Orientador: Antônio Fernando Crepaldi / Banca: Fernando Bernardi de Souza / Banca: Daisy Aparecida do Nascimento Rebelatto / Resumo: O forte cenário competitivo entre as organizações motiva-as a serem mais eficientes em reduzirem custos operacionais, sem comprometer a qualidade dos produtos ou serviços prestados. Essa redução de custos envolve vários setores, entre eles, a manutenção dos ativos industriais, que têm como função primária manter a capacidade produtiva de uma organização. O impacto dessas reduções pode gerar restrições severas, como paradas não planejadas e redução do nível de serviço, como as que ocorrem por ruptura do estoque de sobressalentes de MRO ()Manutenção, Reparo e Operação). Por outro lado, se a falta de estoque de itens denominados slow moving, intermitentes, de alto custo agregado causa perda direta e lucro cessante, o erro de previsibilidade da demanda pode significar a imobilizaçõ de alto valor de capital em estoques, gerando um alto custo de oportunidade, representado pela taxa de juros aplicada sobre o valor dos estoques. Esse trade off é o propósito desta pesquisa, em que se faz um estudo de caso com dados reais de demandas e custos de empresas que possuem operações com ativos industriais, utilizando-se a distribuição de Poisson no estudo do comportamento de variável custo total. O resultado obtido foi uma relação direta entre a variável custo total e o nível de serviço, mostrando que há um ponto de mínimo na curva custo total com o aumento da quantidade de itens projetados, determinando o ponto de menor custo de estoque. A conclusão na observação dessas variáveis é que o menor custo total nem sempre representa o melhor nível de serviço / Abstract: The strong competitive environment between organizations motivate them to be more efficient to reduce operating costs without compromising the products or services quality. This cost reduction involves various sectors, including the maintenance of industrial assets, whose its primary function is to maintain the productive capacity of an organization. The impact of these reductions can lead to severe restrinctions, such as unplanned downtime and reduced fill rate, which occurs due to rupture of MRO stock (Maintenance, Repair and Operation). On the other hand, the lack of inventory items denominated slow moving, intermittent, high added cost cause direct profits losses, the demand predictability error can mean the inmobilization of high-value capital in inventory, thus generating a high opportunity cost, represented by the rate applied to the inventories values. This trade of is the purpose of this research, which is a case study with real data demands and costs of companies that have operations using industrial assets, using the Poisson distribution, and the study of the variable total cost behavior. The results obtained was a direct relationship between tha variable total cost and the fill rate showing that there is a minimum point on the curve total cost by increasing the projected amount, determining the point of least cost of stock. The conclusion on the observation of these variables is that the lowest total cost is not always the best level of service / Mestre

Thesis (MTech (Cost and Management Accounting))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2016. / Small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) in South Africa are perceived to be failing partly due to ineffective management practices. Using a questionnaire survey, this study sought to determine the inventory-management practices of SMMEs operating in the Cape Metropole, and to evaluate the effectiveness of the inventory-management practices currently used by these entities. In addition, the study sought to determine the challenges, if any, that are experienced by SMMEs from the inventory-management practices currently used. This study was motivated by a dearth of research on inventory-management practices of SMMEs. The findings of the study revealed that most of the SMMEs used ‘Rule of Thumb’ as an inventory-management practice. Regarding the effectiveness of the practices used, the study revealed that the SMMEs investigated were perceived to be moderately effective, with SMMEs practising good inventory management techniques such as warehousing, stocktaking, budgeting, good ordering habits and segregation of warehouse duties. In relation to the challenges faced by SMMEs from the inventory-management practices currently used, the findings suggested that theft, shortage of inventory, errors due to incompetent staff, physical inventory not matching up with records and an inability to keep up with the demand of the customers were some of the main challenges faced. This study contributes to the literature on inventory-management practices of SMMEs and fills the gap of knowledge in this neglected area of research. The findings of this study are of significance to the decision-makers of SMEs as they will be enlightened on the best practices and different inventory-management practices that are vital for their businesses’ survival and that have been adopted by their competitors. This should enable them to evaluate their own inventory-management practices and to decide whether to improve, change or continue with their current practice. The South African Government could also draw on the findings of this research to inform its future intervention strategies meant to improve the survival rates of these entities. This could be in the form of the creation of short courses meant to assist SMMEs to improve their inventory-management practices.

M.Com. (Informatics) / This study gives background information on technology like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Expert Systems (ES). The application realm of this technology is the manufacturing environment. The strategies that are addressed are, Computer-Aided Design (CAD), Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM), Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP II) and Computer integrated Manufacturing (CIM). We proposel further process or step namely: Inter Organlzational Information Sharing (1015). CIM integrates all internal information sources. lOIS creates standard and secure interfaces so that the organization and other organizations especially suppliers, manufacturers and distributors can share predefined information. The sharing of this information can help make forecasting more accurate and help the organization espond faster to the consumer's ever changing needs. Due to the fact that inventory plays such an important role in the manufacturing process, a software program was developed to aid the managers in small to medium sized organizations to reduce inventory.

