Category: Technology Hardware, Storage & Peripherals

Supply Chain Transparency

By Sarah Weir, supervised by Lauren Bechtel (2018)

An increasing area of concern within modern day supply chains is the necessity for significant supply chain transparency. Increasing transparency is a concern for many companies because it allows firms to identify areas of inefficiency, permit the sharing of knowledge, and understand the exact location of an item, whether it is moving upstream or downstream. At Company x (the participating company of this student research project), having a transparent supply chain is crucial for the company and its customers. Improving visibility within the supply chain not only provides a more detailed account of transactional activities but improves safety and pinpoints areas of inefficiency. The problem at hand poses the questions of which enabling technologies are available in order to advance this space and what current applications are available to make the necessary improvements. In order to increase upstream material and resource transparency in the healthcare industry at Company x, extensive research has been performed by examining industry leaders and the various platforms they utilize. These systems include blockchain, Amazon Web Services, and Oracle SCM Cloud. The benefits, implications, and applications of each of these three platforms is examined in order to provide information on the best solution for COMPANY X’s supply chain. Our research serves as a working document for Company x colleagues to draw upon as the research of supply chain transparency and traceability continue to grow.

View the document here

Suggested citation

Weir, Sarah. 2018. “Supply Chain Transparency.” Student project paper, supervised by Lauren Bechtel, Center for Supply Chain Research® (CSCR®), The Pennsylvania State University.

Controlled Violation of Temporal Process Constraints – Models, Algorithms and Results

By A. Kumar📧 and R. R. Barton📧

In Information Systems, 2017: 410–424. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.is.2016.06.003

While there has been much work on modeling and analysis of temporal constraints in workflows in the context of many real-world applications, there has not been much work on managing violations of temporal constraints. In real-time workflows, such as in medical processes and emergency situations, and also in logistics, finance and in other business processes with deadlines some violations are unavoidable. Here we introduce the notion of controlled violations as the ability to monitor a running process and develop an approach based on constraint satisfaction to determine the best schedule for its completion in a way so as to minimize the total penalty from the violations. The violations are evaluated in terms of metrics like number of violations, delay in process completion, and penalty of weighted violations. We also relate our work to the concept of controllability in literature and show how it can be checked using our method. Finally, we analyze the properties of our approach and also offer a proposal for implementation.

Keywords: Process management; Temporal workflow mode; Constraint violation

Future Application of Internet of Things (IoT) in Supply Chain of Company D

By Shonaq Gupta, supervised by Robert A. Novack📧 (Thesis Supervisor) and John C. Spychalski📧 (Honors Advisor) (2017)

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the opportunities of Internet of Things (IoT) within company D and recommend technologies which will positively impact company D’s supply chain. The thesis includes information about company D’s process flow which helps pick key nodes where these technologies can be installed. It also includes an adoption framework which defines if company D is an early or late adopter. The research further expands on new technologies available in the near future like Demand Sensing, Prescriptive Analysis, etc., and technologies which will dominate the industry in the long run like Artificial Intelligence (AI). The near future technologies are further categorized through their application in the SCOR framework. The thesis establishes the position of company D in the adoption framework and gives recommendations on technologies to implement in the short and long run. Lastly, the thesis outlines the limitations and risks associated with the adoption.

Access the paper at Electronic Theses for Schreyer Honors College (ETDA) website here.

Addressing Supply-Demand Imbalance: Designing Efficient Remanufacturing Strategies

By J. Jia, S. H. Xu, and V. Daniel Guide📧

In Production and Operations Management, 2016,  25 (11): 1958–1967. https://doi.org/10.1111/poms.12598

The management of remanufacturing inventory system is often challenged by mismatched supply (i.e., returned units, called cores) and demand. Typically, the demand for remanufactured units is high and exceeds the supply early in a product’s lifetime, and drops below the supply late in the lifetime. This supply–demand imbalance motivates us to study a switching strategy to facilitate the decision‐making process. This strategy deploys a push mode at the early stage of a product’s lifetime, which remanufactures scarce cores to stock to responsively satisfy the high demand, and switches to a pull mode as the product approaches obsolescence to accurately match the low demand with supply. In addition, the strategy further simplifies the decision‐making process by ignoring the impact of leftover cores at the end of each decision period. We show that the optimal policy of the switching strategy possesses a simple, multi‐dimensional base‐stock structure, which aims to remanufacture units from the i best‐quality categories up to the ith state‐independent base‐stock level. An extensive numerical study shows that the switching strategy delivers close‐to‐optimal and robust performance: the strategy only incurs an average profit loss of 1.21% and a maximum of 2.27%, compared with the optimal one. The numerical study also shows when a pure push or pull strategy, a special case of the switching strategy, delivers good performance. The study offers the managerial insight that firms can use simple, easy‐to‐implement strategies to efficiently manage the remanufacturing inventory system.

