The research aim was to gain a more detailed understanding of the operation of different key segments for fresh produce supply chains originating in the Highlands Provinces in Papua New Guinea (PNG). The research investigates a number of supply chain dimensions of effectiveness which include, value creation and integration of processes, logistics, quality, information, relationship/vertical integration and overall effectiveness. These were linked together in SC framework. Two potato chains were investigated, one formal, the other informal. The informal potato chain involves small holder farmers, input suppliers and local markets including kai bars and the urban market. The chain originates and ends within the Western Highlands Province. The formal potato chain has farmers, input suppliers, wholesaler/marker, transport companies (trucking and coastal shipping agents), supermarkets, hotels and kai bars. This chain originates in Mt Hagen, Western Highlands Province and ends in Port Moresby, National Capital District. The effectiveness of both the formal and informal chains was identified, and comparisons were made to see how each chain differed. The informal chain was found to have different problems to the formal chains. However, participants to both chains demonstrate a high entrepreneurial behavior. A key finding of the study was that the chains spread their risk by operating in multiple market segments and this can help to solve issues with variable quality. The marketers in each chain position themselves in these different market segments. It was clear from this work that focusing on functions and not the whole chain can lead to a distorted view of chain performance. For example, for the informal chain, a focus on logistics issues, particularly poor roads and problems with availability of seeds, can misrepresent the effectiveness of this chain. Therefore, it was concluded that it is important to look at the overall performance of each chain rather than looking specifically at particular chain functions in isolation.

<p>The purpose of this thesis is to describe logistics collaboration in supply chains. During the past two decades, a new trend towards integration and collaboration in supply chains has been recognised among researchers as well as among business practitioners. This philosophy is called supply chain management and has received enormous attention in logistics research. Collaboration based on supply chain management is expected to reduce total cost and improve service towards the supply chain’s end customers at the same time.</p><p>The argumentation in existing literature is however seldom underpinned by more rigorous empirical material and becomes therefore conceptual and superficial. Furthermore, it is incongruous about what actually is done when companies collaborate and what more specific effects are achieved. Therefore more research, especially survey based, is needed in order to verify existing literature. In this thesis the perspective of a focal company is taken in order to concretise the ideas from supply chain management and investigate what it means for an individual company.</p><p>Based on supply chain management literature, a questionnaire was constructed which focused on the content of the collaboration and its driving forces, barriers and effects. Furthermore, differences between triadic collaborations, i.e. collaborations where both the supplier and customer of the focal company are involved, and dyadic collaborations (collaboration with either a supplier or a customer) were investigated.</p><p>The questionnaire was mailed to 482 Swedish manufacturing companies which had a turnover of more than SEK 100 Million per annum and with more than 100 employees. This population was considered as a typical target group for the supply chain management literature. 177 usable answers were received which gives a response rate of 37.8%.</p><p>The results from this study are summarised in five propositions. It is proposed that the content of logistics collaboration in the Swedish manufacturing companies’ supply chains is rather operative in its character and does not reach the strategic level that is advocated by the literature. In particular, the degree of process approach in the collaborations is low. This area has a great potential for improvements.</p><p>The results also indicate that the intensity of the collaboration, i.e. frequency of information sharing, degree of joint operative planning of involved supply chain activities, and process approach, are positively related to the effects experienced of the collaboration. The relation between joint strategic planning and the operative collaboration issues is however weak and does not seem to influence the effects experienced as a consequence of the collaboration.</p><p>Furthermore, engagement from top management is recognised as an important driver for successful collaboration. Top management involvement means an increased internal focus on the collaboration and facilitates more intensive collaboration.</p><p>Finally, differences in attitude and behaviour are recognised depending on whom the collaboration partner is. The study shows that the traditional way of managing supply chain relations still dominates, where the focal company “demand what he wants” upstream much more than in the case for downstream relations. Such differences according to SCM literature should not exist and can be considered as a serious threat for SCM based collaboration.</p> / The ISBN is incorrect in the printed version but corrected in the electronic version. ISRN/Report code: LiU-Tek-Lic 2005:35.

