In Chapter 4, we consider a supply chain which consists of a manufacturer, a logistics service provider (LSP) and a retailer. The LSP provides the emergency replenishment, financing and logistics services. The advent of the LSP changes the structure and incentive in the traditional one-supplier-one-retailer channel. We develop a framework of 3-player game to investigate the dynamics and competitive behaviors with multiple decision sequences. We provide the explicit equilibria for different decision sequences and demonstrate the possibility that the LSP and the manufacturer collude to create price increment, which squeezes out the retailer. Whereas, the triple marginalization effect is alleviated. / Supply chain coordination and associated contracts have been an active research area for supply chain management research. Yet, little has been done in addressing robustness matters of design, evaluation, and implementation for these coordination contracts. In chapter 2 and 3, we develop a consistency framework for supply chain contracts and classify a number of well-studied contracts into groups. We demonstrate with examples that coordination contracts can be evaluated by their consistency properties. Based on precise mathematical definitions and subsequently developed structural properties and management insights, we are not only able to measure the goodness of supply contracts but also to reveal the nature of their coordination. Our findings open an avenue for design, evaluation and implementation of supply chain coordination contracts. / Lu, Meng. / Adviser: Houmin Yan. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-06, Section: B, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 138-147). / 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, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.

By the rapid development of electronic commerce, many problems are emerging in logistics systems within developing countries. For developing countries such as China, India, and other southeastern countries Logistics is becoming a major part of GDP and logistics cost constitute a large portion of supply chain costs especially for businesses with international relations which is being more and more widespread in parallel with development of IT and e-commerce. Such an interactive juxtaposition of logistics and e-commerce motivated us to look at how small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are run, and of course through a lens that sees these two concepts together. Another point that spiced our motivation was the bloom of virtual businesses especially those with one head in developing countries and the other in developed countries. According to The CIA 2006 fact book, there are 137 million internet users in China. As e-commerce and its logistics support systems in China have a huge effect in the global trade, we have targeted our thesis case towards China. We have narrowed down our case to Chinese SMEs, which are small and medium sized Enterprises located in china; as SMEs, which their number has reached to 42 million, are now responsible for more than 90% of China's industrial output [1]. How the Chinese Electronic business should manage the way logistics must be integrated with e-commerce is the study which the thesis concerned about. In this research we are going to argue the barriers to ecommerce adoption in China, logistics-based barriers to successful SME establishments in china and also put up some suggestions upon possible strategies that can facilitate this process. We have concluded the thesis with two models, one for e-commerce adoption inside SMEs and the other one for Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Customer (B2C) e-commerce development. We didn‟t make any effort for developing a strategy for logistics leg of e-logistics due to the limited size of research and time barriers. The property that differentiates this study from previous similar studies is that here we face business environment in a different way and consider culture and government as two most important features of Chinese business environment. / Uppsatsnivå: D

In light of all these, we study in this dissertation the application of the classical Mean-Variance Theory in finance for supply chain models. In mathematical finance, pioneered by the Nobel laureate Harry Markowitz in the 1950s, the Mean-Variance Theory has been an important theory for risk control in portfolio management. Under the Mean-Variance Theory, we can quantify the profit and risk in a portfolio investment by the expected return and variance of return, respectively. The Mean-Variance Theory has been demonstrated to be very applicable in practice. Based on the spirit of the Mean-Variance Theory, many optimal investment policies in finance are developed. / In the supply chain management literature under the stochastic environment, most of the proposed policies target at improving the supply chain's efficiency in terms of the expected cost reduction or the expected profit improvement. However, the performance measure with an expected value alone lacks precision when the corresponding variance is high. It also ignores the risk preferences of individual supply chain's decision makers. In order to provide a tailor-fit optimal decision-making policy for the decision maker, it is desirable to have a systematic and quantifiable measure for risk preference. / In this dissertation, using the idea of the Mean-Variance Theory, together with the Bayesian Decision Theory and the other optimization techniques, we study, analyze and build various supply chain management models, which include the inventory problems, the supply chain coordinating buyback contracts, and the optimal ordering policies with information updates. / This dissertation is divided into two parts and each part contains several chapters. Each chapter can be treated as a self-contained paper and the Mean-Variance Theory has been applied in each one of them. Throughout this dissertation, short example cases and numerical studies with computer simulations are included to illustrate the applicability of the models. From the studies in this dissertation, we can see that the classical Mean-Variance Theory can provide a systematic framework for the scientific studies of risk and uncertainty control in stochastic supply chain models in the information age. Moreover, the importance of risk control in supply chain management should not be neglected. / by Tsan-Ming Choi. / "September 2002." / Mentors: Duan Li; Houmin Yan. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 63-10, Section: B, page: 4844. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 206-225). / 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 dissertations and theses, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

