Supply Chain Frontiers issue #58 MIT CTL will host a workshop on supply chain finance and resilience roundtable on October 27 and 28, 2015 respectively at MIT. The Supply Chain Finance Workshop will focus on how supply chain actions affect the income statement and balance sheet – two key financial...
Supply Chain Frontiers issue #58 Should Colombia develop a logistics cluster? This will be the central theme of the ANDI 71th National Assembly, Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, August 13, 2015. MIT CTL Director Professor Yossi Sheffi will participate in the discussions, and give a presentation based on his book Logistics...
Supply Chain Frontiers issue #58 OnProcess Technology, a global pioneer in service supply chain management (SCM) and optimization, has joined the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics’ Supply Chain Exchange Program. “The approach companies take to managing their global supply chain has an enormous impact on their top and bottom...
Supply Chain Frontiers issue #58 MISI Javad Feizabadi “An Investigation in the Effectiveness of Strategy Theories in Explaining Supply Chain Performance Using Archival Data,” The 2015 International Conference on Logistics and Maritime Systems,” Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, August 27 – 29. With co-presenters Motlagh Alibakhshi, Mahender Singh...
Supply Chain Frontiers issue #58 MISI David Gligor “To Be or Not To Be (Loyal): is There a Recipe for Customer Loyalty in the B to B Context?” Journal of Business Research, 2015. With co-authors C. Autry and I. Russo. Shardul Phadnis “Effect of Scenario Planning on Field Experts’ Judgment...
Supply Chain Frontiers issue #58 When a change in strategy is not accompanied by a change in the way supporting chains are designed, the result can be more cost and less efficiency. This has happened in the retail sector, where some companies are shifting towards small format stores but are...
Supply Chain Frontiers issue #58 The European Smart-Rail project launched this May with nearly 6 million Euros (around $7 million) of funding from the European Commission (EC), aims to make the mode a better option for commercial freight in Europe. Nineteen organizations are participating in the project, which has an...
Supply Chain Frontiers issue #58 Whether it is called tracking, tracing, or supply chain visibility, the central goal of identifying and following the movement of products across the end-to-end supply chain has become more important. Companies need to keep tabs on product movements to meet sustainability, risk management, quality, and...
Supply Chain Frontiers issue #58 The Zaragoza Logistics Center, Zaragoza, Spain, has introduced two education programs that offer executives opportunities to delve deeper into the supply chain management discipline and the rigors of building supply chain resiliency. ZLC’s Executive Education Program Supply Chain is aimed at executives with at least...
Supply chain resiliency is a relatively new field within supply chain management. Many quantitative and qualitative resiliency frameworks are available. However, there is a need for a hybrid framework that provides a more comprehensive resiliency assessment. In this thesis, we attempt to synthesize important features from different assessment frameworks and...
Airfreight forwarding companies must develop accurate forecasting tools to analyze the suitability and attractiveness of each incoming bidding process, to decide whether to participate in a tender and how to define the optimal commercial strategy. The “1:6” weight/volume ratio establishes that whenever the cargo ratio is different from 1:6 (1m...
Non-asset backed third-party logistics companies provide shippers access to a flexible source of capacity through transportation carrier spot market. The increased volatility in the trucking spot market rates is turning the 3PL businesses more risky and complex. To maximize profitability, a better understanding of the risk and the volatility patterns...
The handicraft sector in Morocco represents more than 9% of the nation’s GDP and employs 2.3 million people. However, despite their talent and expertise, Morocco’s artisans are struggling to reach markets other than local regional or national markets. The main distribution model used so far has been the classic retail...
Optimization models are a commonly used tool to identify cost efficient network flows. Complexity increases when various products move across different paths and transportation modes within one network. To address the challenges posed by this complexity, this thesis develops a mixed integer linear programming model for a uniform rental company...
A challenging part of E-Commerce for perishable consumer packaged goods (PCPG) is the fulfillment. Given the fragile nature of the items shipped, they require a low cost, effective cold chain fulfillment method so as to keep integrity, ensure speed at an affordable low cost for the end consumer. Our research...
Natural disasters such as the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that hit Japan in 2011 can have catastrophic effects on businesses. This type of unexpected event can cause millions of dollars in damages, lost sales and can impact company stock performance. With 39% of supply disruptions occurring at indirect suppliers, companies...
Pharmaceutical companies operating in Africa are well positioned to contribute to the United Nations’ ongoing efforts to improve access to medicine in Africa. This thesis explores how access to finance for businesses in the Ugandan private pharmaceutical supply chain affects access to medicine for end patients. Specifically, we consider three...
Improvement in sales forecasting allows firms not only to respond quickly to customers’ needs but also to reduce inventory costs, ultimately increasing their profits. Sales forecasts have been studied extensively to improve their accuracy in many different fields. However, for automotive batteries, it is very difficult to develop a highly...
This thesis focuses on a medical device manufacturer, DeCo, which offers surgical instruments to customers at no cost in order to facilitate the sale of implantable products that require the use of such instruments. DeCo is facing challenges in managing the supply chain for these outsourced instruments, such as long...
Promotions involve a complicated interplay of factors and are a result of a synchronized sequence of activities between manufacturers and retailers. The outcome of promotions pivot on several elements beyond the control of any one party in the supply chain. ‘How’ a promotion performed has a more straight forward answer...
Demand planning affects the subsequent business activities including distribution center operational planning and management. Today's competitive environment requires distribution centers to rapidly respond to changes in the quantity and nature of demand. For the distribution center, accurate forecasts will help managers to accordingly plan operational activities. In the present thesis...
Retailers are exploring more efficient ways to deliver to small format stores that demand frequent and small volume deliveries from Distribution Centers. The need to deliver products at different temperatures, viz. Ambient, Refrigerated and Frozen, reduces volumes that need to be delivered for each product category. One way to make...
As the US economy recovers from the recession of 2008, demand for freight transportation is getting stronger. However, the trucking industry is not ready to take on this growth in volume due to a shortage of truck drivers. From a shipper's perspective, availability of transportation is an important concern that...
This thesis focuses on the study of the carrier-shipper relationships in the US trucking market. It uses data provided by a leading third party logistics (3PL) company to explore and determine whether a relationship exists between the prices charged by the carriers and the performance that they provide to the...
