Browsing by Subject "Supply chain"
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Item Business continuity planning and semiconductor manufacturing(2010-12) Urena, Enrique C.; Lewis, Kyle, 1961-; Duvic, Robert Conrad, 1947-In the current era of globalization in supply chain, business continuity planning should play an even more important role than previously. Business continuity planning provides company with an analysis of potential business threatening situations, everything from natural disasters to supply shortages, and ensures that actions are taken in order to mitigate the probability that those risks will become reality. Business continuity planning does not come without a cost, since companies will in some cases have to spend money in actions like redundancies (e.g. supplier). In the Semiconductor industry, supply chains might are extremely complex and globalized. These supply chains can go from having suppliers in the United States, to front-end manufacturing in Europe, to back-end manufacturing and packaging in Asia. Raw materials for semiconductor manufacturing, for example raw wafers, can be found for above $500 per wafer. It is due to not only the complexity of the supply chain in semiconductors, but also due to the high costs of raw materials and manufacturing, that it is crucial for companies in this particular industry to ensure business continuity planning is taken seriously, and adequate measures are taken to mitigate as many risks to their supply chain as possible.Item Demand forecasting for job order products in highly technological and emerging industries(2012-05) McFarland, Ian Christopher; Kutanoglu, Erhan; Gotcher, AlanDemand forecasting is an important step of a company’s supply chain management process, allowing companies to project their needs for different components that are used in the final product. This is even more important in emerging industries with job order (or project-based) products where historical demands do not exist and components may not be readily available or may involve a long lead time. Developing a demand forecasting model which accurately projects the needs of components for a company can decrease costs while decreasing overall lead times of final products. This demand forecast model takes into account projected component needs along with the likelihood of successfully winning a project bid. The model is extended to four different demand forecasting formulas incorporating different use of the winning probabilities. Historical results are then used to compare the methods and their advantages and disadvantages are discussed.Item Effectively managing multi-source, Multi-site technology deployments(2011-08) Emanuel, Mark Eugene; Darwin, Thomas Jason, 1966-; Nichols, Steven Parks, 1950-Information Technology infrastructures continue to be dynamic, evolving, and business critical investments for companies of all sizes. Even with moves to virtualize end user computing functions, the evolution of network architectures, mobile computing devices and corporate security requirements will continue to necessitate technology upgrades requiring, at their core, the rudimentary act of placing hardware at specific physical locations on a prescribed timeline. In distributed corporate environments, deploying a range of devices sourced from multiple suppliers into geographically dispersed locations can be a challenge in material management and logistics planning. This Multi-Source, Multi-Site style of deployment is a complex balance of competing timelines where failures to meet delivery targets can have costly impacts that cascade throughout the project. Perturbations in global supply chains, manufacturing schedules, and local shipping capacities drive fluctuations in a supplier's ability to consistently and predictably execute to delivery timelines so it is the task of a deployment Project Manager to interpret a variety supply chain signals and take action to minimize the negative impacts of supply chain challenges. In that effort, the deployment PM will benefit from a structured approach to defining how available supply chain data will be used to help manage expectations, monitor execution, and effect the overall deployment success. In this paper, I present an approach that breaks deployment planning into 3 primary deliverables; the Site Plan, the Data Plan, and the Monitoring Plan. Executing those three plans will drive a PM to understand the supply chain data available to them, translate that data into information useful and understandable by all stakeholders, and monitor the progress of the supply chain against a deployment schedule. In practical terms, those plans culminate in a data mining and data management methodology that can be supported with spreadsheet based dashboards that provide both a fixed Snapshot of the status of the deployment as well as a rolling Timeline of key material movements over the duration of the deployment. The data management approach described here is specifically designed to avoid complex macro development, database queries, or software purchases that may not be available to all Project Managers. Applying the Multi-Source, Multi-Site approach, a PM can gain useful and relevant information from various streams of supply chain data using straightforward spreadsheet manipulations. With a clearer picture of supply chain execution, a PM tasked with a Multi-Source, Multi-Site deployment can better leverage project change control methods to improve their chances of successfully meeting their schedule and cost targets.Item Global Supply Chain Analysis of U.S. Lamb Promotion(2014-04-13) Ghosh, SomaliThe United States sheep industry has suffered an almost constant decline in sheep and lamb inventories; a record of 56 million head in the early 1940s to only 5.54 million head in 2011. The steady decline of the industry can be attributed to a confluence of many factors, amongst which is the discontinuation of the U.S. Wool Incentive payment program. With the discontinuation of the program in 1996/97, an unsuccessful effort was made to pass a mandatory checkoff program through a producer referendum. Six years later, in 2002, to enhance the demand for lamb, the Lamb Promotion, Research, and Information Order, better known as the American Lamb Checkoff Program, was established under the Commodity