream retailers. Based on total capacity available, the manufacturer needs to find ways to best use the capacity by determining whether or not to release the capacity information to retailers. The third paper looks at competition in a more complicated supply chain structure. A retailer buys three brands of products from two manufacturers. One manufacturer produces both branded and private label products, and the other one manufactures a branded product only. With our model, we are able to determine the profits of each supply chain agent. At the end of the paper, we use data from the Australian milk industry and discuss a problem in which a manufacturer needs to decide how to allocate capacity between the national brand and the private label when there is a capacity shortage.

Zugl.: Darmstadt, Techn. Univ., Diss., 2005