Master-Arbeit Univ. St. Gallen, 2008.

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Master of Agribusiness / Department of Agricultural Economics / Vincent Amanor-Boadu / Generally, commodity prices immediately after harvest tend to be low because of supply glut and rise over time away from harvest as supply shrinks and demand remains virtually unchanged. Unfortunately, because many Malawian farmers do not have effective storage, they do not have any commodity for sale when prices are high. To help improve the income Malawian farmers may generate from their activities, this thesis explored the feasibility of hybridizing the two forms of price risk management systems in Malawi to minimize their individual weaknesses and enhance their collective benefits. The two risk management systems are forward contracts and warehouse receipt systems. Forward contracts allow farmers and their buyers to agree on a future delivery date and commodity price. On the agreed date, the farmer delivers the commodity and receives the agreed price. It allows farmers to pass downward price risk to buyers and guarantees a fixed price. As private transactions, forward contracts are not regulated by the Government, and present opportunism and enforcement challenges. Warehouse Receipt System (WRS) enables farmers to deposit their crop in the care of a warehouse operator and sell the crop when and where they choose. Farmers, therefore, incur both upside and downside price movement but avoid some of the opportunism and enforcement challenges presented by forward contracts. The thesis explored the net benefits of developing a hybrid system that allow forward contracts with warehouse receipt enforcement mechanisms. Thus, farmers are guaranteed a minimum price at some future date and the deposited commodity is used as the security supporting the guaranteed minimum price. The buyer also deposits a performance bond as commitment to purchase the commodity. The costs associated with these transactions are real and could affect participation. The thesis provides a process for assessing these transaction costs and incorporating them into the effectiveness of forward contracts, warehouse receipt systems and the hybrid program. The mathematical model example has proved that the hybrid system guarantees a fixed margin to the farmer over and above the harvest price and WRS cost as opposed to fluctuating margins under WRS alone. The thesis has identified three factors that can lead to the successful implementation of this hybrid system in Malawi and they include: the availability of the warehouse receipt bill, reliable warehouse certification which is done by AHCX and ACE on third party warehouse operators; and the availability of performance guarantee assuring that the quantities and quality of goods match those specified by the warehouse receipt. The thesis has also identified two factors that could hinder a successful implementation of this hybrid program and they include: first, low scale of warehousing operations under WRS which could deny most farmers a chance to access and benefit from this hybrid sytem and the commodity exchanges may not benefit from the economies of scale provided by large volumes of commodities produced in rural areas. Second, the absence of a harmonized national grading standard which possess a challenge when engaging in international trade. Finally, the thesis has made three recommendations for the successful implementation of the hybrid program as follows: Taking the system close to the producers to mitigate potentially high transportation costs; educating and selling the system to the stakeholders to increase adoption rate; and push for the implementation of national standardized grading regulations.

Le processus S&OP est souvent considéré comme un processus d'alignement de l'offre et de la demande dans les chaînes d'approvisionnement simples et linéaires, avec un seul marché et une seule usine. Les entreprises multinationales présentent aujourd'hui des configurations de chaînes d'approvisionnement plus complexes possédant des usines spécialisées qui desservent plusieurs marchés. Ce papier analyse comment les entreprises multinationales configurent leurs processus de gouvernance S&OP pour relier les usines et les marchés, ainsi que l'influence de cette gouvernance sur leur capacité à obtenir un alignement entre l'offre, la demande, et les plans financiers. Au travers d'entretiens menés avec des entreprises, une typologie est définie pour les modèles de gouvernance S&OP observés. Cette typologie suggère qu'un type de gouvernance S&OP exerçant une autorité, à la fois dans les usines et dans les marchés, conduit à des résultats S&OP plus probants. Un lien est également établi entre l'efficacité des S&OP et les mesures formelles d'alignement pour la planification financière. A partir de ceci, les éléments de Contrôle de Gestion sont précisés pour permettre la conceptualisation des S&OP en reconnaissant l'influence de la comptabilité sur la gouvernance du processus S&OP pour assurer la transparence et l'engagement multifonctionnel dans les contextes de la chaîne d'approvisionnement multinationale. Il en découle quatre règles normatives pour la réussite de la gouvernance et de l'alignement du processus S&OP dans un contexte de configuration de la chaîne d'approvisionnement multinationale. / S&OP is often seen as a process for alignment between supply and demand in simple, linear supply chains with one market and one factory. Multinational firms today have more complex supply chain configurations that have specialized factories serving multiple markets. This research explores how multinational companies configure their S&OP governance linking factories and markets and the influence this governance bas on their ability to obtain alignment between supply, demand and financial plans. Through company interviews, a typology for observed S&OP governance models is developed., and suggests that an S&OP governance type exerting authority simultaneously into both factories and markets leads to more successful S&OP outcomes. A link is also drawn between S&OP effectiveness and forma! policies for alignment with financial planning. From this, elements of Management Control are deployed as a framework to furthering S&OP conceptualization by recognizing the influence of accounting on S&OP governance in achieving transparency and multi-functional engagement in multinational supply chain contexts. The result is four normative rules for successful S&OP governance and alignment within a multinational supply chain configuration context.

