Thesis (M.S. in Operations Research)--Naval Postgraduate School, March 2004. / Thesis advisor(s): Susan M. Sanchez. Includes bibliographical references (p. 61-65). Also available online.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2004. Directed by Yorai Wardi. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 161-164).

Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 100-105).

Thesis (M. Phil.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 59-61). Also available in electronic version. Access restricted to campus users.

Nowadays business world requires more collaboration along supply chains in order to sustain production, optimize cost structure and speed up delivery. The growing inter twist among supply chainpartners causesnumerous risks whose impacting magnitude and scope are larger than ever before. The risks are not just limited in operations any more but further extend to relationships related aspects. It demonstrates new features that we think should deserve careful investigation. Although supply chain risks and partnerships are great concerns in both academics and industry, the existing literature seldom links them together, and it echoesinadequately upon the new situations happened in the past decade. As such, this research project is made with ambition to improve the understanding of risks in the context of today’s collaborative supply chains where interorganizational linkages are strengthened through partnerships. The research project contains three studies. They constitute an integrated series subjected to the overall research objective. The first study starts with concept building and fundamental notion rethinking of risks in supply chains. We conceptualize supply chain risks into a general form in which risks are integrated into a system capable to reflect the correlation and chain effect among them. Through analytical inference and simulation it is found that the level of collaboration of partners contributes to the resilience of supply chains. It implies that partnerships can positively affect the integration of supply chain risk system, thus enhancing supply chain operations by improved ability in fault recovery.In the following two studies we are concerned with the impacts of different types of risks in supply chains upon companies’ operational performance given the effect of partnerships. The pre risk event effect and post risk event effect of partnerships are investigated in study two and study three respectively. The second study uses survey to research practitioners’ view on the role of supply chain risks and partnerships in supply chain performance. The validated sample of 162 responses reveals that the depth of partnerships imposes the most significant impact on supply chain risks and the collaboration risks are considered the top risk type that can influence supply chain performance to the most extent. The third study focuses on the negative consequence brought to the companies by supply chain risks when they have been realized. Event study is employed as the research methodology to identify and analyzethe effects of different risks under different partnerships. With respect to impact analysis, relationship risks are shown to cause the most significant loss to firm value. Moreover, deeper partnerships are found to have more negative impact on firm value resulted from relationship risks. This research project could contribute to the supply chain risk management literature by furthering the understanding of the important role of supply chain risks in enhancing the company’svalue and operational performance. The findings uncover the crucialrelationship between partnerships and supply chain risks, offering a novel view from a risk perspective to explain why an increasing number of supply chain companies are consciously engaged in partnerships nowadays. They may confer academicians and industrial practitioners with some new insights for risk management in supply chains and encouragefuture research in this area. / published_or_final_version / Business / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Industrial parks have played an indispensible role in boosting economic and industrial development. However, further development has been impeded by the shortage of land resources and by duplicate investments on common physical assets and services. This thesis proposes the concept of Supply Hub in Industrial Park (SHIP) as a public provider of warehousing and transportation services shared by manufacturing enterprises located within an industrial park. This research investigates four typical scenarios. The first scenario explores SHIP’s storage capacity pooling effect. Inventory models are built to simulate the supply chain in a typical industrial park: with and without SHIP. Under demand variations, two rules are presented for SHIP’s space allocation: the proportional dispatching rule (PDR), and the backorder cost priority dispatching rule (BPDR). The simulation results show that the industrial park can benefit from SHIP’s storage capacity pooling especially under complementarily seasonal or identically volatile demand pattern. BPDR is more beneficial than PDR to the industrial park, SHIP, and the manufacturer with the largest backorder cost rate. The second scenario evaluates SHIP’s value in consolidating shipments via numerically comparing the supply chain with SHIP with the traditional one. Genetic algorithm is used to solve the models developed for the two supply chains. Numerical outcomes show that the industrial park can obtain significant cost savings from applying SHIP. The cost reductions increase with the size of the supply chain, the vehicle capacity, and the rates of fixed transportation cost and holding costs of finished products at manufacturers. The third scenario investigates SHIP’s storage pricing strategies. A bilevel model is proposed to optimize SHIP’s decision on storage pricing, and individual manufacturer’s decisions on replenishment and delivery. A dynamic storage pricing depending on the storage length is adopted. The bilevel model is solved in closed-form in special cases. Through numerical experiments, SHIP is found to gain more profit by using the dynamic storage pricing than the constant one. It is observed that SHIP could not gain profit improvement by raising its delivery charge. Contrary to intuition, SHIP attracts more space demands from large production-scale manufacturers when charging higher on delivery or when the public warehouse’s delivery charge is lower, and more demands from small manufacturers when the market storage price is lower. The fourth scenario discusses how SHIP and manufacturers interact to optimize their decisions on shared transportation pricing and cycle-time, and raw material delivery schedules. A bilevel model is proposed to study this problem. The theoretical analysis of the model indicates that the SHIP’s storage price is the key in determining each partner’s behaviour. For comparison, a bilevel analytical model is constructed for direct transportation. The numerical outcomes show that SHIP’s profit may not always increase with the vehicle capacity. Manufacturers make more delivery orders when SHIP charges a significantly high storage price or the holding cost rate at manufacturers is significantly low. Sharing transportation service may bring benefits to SHIP and manufacturers with large demands. / published_or_final_version / Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Managing large scale supply chains are never an easy task. Numerous researches have put emphasis on supply chain modeling and optimization to assist businesses in searching for the best practices so as to endure the extremely competitive business landscape. To some, the paradigm of centralized supply chain management is adequate for solving its strategic and operational problems. Yet with the improper use of authoritative assumptions, the efficiency of the management process is often jeopardized. Furthermore, current researches in decentralized supply chain are mostly focused on dyadic or linear relationship and seldom consider quantitative modeling and analysis with scalability. Recent development in multi-agent systems provided a means for such a modeling methodology and hence researches in this area. To enhance model representativeness and computational efficiency, vision-based control models that are able to simulate individual operational and strategic traits are developed. In this research, pyramidal agent alignment is proposed for simulating the management-operation dimension with regards to decision exercising and bargaining power management. The system offers one thousand supply chain agents that are simulated in a mono-layer, multi-tier network in real time. Stochastic and dynamic behaviors of the network are handled by statistical regression on scenario-based model evaluation. The proposed design enabled grand scale supply chain modeling and optimization that follows a general or custom simulation supported optimization architecture. Network governance problems and dynamic steering problems are considered and solved using genetic algorithm and dynamic programming. The thesis looks into the potential benefits and limitations of the proposed methods in details, and future research directions are discussed. / published_or_final_version / Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The logistics industry is known to be one of the main players for integrating Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) into their supply chain. By reflecting radio waves, RFID allows any item to become an intelligent part of an organization’s information infrastructure. RFID can create greater efficiency and effectiveness as it provides real-time information, and thus has the possibility to heavily increase logistics companies’ performance. RFID is also suggested to create marketing opportunities for companies as it facilitates customer value creation. However, little is known of RFID’s true influence on marketing. To fully understand what influence RFID has on marketing, companies must seek insight into what influence RFID has on the four P’s; Product, Price, Place and Promotion. By understanding this, companies can gain an increased knowledge of how to utilize RFID to increase their customer value and hence increase their competitive advantage in the targeted market. This study investigates what perceived influence RFID has on the four P’s within the logistics industry in Scandinavia. This was achieved by performing an exploratory research, and both primary and secondary data was collected in order ensure the validity and reliability of the study. The primary data was gathered by conducting in-depth interviews together with eight logistics companies located in Scandinavia. The findings from the interviews conducted suggested that the perception of RFID’s influence on the logistics industry’s offered product is positive. According to the findings, the use of RFID technology improved the logistic solution offered which also resulted in an increased perceived customer value. The findings also show that RFID has a positive perceived influence on price as well as promotion and place. In conclusion, the authors suggest that for RFID to have positive influence on the four P’s it must not only be successfully implemented into the logistics process, but it also requires the implementing company to reach a certain economy of scale, as well as hold a certain level of expertise about the technology to see the full potential of RFID. If these criteria are met there are several benefits to gain from use of RFID in marketing purposes in the logistics industry.