Fine art logistics concept is revealed by Innovative third party logistics services. However, fine art logistics concept is quite new topic of current logistics literature and existing resources, acquired knowledge are limited. Furthermore, innovative logistics services, which are provided by third party logistics service providers and their relation with niche market strategy, are not well researched. This study is prepared for making contribution to current logistics literature about fine art logistics and to investigate relation between niche market strategy and innovative third party logistics services. The method used is a qualitative case study at Benice Logistics, a fine art logistics service provider firm, located in Turkey. This study concludes and suggests how, third party logistics service providers should be more innovative for settle new business trend, and how they can create new opportunities and new specialization areas with their innovative services.

In the competitive world of manufacturing, companies are often searching for new ways to improve their process, customer satisfaction and stay ahead in the game with their competitors. Reverse logistics has been considered a strategy to bring these things to life for the past decade or so. This thesis work tries to shed some light on the basics of reverse logistics and how reverse logistics can be used as a management strategy. This paper points out the fundamentals of reverse logistics and looks into what kind of decisions today’s logistics managers have to take on a daily basis for the improvement of their logistics model. A growing concern has been developing to control rising global pollution, this paper also brings out some of the effects of reverse logistics decisions on the environment and vice versa. The thesis starts out by compiling the works of researchers and logistics experts in the field of logistics in the theoretical background section. Through a survey conducted in a few manufacturing firms in India, a small picture of the extent to which reverse logistics has penetrated the manufacturing world has been drawn.

The application of innovative methods to diminish the amount of human creation called “waste” should be applied not only under commercial terms, but also under the humanitarian concept. Negative results of focusing only on the fastest relief of human suffer without attending the consequences of the flow of items left on the disaster zones, could bring in the medium term, critical environmental consequences, due to the creation of new waste. This research analyzes relevant approaches of the Humanitarian Relief of Aid under a Humanitarian Logistics point of view. It aims to find if those approaches have already a Reverse Logistic phase of the items provided by donors. The results demonstrate the absence of a Reverse Logistics Phase for items brought to disaster zones. Thus, some proposals were suggested for a new Reverse Logistic Phase in any humanitarian relief of aid. NGOs, donors participation, coordination among players on the scene, managing inventories, last mile distribution, performance measurement, relief of aid models,  and reverse logistics concepts applied to the humanitarian field would be only some of the themes revised on this research. These aim to enrich the readers’ knowledge on the topic as well as to provide an open panorama of the humanitarian actions employed in each Natural Disaster. The reader would acquire sufficient understanding to determine how feasible and reachable are the alternatives proposed by the authors. The relevance of this theme reveals a critical and not yet researched niche in Reverse Logistics under Humanitarian Logistics. It encourages more readers to research on it, explore and apply in future natural disasters. This research used a qualitative approach employing a semi-structured interview made to small and large humanitarian organizations.

No description available.

