An agent-based dynamic information network for supply chain management

One of the main research issues in supply chain management is to improve the global efficiency of supply chains. However, the improvement efforts often fail because supply chains are complex, are subject to frequent changes, and collaboration and information sharing in the supply chains are often infeasible. This paper presents a practical collaboration framework for supply chain management wherein multi-agent systems form dynamic information networks and coordinate their production and order planning according to synchronized estimation of market demands. In the framework, agents employ an iterative relaxation contract net protocol to find the most desirable suppliers by using data envelopment analysis. Furthermore, the chain of buyers and suppliers, from the end markets to raw material suppliers, form dynamic information networks for synchronized planning. This paper presents an agent-based dynamic information network for supply chain management and discusses the associated pros and cons

Optimization models of the supply of power structures’ organizational units with centralized procurement

Management of the state power structures’ organizational units for materiel and technical support requires the use of effective tools for supporting decisions, due to the complexity, interdependence, and dynamism of supply in the market economy. The corporate nature of power structures is of particular interest to centralized procurement management, as it provides significant advantages through coordination, eliminating duplication, and economy of scale. This article presents optimization models of the supply of state power structures’ organizational units with centralized procurement, for different levels of simulated materiel and technical support processes. The models allow us to find the most profitable options for state power structures’ organizational supply units in a centre-oriented logistics system in conditions of the changing needs, volume of allocated funds, and logistics costs that accompany the process of supply, by maximizing the provision level of organizational units with necessary material and technical resources for the entire planning period of supply by minimizing the total logistical costs, taking into account the diverse nature and the different priorities of organizational units and material and technical resources

Sanitation as a Business: Unclogging the Blockages

The first Unclogging the Blockages conference took place in Kampala, Uganda in February 2014 with the aim of putting on the table some of the major challenges facing the scale up of sustainable sanitation as well as collaborating towards innovaive soluions. This report summarizes the discussions and takeaway messages from the conference, including concrete action plans developed around a number of thematic areas. [KEY FINDINGS]Market based approaches are key to addressing some of the main barriers for scaling sustainable sanitation solutions. Participants came away with a much richer understanding of the principles and key tenets of sanitation as a business. A push for greater integration in sanitation programming between the housing, energy, business, health, and education sectors will allow for sustainable city and district-wide sanitation services.Unlocking finance for businesses and households and embedding monitoring within all work is critical. One interesting outcome of the group work was a suggestion to form a Global Sanitation Financing Alliance.Supporting sanitation businesses to be successful in the realities of the market requires on-the-ground, real time, market-focused technology development and R&D. A variety of these technologies were on display at the meeting

Performance optimization of a leagility inspired supply chain model: a CFGTSA algorithm based approach

Lean and agile principles have attracted considerable interest in the past few decades. Industrial sectors throughout the world are upgrading to these principles to enhance their performance, since they have been proven to be efficient in handling supply chains. However, the present market trend demands a more robust strategy incorporating the salient features of both lean and agile principles. Inspired by these, the leagility principle has emerged, encapsulating both lean and agile features. The present work proposes a leagile supply chain based model for manufacturing industries. The paper emphasizes the various aspects of leagile supply chain modeling and implementation and proposes a new Hybrid Chaos-based Fast Genetic Tabu Simulated Annealing (CFGTSA) algorithm to solve the complex scheduling problem prevailing in the leagile environment. The proposed CFGTSA algorithm is compared with the GA, SA, TS and Hybrid Tabu SA algorithms to demonstrate its efficacy in handling complex scheduling problems

Future Agribusiness Challenges: Strategic Uncertainty, Innovation and Structural Change

The IFAMR is published by the International Food and Agribusiness Management Association.(IFAMA) www.ifama.orgStrategic uncertainty, innovation, structural change, Agribusiness, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Risk and Uncertainty, ISSN #: 1559-2448,

Business Model Innovation

[Excerpt] Who is your customer? What does the customer value? How do you deliver value to customers at an appropriate cost? Business models that focus on the who, what, and how to clarify managerial choices and their consequences underpin the operations of successful organizations

What Are the Useful Past Inter-Organizational Relationships (IORs) for Forming Complex IORs?

Purpose: The purpose is to explore the relationship between prior and later inter-organizational relationships (IORs) by studying whether past experience can be leveraged on when forming new, more complex, IORs. Methodology: Participation in prior IORs is characterized in terms of both resource- transferring and resource-pooling IORs in home-country networks, while complex IORs are considered those with foreign partners. An empirical test on 366 Italian firms is performed using OLS with robust standard errors. Findings: Both resource-transferring and resource-pooling IORs have non-convergent effects. The former has controversial effects on the base of the position a firm occupies, that in turn affects the structure of interests between the partners. The latter has different effects in line with the information complexity of the objective of the relationship. Research Implications: Results provide support to the idea that structure of interests and information complexity represent \u201cdiscriminating characteristics\u201d that identify salient structural alternatives in the analysis of inter-firm organization. Practical Implications: The paper advances that firms can partially leverage on the exploitation of prior experience in settings that are explorative in nature, by carefully selecting within past experiences. Originality: A distinction between coordination \u201cgiving\u201d and coordination \u201ctaking\u201d IORs is proposed to discern among different types of inter-firm coordination forms