Decision knowledge sharing: flexible supply chains in KM context

Supply chain excellence has a real impact on business strategy. Building supply chains as flexible systems represents one of the most exciting opportunities to create value and one of the most challenging tasks for the policy makers. It requires integrated decision making amongst autonomous chain partners with effective decision knowledge sharing between them. The key to success lies in knowing which decision has more impact on the overall performance and this can be achieved by appropriate knowledge sharing. In this context, knowledge management (KM) can be used as an effective approach to achieve knowledge sharing and decision synchronisation in supply chains. Flexible supply chains (FSC_s) are more complex and involve multiple autonomous players with varying technical cultures (affects knowledge mindsets), managerial background (affects decision knowledge) and supply chain management (SCM) exposures (affects knowledge sharing attitudes). Thus there is a need to develop demo models that can encourage chain managers towards collaborative knowledge sharing in the supply chains. This paper presents the application of one such model based on decision knowledge sharing (DKS) for improved supply chain management. A simulation model of a flexible supply chain based on DKS framework is developed for demo purposes. The key results are highlighted along with industry implications. The cost based performance of DKS at different levels of flexibility is studied. Thus a careful analysis of the chain with a focus on collaborative decisions is useful to ensure success. This paper addresses this interesting and challenging domain.     

IT服务外包项目工期与费用控制的 多属性英氏逆拍卖机制

工期和费用是影响IT服务外包项目成败的两个重要因素,且两者之间呈负相关的关系。在IT服务外包项目执行前,发包方与接包方需要就项目的工期和费用达成一致。通常,发包方并不完全了解外包项目的市场行情,在这种情况下,就需要一种有效的方式使发包方和接包方之间就工期和费用达成一致。本文设计了改进的英氏逆拍卖机制,针对一对多的情况设计了新的拍卖协议;针对工期和费用的多属性情况,引入多属性效用理论解决,设计了相应的效用增加函数。最后通过一个算例来演示所设计的拍卖机制对解决此类决策问题的作用。得出一些结论:所设计机制能够以拍卖方式描述费用和工期管理流程;找到了发包方和接包方的最佳增量效用,并且建议的拍卖协议是发包方和接包方获得双赢结果的机制;从不同大小的案例中可以得到完全一致的结果,这表明设计的拍卖机制的有效性和效用增加函数对协商结果的有效性。     

A note on corporate valuation using imprecise cost of capital

We compare the estimator for discount rates according to Elsner and Krumholz (EK) (J Bus Econ 83:985–1014, 2013) to the approach propagated in Breuer et al. (BFM) (Eur J Financ 20:568–594, 2014). While the EK estimator is derived analytically and implies a correcting factor by which the original arithmetic mean estimator is adjusted, the BFM approach is based on a simple ad hoc modification and recommends to truncate the time horizon for cash flow projection up to about N = 30 years. The BFM approach is reasonable, as the most relevant bias problems are implied by terminal value computations. Rather surprisingly, for our main simulation analysis based on real-world capital market data for 19 countries over the period 2008–2012, the EK estimator turns out inferior to the BFM approach. However, results depend on the kind of bias measure and on the issue of whether using total historical returns or only excess returns for evaluation purposes. In any case, our findings imply that a rather straightforward rule of thumb for valuation may be of value to practitioners: ‘stick to the simple arithmetic mean estimator without terminal value computation, but consider future cash flows up to a time horizon of about 30 years’.     

基于平衡计分卡的CRM有效性评价模型研究

客户关系管理(CRM)是二十一世纪的主导战略之一.由于CRM的复杂性,目前对CRM有效性评价的研究还很少.考虑到平衡计分卡(BSC)的优点,本文建立了一个基于BSC的CRM有效性评价模型,该模型包含四个视角:客户知识、客户交互、客户价值、客户感知价值.通过对四个视角的作用分析,构造了四个视角的评价矩阵,并通过一个案例研究验证了该模型的可行性和有效性.     