Promotion, Research and Information Act of 1996. The main objective of this research was to measure the effectiveness of the Lamb Checkoff Program by determining the extent to which the program has been able to shift out the demand for U.S. lamb and how much of the promotion benefit, if any, has been transmitted back through the supply chain to the different stakeholders of the lamb industry. This research investigated questions dealing with the demand, supply and trade of sheep and lamb through the global supply chain. This analysis used a seventy equation, non-spatial price equilibrium model to estimate the parameters of interest using the OLS method of estimation. After estimating the parameters, a simulation model was conducted over the sample period (1987 - 2011) as a means of validating the model. After validating the model using some within sample simulation statistics, the ?with? and ?without? lamb checkoff expenditure scenarios were developed to measure the effects and benefits of the program. The results of this study clearly indicated that not only did the lamb checkoff program increase the demand for lamb, the program tended to lift the entire supply chain in the process with every stakeholder group benefitting from it.Item Identifying business knowledge areas that are critical to attaining supply chain performance(Texas Tech University, 2011-02) Maku, Tosanwunmi ChristopherBusiness practitioners and academicians have alluded to the leverage attainable from SCM engagements. With increased research involvement over the past two decades, various researchers have faulted the literature for the limited human resource system focus. This research was motivated by the dearth of inquiry at understanding the interrelationship across the human resource system and supply chain performance. The contribution to this knowledge gap was reflected in the research question: What are the supply chain business knowledge areas that characterize the impact of human interaction on supply chain management performance? The study objectives included: (a) to develop a theoretical model that depicts the human resource system across supply chains, (b) to define human interaction in supply chains, (c) to operationalize this definition by identifying business knowledge domains that impact supply chain performance. Following an exhaustive literature review, human interaction in supply chains was defined as the region of intersection between work functions and business processes; including man-machine activity requiring human intervention, and human-to-human activity, whose outcome serves to execute strategy.
A sample of management-level personnel from US based 3PL firms participated in a three round Delphi procedure designed to divulge insights related to the research question. A second sample constituted with academic professors provided an independent group response that was compared with the 3PL practitioner sample.
The research findings implied that CRM, transportation, and logistics were important business knowledge areas that impact supply chain performance at the work function, business process, and financial performance levels, thus supporting the investigation of human resource performance measurement at these levels. The results also alluded to relationship management and cross-functional business management as important business domains for supply chain management-level work. Additionally, the results supported the notion that practitioners and academicians do not always have divergent viewpoints concerning supply chain issues.Item A path to reclaim industry leadership for Dell(2011-05) Nguyen, Quynh Quoc; Bagchi, Uttarayan; Duvic, RobertThe high-tech industry is an extremely fast-paced and highly competitive one with constant changes and with companies entering and exiting the playing field in a matter of months. Within this ruthless environment Dell Inc. emerged as a singular player in January 1984 and rose to be the world’s largest personal computer maker in just seventeen years in 2001. One has to ask what made Dell so special and how did Michael Dell make his fortune from his dormitory room at the University of Texas at Austin. Furthermore, what explains Dell’s decline from its number one position in the world in 2001 to barely number three now as it stands behind Acer and clearly behind the current industry leader Hewlett-Packard? This paper is an attempt to take the reader through the history of the rise and fall of Dell. More importantly, it seeks to identify the weaknesses as well as strengths, and advantages as well disadvantages of the business model of this company. Finally, the paper will outline the necessary steps that Dell must take to reclaim the crown of the largest and most successful computer manufacturer in the world.Item Using six sigma tools to measure and improve the performance of a manufacturing supply chain(2011-08) Ahmad, Ammar; Kobza, John E.; Farris, Jennifer; Matis, Timothy I.Financial Success of any business is dependent on the amount of value it can deliver to its customers. Before the mid 1900s most organizations had a one dimensional focus as they concentrated on cost only. However rapid growth in technology and market globalization have led to a different scenario altogether and these days, in order to materialize the potential financial gains, businesses are required to focus on other dimensions of value addition as well. The problem lies with the fact that performance improvement with respect to other aspects of value addition like customer service, timely delivery, and functional quality tends to increase cost. And increasing cost will more than likely drive the customer away. This is exactly why supply chains have assumed a critical role in today’s economy because efficient supply chains lead to lower operating costs, which gives management some extra space to invest in improvement initiatives without actually increasing the final price of a product or service. This relationship between supply chain efficiency, cost, and performance improvement has led to a lot of research in this field over the past 15 to 20 years and this is also the primary motivation behind this thesis; where we have attempted to develop a framework for improving supply chain efficiency with respect to product quality and timely delivery by means of synchronization.