The concept of supply chain management has become an important issue for companies today in order to keep or gain competitive advantage. It is all about managing your supply chain to reach the highest possible efficiency and increase profits through cooperation with your supply chain partners. A supply chain is however vulnerable to several threats, or risks, that decreases the overall efficiency and influences the business performance. The purpose of this thesis is to identify the internal risks that can be found in a basic internal supply chain in order to make an assessment of their manageability and impact using a specific case. To do this a case study of Thule Trailers AB in Jönköping was conducted. Thule Trailers AB chose to offshore their main production of components to Poland in 2003, so the company’s internal supply chain was expanded outside of Sweden. This research looks closer at the interactions between Thule Trailers AB in Jönköping and their internal supplier plant in Poland. The research was conducted using a qualitative method with several interviews with representatives in both Jönköping and Poland, during which a number of internal risks were identified in Thule Trailers AB in Jönköpings’ internal supply chain. The conclusions made are that the internal risks identified, i.e. communication risks, quality risks etc, might not have as great an influence on the company as would external risks, they can however in comparison be managed. The findings suggest that the issues with e.g. quality and delivery basically come down to insufficient communication inside the internal supply chain. Another conclusion that could be drawn is that since the internal risks in the internal supply chain all are ripple effects, its source is almost always external, which implies that their avoidance is difficult. At least they cannot be eliminated completely by the company itself, it needs to be done in cooperation with the company’s external supply chain partners. There is potential to solve most of the internal problems that can be managed internally if both parties are prepared to put some real effort into reducing the risk sources. The risks are manageable and need to be managed to reduce the impact it has for the customer and end customer in turn. The authors of this thesis believe that for a company to be successful, the end customer has to be prioritized in almost every situation, and this goes for all of the members in the supply chain, especially the internal ones.

Competition amongst companies in the global market has resulted in increased production of goods and services. Enterprises are now faced with the challenges of shipments of raw materials, spare parts from vendors, and the finished goods to consumers. Logistics companies are springing up to tackle transportation and other logistics problems. There are various logistics companies such as logistics intermediaries, carriers and third party logistics service providers in the market which are in one way or the other competing and at the same time cooperating within the supply chain in order to fulfill their assignments to their customers. Third party logistics service providers are experiencing rapid growth because of the advanced demand of services such as the desire to reduce lead time, inventory management, outsourcing, and a host of other functions. Not much has been written on the logistics firms. Besides, most studies on logistics firms and the third-party logistics providers focus more on such aspects like their skills, services, and their relationships with their customers. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the logistics service providers’ roles within the logistics firms’ supply chain by identifying how the expected roles are performed. In the frame of reference, the author searched several books and articles that are relevant within the scope of the thesis topic. Both qualitative and explorative data collection methods are used in the thesis and these involve conducting interviews, and reading the accounts of other people concerning the thesis topic. The conclusion shows that logistics service providers are able to perform their roles through vertical and horizontal cooperation with other firms and with other logistics firms respectively. Besides, logistics firms do live up to their roles. Carriers and the logistics intermediary now perform more roles than what people think they do, because networks connection and the urge to remain competitive make them to take up value-added services. Third-party logistics service providers add values for their customers through their value-added services in various ways such as time and place utility including tracking and tracing the goods to ensure that they are delivered.

<p>Ett ERP-system syftar till att ta hand om företagets resurser och skapa ett enhetligt integrerat system för dessa. ERP-system kan också användas för informationsutbyte mellan företaget, kunden och leverantörens system. Behov av ERP-system finns inom de flesta branscher oavsett storlek och inriktning men kritik har riktats mot att systemen inte lever upp till användarnas förväntningar eller tillfredställer användarens behov. Arbetets fokus ligger koncentrerat på hur mindre företags uppfattning om ERP-system är och vad som krävs av en ERP-leverantör för att i framtiden tillfredställa mindre företag. En surveyundersökning har använts för att få fram relevant information för att lösa min problemprecisering. Resultatet av arbetet visar att integrering med företagets externa aktörer, framför allt med kunders informationssystem, är det kriterium som är mest betydelsefullt i ett ERP-system i framtiden. ERP-leverantörer bör också inrikta sig mot att öka integreringen med de interna informationssystemen i företaget.</p>

<p>The concept of supply chain management has become an important issue for companies today in order to keep or gain competitive advantage. It is all about managing your supply chain to reach the highest possible efficiency and increase profits through cooperation with your supply chain partners. A supply chain is however vulnerable to several threats, or risks, that decreases the overall efficiency and influences the business performance.</p><p>The purpose of this thesis is to identify the internal risks that can be found in a basic internal supply chain in order to make an assessment of their manageability and impact using a specific case. To do this a case study of Thule Trailers AB in Jönköping was conducted. Thule Trailers AB chose to offshore their main production of components to Poland in 2003, so the company’s internal supply chain was expanded outside of Sweden. This research looks closer at the interactions between Thule Trailers AB in Jönköping and their internal supplier plant in Poland. The research was conducted using a qualitative method with several interviews with representatives in both Jönköping and Poland, during which a number of internal risks were identified in Thule Trailers AB in Jönköpings’ internal supply chain.</p><p>The conclusions made are that the internal risks identified, i.e. communication risks, quality risks etc, might not have as great an influence on the company as would external risks, they can however in comparison be managed. The findings suggest that the issues with e.g. quality and delivery basically come down to insufficient communication inside the internal supply chain.</p><p>Another conclusion that could be drawn is that since the internal risks in the internal supply chain all are ripple effects, its source is almost always external, which implies that their avoidance is difficult. At least they cannot be eliminated completely by the company itself, it needs to be done in cooperation with the company’s external supply chain partners.</p><p>There is potential to solve most of the internal problems that can be managed internally if both parties are prepared to put some real effort into reducing the risk sources. The risks are manageable and need to be managed to reduce the impact it has for the customer and end customer in turn. The authors of this thesis believe that for a company to be successful, the end customer has to be prioritized in almost every situation, and this goes for all of the members in the supply chain, especially the internal ones.</p>

No description available.