ABC Classification: Service Levels and Inventory Costs

ABC inventory classifications are widely used in practice, with demand value and demand volume as the most common ranking criteria. The standard approach in ABC applications is to set the same service level for all stock keeping units (SKUs) in a class. In this paper, we show (for three large real life datasets) that the application of both demand value and demand volume as ABC ranking criteria, with fixed service levels per class, leads to solutions that are far from cost optimal. An alternative criterion proposed by Zhang et al. performs much better, but is still considerably outperformed by a new criterion proposed in this paper. The new criterion is also more general in that it can take criticality of SKUs into account. Managerial insights are obtained into what class should have the highest/lowest service level, a topic that has been disputed in the literature.     

基于DSM的复杂研发项目价值流优化

针对传统设计结构矩阵(DSM)优化研发项目的不足,本文采用基于价值要素的DSM价值流优化方法,提出了活动的"费用时间比"参数和返工因子DSM矩阵,以综合反映活动的费用、时间及返工风险等价值要素对复杂研发项目活动排序优化的影响。进一步,将活动的"费用时间比"参数和返工因子作为优化参数,构建了相应的DSM价值流优化目标函数。对某案例优化计算表明,与传统方法相比,采用本文提出的价值流优化方法能明显降低由于返工而引起的项目费用增加值。     

Simultaneous Determination of Joint Product Cost Allocations and Cost-Plus Prices*

Use of the net realizable value approach for joint manufacturing cost allocations requires knowledge of selling prices of joint products. However, joint product selling prices themselves are functions of the allocated costs under a cost-plus pricing policy. In this case, it is necessary to determine joint cost allocations and joint product prices simultaneously. This paper applies a nonlinear programming (NLP) approach to simultaneously determine the optimal joint production decision, joint product cost-plus prices, and joint cost allocations using the net realizable value method. The NLP solution provides not only the optimal joint production and pricing decisions, but also the necessary conditions for such optimal decisions.     

Setting tolerance limits for statistical project control using earned value management

Project control has been a research topic since decades that attracts both academics and practitioners. Project control systems indicate the direction of change in preliminary planning variables compared with actual performance. In case their current project performance deviates from the planned performance, a warning is indicated by the system in order to take corrective actions.Earned value management/earned schedule (EVM/ES) systems have played a central role in project control, and provide straightforward key performance metrics that measure the deviations between planned and actual performance in terms of time and cost. In this paper, a new statistical project control procedure sets tolerance limits to improve the discriminative power between progress situations that are either statistically likely or less likely to occur under the project baseline schedule. In this research, the tolerance limits are derived from subjective estimates for the activity durations of the project. Using the existing and commonly known EVM/ES metrics, the resulting project control charts will have an improved ability to trigger actions when variation in a project׳s progress exceeds certain predefined thresholdsA computational experiment has been set up to test the ability of these statistical project control charts to discriminate between variations that are either acceptable or unacceptable in the duration of the individual activities. The computational experiments compare the use of statistical tolerance limits with traditional earned value management thresholds and validate their power to report warning signals when projects tend to deviate significantly from the baseline schedule.     

A two-agent single machine scheduling problem with due-window assignment and a common flow-allowance

We study a single-machine scheduling model combining two competing agents and due-date assignment. The basic setting involves two agents who need to process their own sets of jobs, and compete on the use of a common processor. Our goal is to find the joint schedule that minimizes the value of the objective function of one agent, subject to an upper bound on the value of the objective function of the second agent. The scheduling measure considered in this paper is minimum total (earliness, tardiness and due-date) cost, based on common flow allowance, i.e., due-dates are defined as linear functions of the job processing times. We introduce a simple polynomial time solution for this problem (linear in the number of jobs), as well as to its extension to a multi-agent setting. We further extend the model to that of a due-window assignment based on common flow allowance.     

Using Advance Purchase Discount Contracts under Uncertain Information Acquisition Cost

We study the use of advance purchase discount (APD) contracts to incentivize a retailer to share demand information with a dual‐sourcing wholesaler. We analyze such contracts in terms of two practical considerations that are relevant in this context but have been overlooked by previous work that has largely studied the direct offer of APD to customers: the retailer's information acquisition cost and the wholesaler's limited information about that cost. The wholesaler's limited knowledge of the retailer's cost leads to a departure—from the normal “full observability” APD design—that is asymmetric and depends on the extent of unobservability; if the uncertainty is small (resp., large) then the optimal discount is higher (resp., lower) than in the case of full observability. An APD contract that ignores the retailer's cost or the wholesaler's uncertainty about it will yield fewer benefits for the wholesaler and the supply chain. We offer a numerical illustration (calibrated on real industry data) establishing that for a representative product, an APD contract can improve the wholesaler's profit margin by as much as 3.5%.     