Keywords: Remanufacturing; Inventory management; Supply–demand imbalance

Managing Demand Uncertainty through Core Acquisition in Remanufacturing

By A. Mutha, S. Bansal📧, and V. Daniel Guide📧

In Production and Operations Management, 2016, 25 (8):  1449–1464. https://doi.org/10.1111/poms.12554

We discuss the optimal raw material acquisition strategy for a third party remanufacturer (3PR). We specifically investigate whether a 3PR should acquire used products or cores in bulk with uncertain quality levels, or in sorted grades with known quality levels; and whether to acquire and remanufacture cores before the demand is realized (planned acquisition), or after the demand is realized (reactive acquisition), or on both occasions (sequential acquisition). When only sorted cores are acquired, we find that, (i) it is optimal to acquire cores in multiple grades to balance acquisition and remanufacturing costs; (ii) if reactive acquisition is possible, it reduces the assortment size (number of grades in which cores are acquired) and the total inventory acquired in the planned acquisition; and (iii) the optimal portfolio of grades to acquire and the optimal acquisition and remanufacturing quantities of these grades can be determined analytically. When bulk cores are acquired in addition to sorted cores, the property of reduction in assortment size of the planned acquisition is preserved. We also show that the 3PR should acquire only a fraction of the demand in planned acquisition, and leave the rest for reactive acquisition. This fraction changes during the lifecycle of a remanufactured product. Using a combination of empirical and realistic data from a smartphone remanufacturer we show that sequential acquisition increases expected profit by up to 8% and 27% over only planned and only reactive acquisitions respectively, and reduces the inventory acquired by up to 21% over only planned acquisition.

Keywords: Third-party remanufacturing; Closed‐loop supply chains; Product acquisition management; Product lifecycle

A Competitive Advantage from the Implementation Timing of ISO Management Standards

By H.-C. Su, S. Dhanorkar📧, and K. W. Linderman📧

In Journal of Operations Management, 2015, 37:31–44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jom.2015.03.004

With the rise of globalization, firms increasingly implement management standards developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to assure they can meet their customers’ expectations. ISO management standards reduce performance variability among suppliers and promote global trade. However, ISO standards also promote a certain degree of commonality or isomorphism between firms. If the very notion of ‘standards’ encourages a certain level of commonality between firms, then how can firms achieve a competitive advantage from implementing ISO standards? This research argues that the timing of when a firm implements an ISO standard relative to their rivals has strategic benefits. Drawing on the competitive dynamics literature we argue that firms can achieve an early mover advantage when implementing ISO 14001. However, an early mover advantage depends on the level of a firm’s absorptive capacity (prior experience with ISO 9001) and the competitive intensity of their industry. This study uses longitudinal data from firms that implemented ISO 14001 at varying points in time to examine the benefits of an early mover advantage. More broadly, this research sheds light on when firms benefit the most from implementing new management standards. The results provide insights into implementing other emerging management standards.

Keywords: ISO 9001; ISO 14001; Management standards; Competitive strategy; Absorptive capacity; Early mover advantage

Requirement or Promise? An Analysis of the First-Mover Advantage in Quality Contracting

By X. Yan, H. Zhao📧,  and K. Tang

In Production and Operations Management, 2015, 24 (6): 917–933. https://doi.org/10.1111/poms.12315

Supplier selection can be a challenging task for a buyer when she faces uncertainty in product quality, information asymmetry, and quality improvement opportunities. In practice, to hedge against quality uncertainty, the prevalent approach a buyer uses in supplier selection is quality requirement (QR), with which the buyer moves first by posting quality requirement to potential suppliers. However, with information asymmetry, is QR always the best approach for the buyer? An alternative is a quality promise approach (QP), with which the buyer foregoes her first-mover right by requesting potential suppliers to provide quality promises as the basis for selection. With either approach, the buyer may induce the suppliers for quality improvement with or without her own quality improvement efforts. We study (1) how the different supplier selection strategies (QR and QP) affect the players’ quality improvement efforts, their profits, and the final product quality; and (2) whether having the first-mover right (QR) is always beneficial to the buyer under asymmetric information. We find that (1) QR is not always superior: when suppliers are more efficient in quality improvement, QP leads to higher product quality and higher profit for the buyer; (2) Under certain conditions, using appropriate strategies, buyer can obtain suppliers’ private information with no cost under either QP or QR; (3) When buyer has to pay for the suppliers’ quality information, she can either “completely screen” the information with some cost or “partially screen” the information without any cost, depending on the cost and the information parameters. Finally, the supply chain can be coordinated under common knowledge, but not always under asymmetric information.