<p>With the extensive use of outsourcing and more frequent technological innovations, global supply chains become vastly stretched and dynamic networks. As a result, firms face increasingly significant challenges to managing their fragile supply networks and responding to more rapidly changing demand evolutions. In this dissertation, we analyze three aspects of these challenges and summarize the findings in three essays. The first essay considers firms' problem of managing social and environmental non-compliance risk at its sub-tier suppliers. We figure out under what circumstances the firms should delegate the sub-tier supplier non-compliance management to its direct suppliers and under what directly control. In the second essay, we analyze the firm's strategy to deal with random demand surges. We develop a new demand model that captures important non-Markov characteristics of possible random demand surge trajectories and derive the optimal safety stock and reactive capacity strategy. Eventually, we establish a useful framework for supply chain planning under a variety of surge demand characteristics (e.g., frequency, intensity, duration, and shape). In the third essay, we examine a dynamic customer-base management problem for a firm with finite capacity, when its customers are prone to disruption and retention risks. We show that the optimal base size is an adding-up-to policy and derive the firm's optimal capacity allocation policy when capacity shortage occurs. In summary, our studies in this dissertation provide useful modeling ideas, decision tools, insights, and guidance for firms to build up resilient supply chains from both the supply and demand sides.</p> / Dissertation

This dissertation investigates two major themes: (1) the strategies that global firms use to overcome weak institutions in their outsourcing and (2) how local institutions affected how firms reconfigured their global supply chains in response to the financial crisis. All three papers use a unique dataset of international contract manufacturing orders that provides hitherto unavailable insight into the global supply chains of many of the world's largest brands in footwear, sportswear, and apparel. In the first essay I create a formal model that examines the use of relational contracting by firms to overcome weak contracting institutions in their supply chains. The model predicts that, when the risk of future demand shocks is high, buyers make long-term commitments to source from suppliers in weak institution countries. I test this model and find that buyers preserved their relationships with suppliers in weak contract enforcement countries during the financial crisis for reasons that cannot be explained by cost. In conjunction with the model, these results suggest that relying on relational contracting to overcome weak contracting institutions can reduce a buyer’s flexibility in configuring his supplier networks. In the second essay, I examine whether firms choose to source from multinational (MNC) suppliers instead of local suppliers as a means of overcoming weak contract enforcement institutions or as a means of accessing supply chain management capabilities. I find strong evidence that buyers are more likely to source from MNC suppliers in countries where contract enforcement is weak and when they have less experience sourcing from a given country. Buyers are also more likely to source from MNC suppliers when they source a wider variety of products, have smaller supplier networks, and have smaller order volumes. My third essay investigates how trade credit terms are affected by local credit markets, financial institutions, and market power. I find that trade credit terms are longer when local credit markets are more developed and when buyers have market power. I also test how trade credit terms responded to the financial crisis and find that terms lengthened subject to the depth of local credit markets and buyer market power.

Working with international suppliers in global supply chains, manufacturing firms now are faced with substantial supplier risks which could be triggered by disruptions in either their suppliers or the supplier’s market. Reactive actions to the risks, however, have usually been shown to be inefficient and sometimes ineffective. In this dissertation, therefore, I develop a theoretical framework linking some key relationship-specific capabilities to supplier risk. My contention is that the capabilities, when developed, can help proactively mitigate the risk. Thus, the model in this study is grounded in the resource-based and the relational views. In this study, the survey method has been employed to collect data from 66 manufacturing firms in the United State who are sourcing from international suppliers. Procedural and statistical methods have been employed to guard against typical empirical issues including non-response bias, common method bias, and problems in validity and reliability of measurement instruments. Structural equation modeling with partial least squares was employed to test the model with bootstrapping to estimate t-values for the paths. The analysis results showed support for the model. A conclusion from the study is that visibility is the critical relationship-specific capability that needs to develop for buying firms to mitigate supplier risk proactively. This is because it may not be substitutable by other mechanisms like goodwill trust, and other capabilities, including absorptive capacity and IT integration, will only operate via visibility to influence risk performance. Moreover, visibility is a significant capability that helps mitigate risk regardless of the relationship duration between the buyer and the supplier and of the market conditions under which the supplier is working. This study thus adds to the risk literature with discussions of supplier risks. Nuances have also been added to the resource-based and relational views by developing the theoretical relationships among the identified capabilities and by examining the contextual conditions under which the relationships are working to mitigate supplier risk. Managers from both sides of a dyadic relationship may benefit from the study by utilizing the tools and the study results to monitor and mitigate supplier risk.