ORTHOGONAL INFORMATION STRUCTURES—A MODEL TO EVALUATE THE INFORMATION PROVIDED BY A SECOND OPINION

The paper discusses the value of information when a number of independent sources provide information related to a common set of states of nature. The starting point is the information economic model of information structures. The model is augmented to represent independence of informational sources by means of orthogonality of the information structures. A new mathematical operator, orthogonal product, is defined and its properties are probed. It is shown that this operator maintains some mathematical properties such as closure, association, unity element, null element, and so forth. It is demonstrated how the orthogonal product represents the notion of multisource information. The paper proves that an orthogonal product is generally more informative than its multipliers, namely, if cost is not considered a constraining factor, then there is a nonnegative value to obtaining a second opinion. An appendix to the paper expands this result to a case of partially dependent signals. The paper concludes with a numerical example and a discussion of the model's applicability for practical problems such as cost estimates.     

企业获取成本竞争优势的价值链分析法

本文把价值链作为成本分析的系统框架和基本工具,描述了价值链及其组成部分,阐述了怎样使用成本驱动因素的概念和方法分析成本行为,指出了企业获取成本竞争优势的两种主要方法和我国企业成本管理的五大误区。     

Safety culture: Key theoretical issues

The organizational preconditions to major systems failures are seen as increasingly important for risk management. However, existing empirical attempts to study safety culture and its relationship to organizational outcomes have remained fragmented and underspecified in theoretical terms. This is despite the existence of a number of well-developed theories of organizationally induced accidents and disasters. Reasons for this disfunction of theory and practice are first considered. The paper then outlines four key theoretical questions for safety culture researchers: the fact that culture acts simultaneously as a precondition both for safe operations and for the oversight of incubating hazards (the paradox of 'safety' culture); the challenge of dealing with complex and ill-structured hazardous situations where decision makers are faced with deep forms of uncertainty represented by incompleteness of knowledge or ignorance; the need to consider the construction of risk perceptions in workgroups, and to view risk acceptability as the outcome of a process of social negotiation; and the fact that institutional politics and power are critical for determining the achievement of safety culture goals, and in particular that of organizational learning.     

End‐of‐Life Inventory Problem with Phaseout Returns

We consider the service parts end‐of‐life inventory problem of a capital goods manufacturer in the final phase of its life cycle. The final phase starts as soon as the production of parts terminates and continues until the last service contract expires. Final order quantities are considered a popular tactic to sustain service fulfillment obligations and to mitigate the effect of obsolescence. In addition to the final order quantity, other sources to obtain serviceable parts are repairing returned defective items and retrieving parts from phaseout returns. Phaseout returns happen when a customer replaces an old system platform with a next‐generation one and returns the old product to the original equipment manufacturer (OEM). These returns can well serve the demand for service parts of other customers still using the old generation of the product. In this study, we study the decision‐making complications as well as cost‐saving opportunities stemming from phaseout occurrence. We use a finite‐horizon Markov decision process to characterize the structure of the optimal inventory control policy. We show that the optimal policy consists of a time‐varying threshold level for item repair. Furthermore, we study the value of phaseout information by extending the results to cases with an uncertain phaseout quantity or an uncertain schedule. Numerical analysis sheds light on the advantages of the optimal policy compared to some heuristic policies.     

一种衡量作业效率与效果的作业价值乘数指标

国内外企业界用作业成本法实施作业成本管理时经常只关注作业消耗的成本,而忽视作业创造的价值,针对这一问题采用乘数分析法,定义作业价值乘数指标,通过量化作业成本与市场价值间的关系来衡量不同作业的执行效率和运行效果;结合中国某制造企业进行研究,探索性地分析了针对作业价值乘数一级指标、二级作业执行效率指标和二级作业运行效果指标的评价方法.研究结果表明.作业价值乘数指标解释了企业价值创造与资源成本消耗之间的关系,能消除成本一价值鸿沟;管理人员可以根据作业执行效率指标和作业运行效果指标进一步寻求企业持续经营的路径.     