M.Comm. / The concepts of logistics and supply chain management are relatively new in South Africa. The concept of logistics management was more commonly known in the 1960s and 1970s as physical distribution. In the late 1970s, the concept evolved to logistics management and in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it evolved into supply chain management. It was only after the end of apartheid in 1994 when South Africa was able to compete globally that there was great interest in supply chain management in South Africa. There is virtually no business or industry untouched by the business of logistics and supply chain management. Getting the right product to the right customer at the right time as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible is the main objective of logistics and supply chain management (Gordon, 2000a: 14). Logistics is “the process of strategically managing the acquisition, movement and storage of materials, parts and finished inventory (and the related information flows) through the organization and its marketing channel in such a way that current and future profitability is maximised through the cost-effective fulfillment of orders” (Anon1. ,2002). The term supply chain is described by Lummus and Vokurka (1999) as “all of those activities associated with moving goods from raw materials stage through to the consumer. This includes procurement, production scheduling, order processing, inventory control, transportation, warehousing, and customer service. The information systems necessary to monitor all of these activities are also included. All these activities are then integrated and coordinated into a seamless process to involve all the partners in the supply chain”. With every step in the supply chain management process, there are costs involved and two of the major cost drivers in the supply chain according to Palmieri and Africk (1999) are inventory holding and transportation. Stout is of the opinion that this is more than a valid statement from a South African business perspective and emphasizes that unnecessary inventory costs money as does inventory that is distributed inefficiently (Gordon, 2000b: 21). Excessive inventory holding together with under-utilization of transport can lead to a major negative financial impact on total supply chain costs (Cooke, 2000: 12; Lambert, Stock & Ellram, 1998: 165; Hankanson, 1999). Therefore, the reciprocal relationship between inventory holding and transportation cost is very important. Christopher (1992: 25) also stipulates that the ultimate purpose of any supply chain is to satisfy customers. The importance of customer service in total supply chain functioning must therefore always be considered in a logistics supply chain system design. In South Africa, transport and inventory are two of the main cost drivers in the supply chain. Factors that make inventory and transport two of the main cost drivers in the supply chain are, among others: high fuel prices, high interest rates, poor road conditions, security concerns and the weak performance of the rand against major foreign currencies. It can therefore be said that inventory and transport are just as important in obtaining an optimized supply chain in South Africa as in the rest of the world. / Mr. P. Kilbourn Prof. J. Walters

This thesis presents a cost allocation method for deriving lower bounds on costs of feasible policies for a class of production/inventory problems. Consider the joint replenishment problem where a group of items is replenished together or individually. A sequence of reorders for any particular item will incur holding, backorder and set-up costs specific to the item, in addition whenever any item is replenished a joint cost is incurred. What is required of the total problem is the minimization of a cost function of the replenishment sequence or policy. The cost allocation method consists of decomposing the total problem into sub-problems, one for each item, by allocating the joint cost amongst the items in such a way that every item in the group receives a positive allocation or none. The result is that, for an arbitrary feasible cost allocation, the sum of the minimum costs for the subproblems is a lower bound on the cost of any feasible policy to the total problem. The results for the joint replenishment problem follows: For the constant and continuous demand case we reproduce the lower bound of Jackson, Maxwell and Muckstadt more easily than they did. For the multi-item dynamic lot-size problem, we generalize Silver-Meal and part-period balancing heuristics, and derive a cost allocation bound with little extra work. For the 'can-order' system, we use periodic policies derived from the cost allocation method and show that they are superior to the more complex (s,c,S) policies. The cost allocation method is easily generalized to pure distribution problems where joint replenishment decisions are taken at several facilities. For example, for the one-warehouse multi-retailer problem, we reproduce Roundy's bound more easily than he did. For the multi-facility joint replenishment problem (a pure distribution system with an arbitrary number of warehouses), we give a lower bound algorithm whose complexity is dr log r where d is the maximum number of facilities which replenish a particular item and r is the number of items. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

As in the stock of trading business is allocated a large part of the capital resources, it is necessary to determine the manner of their control. For this purpose a number of models were developed. Before application to the specific case, these models must be properly adjusted to ensure conformity with reality. The aim of this thesis is to optimize the inventory management of electronic commerce. The stochastic model with loss from unfulfilled orders was chosen as default. First, the necessary adjustments were made to the model and defined input parameters. After filling model with real data, the optimum values of the monitored variables were obtained. The last part deals with the influence of changes in input parameters on the optimal value of variables. Use of the model is not limited to this particular case. Without major modifications, the model is also applicable to other similar problems.

To turn today’s challenges and threats into fruitful opportunities, marketing organizations must move away from their traditional modus operandi of closed system approach to an open system where employees, customers, procedures, processes, vendors, and strategies are viewed interdependently. This article presents a systematic and synergistic practical framework grounded in an open system. A case study is employed to illustrate the application of the framework and to demonstrate how it can benefit organizations in attaining desirable outcomes.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.