Keywords: Quality competition; Supplier selection; Quality improvement; Asymmetric information

Performance Effects of Early and Late Six Sigma Adoptions

By Jacobs, B., Swink., M., and Linderman, K.📧

In Journal of Operations Management, 2015, 36:244–257. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jom.2015.01.002

Operations managers confront the challenge of deciding when to implement various administrative innovations such as Six Sigma, ISO 9000, and Lean. This research examines the operating performance effects of early versus late adoption of Six Sigma process improvement. Using theories of organizational learning and knowledge transfer, we develop hypotheses describing the advantages of late adoption, and factors that affect a firm’s ability to benefit from Six Sigma either as an early or late adopter. We test our hypotheses using an event study methodology. The empirical results show that, on average, late adopters in our sample enjoy significantly greater performance gains than early adopters. However, the analysis also shows that the advantages of late adopters tend to be moderated by certain environmental and structural characteristics of a firm. Specifically, late adoption has been favorable when firms operate in low-velocity industries, when they primarily sell in business-to-business markets, when they have good financial performance prior to adoption, and when they are large. Conversely, when adopters operate in conditions that have the opposite characteristics, then early adoption appears to have produced better results. Understanding the effects of these factors can enhance managers’ abilities to determine appropriate adoption timing to increase performance.

Keywords: Six Sigma; Quality management; Administrative innovation; Adoption timing; Organizational learning; Empirical research

Managing Knowledge Creation in High-Tech R&D Projects: A Multi-method Study

By Chandrasekaran, A. and Linderman, K.📧

In Decision Sciences, 2015, 46 (2): 267–300. https://doi.org/10.1111/deci.12129

R&D projects in high‐tech organizations bring together diverse knowledge domains to quickly develop new products and processes. The fast‐paced context of high‐tech organizations makes it challenging to create new knowledge and solve complex problems. Managing these R&D projects requires understanding both the mechanisms and the type of knowledge created to achieve project objectives. This research conducts a two‐phased multimethod study to understand knowledge creation in high‐tech R&D projects. The first phase uses qualitative data to develop a theory on knowledge creation in R&D projects. The second phase involves a survey that collects data from R&D projects to test the theory. Results from the case study find that R&D projects benefit from two types of knowledge – objective and intuitive. The case analyses show that intuitive and objective knowledge creation in high‐tech organizations occurs by creating not only diverse but also psychological safe project teams. The large‐scale survey finds that team diversity positively influences objective knowledge creation while psychological safety affects intuitive knowledge creation. Surprisingly, the results show that team diversity negatively affects intuitive knowledge creation. A post hoc analysis takes a more granular look at diversity and shows that different kinds of diversity have different effects on knowledge creation. This helps to better explain how to manage innovation across boundaries. Finally, the analysis shows that both objective and intuitive knowledge influence R&D project performance. Taken together, these results help explain how to manage innovation across functional boundaries to create knowledge and enhance R&D project performance.

Keywords: High‐Tech R&D; Knowledge management; Multi‐method; Project management

The Role of Project and Organizational Context in Managing High-Tech R&D Projects

By Chandrasekaran, A., Linderman, K.📧, Schroeder, R.

In Production and Operations Management, 2015, 24 (4): 560–586. https://doi.org/10.1111/poms.12253

High‐tech organizations often struggle to manage different types of R&D projects. Evidence from research and practice suggests that managers frequently categorize and manage projects based on the extent of change triggered in product, process, technology, and market dimensions. However, this can create challenges in high‐tech organizations. This study investigates how high‐tech organizations manage R&D projects based on their learning goals. First, we argue for the benefits of categorizing R&D projects based on the degree of exploration and exploitation learning goals. A qualitative case study from four high‐tech business units involving 10 R&D projects helps understand the different types of projects based on their learning goals. The case study shows that R&D projects in high‐tech organizations typically fall into three categories based on their learning goals: Radical innovation projects, Incremental innovation projects, and Hybrid projects. Second, we iterate between literature and evidence from our qualitative data to theorize how project context and organizational context affect project performance depending on the type of project. The data for the empirical analysis come from a multilevel survey of 110 R&D projects across 34 high‐tech business units. Results show the importance of designing project and organizational context differently for the three types of R&D projects. Collectively, this study offers a new perspective on how to manage high‐tech R&D projects.

Keywords: Exploration; Exploitation; R&D projects; Innovation; Team effectiveness; High‐tech organizations; Qualitative data; Survey