Safety culture: Key theoretical issues

Abstract

The organizational preconditions to major systems failures are seen as increasingly important for risk management. However, existing empirical attempts to study safety culture and its relationship to organizational outcomes have remained fragmented and underspecified in theoretical terms. This is despite the existence of a number of well-developed theories of organizationally induced accidents and disasters. Reasons for this disfunction of theory and practice are first considered. The paper then outlines four key theoretical questions for safety culture researchers: the fact that culture acts simultaneously as a precondition both for safe operations and for the oversight of incubating hazards (the paradox of ‘safety’ culture); the challenge of dealing with complex and ill-structured hazardous situations where decision makers are faced with deep forms of uncertainty represented by incompleteness of knowledge or ignorance; the need to consider the construction of risk perceptions in workgroups, and to view risk acceptability as the outcome of a process of social negotiation; and the fact that institutional politics and power are critical for determining the achievement of safety culture goals, and in particular that of organizational learning.     

Inventory Control and Scheduling of Multiple Products in a Common Facility*

Consider a set of chemical products to be produced in a single facility. Each product has its own unique reaction time (which is assumed to be independent of its batch size), as well as other cost and demand values. In this paper, we address the problem of determining the optimal number of batches, batch sizes, and an accompanying production schedule for these products in the single facility that will minimize the total cost. Two different algorithms have been developed for this problem, the performances of which are contrasted with classical cyclic production schedules. Finally, some guidelines for the application of these methods to real-life problems are outlined.     

考虑故障停机的生产控制与维修计划联合决策模型

通过生产控制与维修计划协同决策,降低生产成本。首先描述生产过程,分析各项费用。其次,建立了考虑生产过程失控、故障率和故障停时间的生产过程控制、生产计划优化和维修管理联合优化决策的模型。通过模型求解,联合制定出生产过程检查策略、生产计划（经济生产批量、生产批次）以及维修计划（PM间隔期）,实现单位时间内总费用最低的目标。再次,案例研究,分析生产过程失控、故障率和故障停机时间对于经济生产批量、生产过程检查策略和生产系统维修计划的影响。该模型从理论上解决了生产过程控制、生产计划优化和维修管理联合优化决策难题,对于指导企业制定生产计划和生产系统的检修计划,进而提高产品质量、降低生产成本、确保准时交货都具有指导意义和实用价值。     

Optimal Control of Selling Channels for an Online Retailer with Cost‐per‐Click Payments and Seasonal Products

The problem studied in this paper is a predigestion of the decision faced by online retailers (etailers) that advertise on publisher or comparison‐shopping websites. An etailer may sell its product not only through its online and bricks‐and‐mortar stores, but also through the websites of one or more third parties (e.g., Yahoo.com). However, the etailer has to pay a certain amount to such third parties in an action‐based payment scheme, such as a cost‐per‐click (CPC) scheme. Under the CPC scheme, payment is based solely on click‐throughs, which means that the etailer pays only when a shopper clicks through to the product page of its website. Only a fraction of such clicks lead to actual sales. The extra cost that is associated with shoppers who first click through to the third‐party websites makes them less attractive as customers than those who directly visit the etailer's online store. Moreover, the CPC rate for a prominent placement is normally set by competitive bidding, and thus varies over time. Therefore, the etailer needs to decide dynamically whether or not to list on a third‐party website. The structural properties of the optimal policy are discussed, and numerical examples are given to show the revenue impact of dynamic listing control.     

A Probabilistic Feasibility and Value Analysis of the Generalized Assignment Problem

We study the generalized assignment problem, under a probabilistic model for its cost and requirement parameters. First we address the issue of feasibility by deriving a tight condition on the probabilistic model that ensures that the corresponding problem instances are feasible with probability one as the number of jobs goes to infinity. Then, under an additional condition on the parameters, we show that the optimal solution value, normalized by dividing by the number of jobs, converges with probability one to a constant, again as the number of jobs goes to infinity. Finally, we discuss various examples.