Notre thèse traite des compétences nécessaires à acquérir afin que les agricultures familiales puissent être incluses durablement dans une Global Value Chain. Nous y développons une grille de lecture de ces compétences, afin de rendre les coopératives capables de gérer leur Supply Chain Management. L’approche par compétences consiste en un apprentissage plus concret, plus actif et plus durable. Il met donc l’accent sur la capacité d’utiliser concrètement ce qui a été appris dans des tâches et situations nouvelles et complexes.Les difficultés des petits agriculteurs remontent à longtemps. Plusieurs études sont été développés pour résoudre leurs principaux problèmes. Ceux-ci comprennent la production à petite échelle, l’obtention du marché pour ces produits, la gestion de leur petite 'entreprise', l’acquisition d’un rendement financier. Le but de notre thèse n’est pas de transformer les petits agriculteurs aux grandes, cette erreur a déjà été commise précédemment par diverses politiques publiques dans les pays en développement. Notre objectif est proposer une voie dans laquelle ils peuvent, même si petite, assurer leur qualité de vie a partir de la production et de la vente de leurs produits.Cependant, nous savons qu’un petit agriculteur n’est pas en mesure d’entrer individuellement dans le marché mondial. Le marché de la consommation a besoin d’une production continue, en volume et en qualité. Alors, ils ont besoins de développer des actions collectives qui puisse les insérer dans ce supply chain global.Pourquoi parlons-nous de l’introduction des producteurs dans les marchés mondiaux, et non pas son introduction dans les marchés locaux ? Eh bien, notre contexte est basée sur les petits agriculteurs de régions sous-développées, ça implique que, les régions dans lesquelles ils sont incorporés n’on pas la capacité économique d’acheter leurs produits pour assurer le durabilité de leurs affaires, de sorte que le défi est d’insérer les agriculteurs dans les circuits globales.Afin que les agriculteurs peuvent avoir un paiement plus équitable pour leur production, et soit capable de 'voler de ses propres ailes', a partir d’un approche capabilités, ils devraient chercher une forme d'organisation qui permet une production avec caractéristiques et qualité similaire, assurer le processus d'emballage et de transport, en plus avoir un potentiel financier et de gestion pour mener des négociations avec les client et fournisseurs. L’option la plus discutée dans la littérature est la coopérative.A partir d’une étude de cas comparative qualitative nous analysons deux territoires dans la région Nordeste du Brésil, dont l’un réussit (le Piauí) et l’autre échoue (le Ceará). Nous élucidons que c’est entre autres la gestion du SCM, le soutien aux apiculteurs et le contrôle de qualité qui sont à l’origine du succès de la coopérative centrale du Piauí. / The difficulties of small farmers go back a long time. Several studies have been developed to solve their main problems. These include small-scale production, obtaining the market for these products, managing their small 'business', acquiring a financial return.The purpose of our thesis is not to transform small farmers to large, this mistake has already been made previously by various public policies in developing countries. Our goal is to provide a way in which they can, even if small, ensuring their quality to improve its product life cycle from production to sale in the market.However, we know that for a small farmer is not easy to enter into the world market individually. The consumer market needs continuous production, in quality and quantity. So, they need to develop collective actions that can insert them into this global supply chain.Why are we talking about the introduction of producers into the world market and not their introduction into local markets? Well, our context is based on small farmers in underdevelopment regions which do Not have the economic capacity to buy their products in the way to ensure the sustainability of their business, so the challenge is; insert farmers into global circuits.In this case, farmers will have a more equitable payment for their production and be able to 'fly on their own', from a capabilities approach, they should look for a form of organization that allows production with characteristics and quality similar, ensuring the packaging and transportation process, in addition to having financial and management potential to conduct negotiations with customers and suppliers. At that moment, we are wondering what is the apropriate legal form “Cooperative” or not.From several case studies we analyze two territories in the Northewest region of Brazil, one (Piauí) and the other (Ceará). We are clear that the management of SCM, support for beekeepers and quality control department are, among others, those that are at the origin of the success of the central cooperative of Piauí.

This dissertation is based on three essays in operations and supply chain management. In essay 1, we study an operations scheduling problem in a complex manufacturing system, most notably, semiconductor manufacturing. In particular, we study the scheduling problem of minimizing total weighted tardiness on parallel non-identical batch processing machines. We formulate the (primal) problem as a nonlinear integer programming model. Moreover, we prove that the primal problem can be solved exactly by solving a corresponding dual problem with nonlinear relaxation. Since both the primal and the dual problems are NP-hard, we propose to use genetic algorithms, based on random keys and multiple choice encodings, to heuristically solve them. We found that the genetic algorithms consistently outperform a standard mathematical programming package in terms of solutions and computation times. We also found that for small scale problem instances, the multiple choice genetic algorithm outperforms the random keys genetic algorithm, while for medium and large scale problem instances, the random keys genetic algorithm outperforms the multiple choice genetic algorithm. In essay 2, we study a monopolist firm offering successive versions of a durable good (e.g., software) that improves over time. The firm decides the time between successive introductions as well as price. In turn, consumers strategically decide whether to purchase or wait for a later version. We model and analyze three alternative strategies for offering successive product versions: the partial-, continuous-, and no-updates policies. We first consider the firm's profit maximizing policy assuming a homogeneous market and subsequently address consumers with heterogeneous product valuations. Our analytic model's simple structure and results highlight the important tradeoff between price and release timing for products with successive versions. In essay 3, we study the effect of time series structure of customer demand models on the value of information sharing within a supply chain. We contribute to the literature by incorporating a nonlinear demand model based on exponential disturbances, coupled with temporal heteroscedasticity, which captures more complex patterns in the demand process. We examine the conditions under which information sharing is valuable. / 10000-01-01

Kyoto University (京都大学) / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(工学) / 甲第13812号 / 工博第2916号 / 新制||工||1431(附属図書館) / 26028 / UT51-2008-C728 / 京都大学大学院工学研究科機械理工学専攻 / (主査)教授 椹木 哲夫, 教授 吉村 允孝, 教授 松原 厚 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当

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