ABSTRACT As enterprises have increased the demand for logistics services, the role of logistics service providers (LSPs) as home bases for merchandise transportation and distribution has consequently become increasingly important. Therefore, how to strengthen the logistics capability and promote the logistics performance has become an important topic. In addition, traditionally the perspective of treating tangible assets as the location of firm¡¦s value has been gradually diminished. The intangible intellectual capital is increasingly playing a pivotal position for the firm¡¦s performance. Researchers studied the field of intellectual capital argued that intellectual capital was the main source of organizational competitive advantages. Besides, they thought that the better the intellectual capital a company has, the better the business can have the ability to generate performance. However, researchers seldom distinguished static intellectual capital from dynamic capability for utilizing intellectual capital. Whereas, this study proposed that these two constructs were different concepts, and would like to explore the impact of utilizing intellectual capital on logistics performance. Consequently, this study integrated the concept of RBT and dynamic capability to offer a conceptual model, a survey of LSPs was undertaken in order to examine the relationships among intellectual capital, logistics capabilities and firm performance, using the structural equation modeling technique (SEM) analysis method. Previous researches had concerned the tangible resources, capabilities and firm performance, however, less from the perspective of intangible resources to study this subject. Hence, after reviewing the relevant literature, we conclude human capital, structural capital, and relational capital as dimensions of intellectual capital. Furthermore, from the empirical results of related scholars¡¦ researches, this study argues that it has a directly significant effect of logistics capabilities on logistics performance, and logistics capabilities are the critical factors for utilizing intellectual capital. Moreover, this research proposes that logistics capabilities are complex constructs. Therefore, we should clarify these constructs and provide an appropriate measurement tool with reliability and validity if we would like to measure them. Consequently, logistics capabilities were identified: service capability, innovation capability, and flexibility capability. Finally, after clarifying the definition and extracting the components of each variable from the literature review, this research deduced several hypotheses and formed the research framework. In this study, we take logistics service providers in Taiwan as the study sample. A total of 1,033 questionnaires were hand delivered and the remaining 109, valid and complete, were used for quantitative analysis. The useable response rate was 10.6%. A structural equation modeling (SEM) approach was employed to test the research hypotheses. Results indicated that structural capital, relational capital, and logistics capabilities had a significant positive effect on logistics performance. Results also indicated that human capital, structural capital, and relational capital had a positive effect on LSPs¡¦ logistics capabilities. While human capital was not found to have a direct positive effect on LSPs¡¦ logistics performance, it was found to have an indirect effect on logistics performance mediated by logistics capability. According to the results, LSPs should enhance the intangible resource - intellectual capital, further heighten their understanding of logistics capabilities and identify how such capabilities may affect logistics performance, therefore develop effective logistics strategies.

published_or_final_version / Urban Planning / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

Purpose: This master thesis attempts to propose a guideline for improving logistics performance in terms of cost efficiency and on-time delivery in shipper-TPL provider relationships within offshore outsourcing businesses. Methodology: As a first step, the authors construct a conceptual model based on a thorough literature review. In a second step, empirical data is collected through semi-structured interviews within a single-case study with dyadic perspectives examining the shipper-TPL provider relationship of Ericsson, Sweden and Aramex, Saudi Arabia. Lastly, the authors are able to develop a final detailed model through merging the discovered theoretical and empirical findings. Findings: The findings of this thesis highlight the impact on performance of the factors of communication, culture, work agreements, standardization, system compliance and trust. Based on these factors, the PILOOR Model is developed that illustrates a sequential order of these factors to improve performance. In detail, the findings suggest to start off with communication and culture in order to foster a mutual understanding. Afterwards, work agreements and standardization within processes and communication channels should be established. Thus, considerable efforts are required within the build-up stage of shipper-TPL provider relationships. Within the execution stage, system compliance is found to enhance performance, in which formal and informal communication tools support performance improvements. Finally, this research highlights that trust develops over time by successfully working on the other factors. In addition, it has an overall positive effect on performance once a sufficient level is achieved. Research Implications: This research is the first to propose a guideline for performance improvements within offshore outsourcing of TPL services through the presented PILOOR Model. Thus, this research fills a significant gap within the body of the TPL literature. Furthermore, the PILOOR Model is believed to support practitioners in successfully building-up and executing their offshore outsourcing shipper-TPL provider relationships. Limitations & Further Research: Due to the choice of methodology, this study is limited in terms of generalizability. Therefore, the authors suggest replicating this study within other offshore outsourcing shipper-TPL relationships. Ideally, the developed PILOOR Model should be tested empirically.