Studien omfattar ämnesområdena luftburen försörjning, logistikkoncept, operativ och taktisk logistik. Då försörjning av förband påverkas av insatsens operationsplan, den fysiska miljön och den hotbild som råder, är det en nödvändighet att det logistikkoncept som styr hur understödet genomförs är av en robust och adaptiv karaktär.Syftet med studien är att undersöka vad ett logistikkoncept vinner på att ha luftburen förnödenhetsförsörjning som en ingående parameter samt att undersöka hur Försvarsmaktens marktaktiska förband påverkas av att understödjas av ett sådant koncept.Studiens empiri utgår huvudsakligen från de svenska Försvarsmakts doktriner och dokument vilken kompletteras genom intervjuer samt utländsk stödlitteratur. Analysverktyget utgår ifrån Moshe Kress teori om Operational Logistics. I studien analyseras logistikkoncept som tillämpats vid tre olika insatser.Av studiens analys framgår att ett logistikkoncept svårligen kan vara av robust och adaptiv karaktär om konceptet saknar möjligheten att tillämpa luftburen försörjning som metod. En viktig slutsats är att metoden kan öka understödda förbands förmåga till uthållighet och verkan.

Although experienced military commanders have always emphasised the importance of logistics in warfare, scholarly researchers have failed to explain how supply factors affect strategic performance. Martin van Creveld, the leading academic author on this subject, argues that detailed logistical planning has little value in war. This thesis counters Van Creveld's argument with the suggestion that logistical planning is indeed decisive in warfare, not only because of the tangible importance of supplies but because of their intangible importance as well. The author portrays logistics as an "arbiter of opportunity" which helps to determine the range of strategic options which military commanders will have at their disposal. This thesis goes on to demonstrate the truth of this statement through the structured, focused comparison of five historical case studies. In conclusion, the author discusses the implications of his work, not only for logistical studies, but for the study of international relations in general.