Regeneration Supply Chain Model and Pool Stock Dimensioning

When regenerating complex capital goods, on-time delivery as the most valuable customers’ requirement is crucial. Schedule reliability and throughput times are being trimmed to meet their targets as precisely as possible while keeping the logistic costs in-check. After disassembly, a significant number of components face relatively long repair times and need to be reassembled on a timed schedule. The configuration of internal supply chains offers the potential to improve schedule reliability. Pooling strategies are developed and discussed to achieve higher flexibility and positive effects on logistical performance. Pools help with reducing throughput times and short-term capacity allocation to satisfy an optimal on-time schedule. Serviceable (SA) components that have already been repaired, are stored in SA-pools and, if necessary, are allocated to the reassembly. The focus of this paper is the non-serviceable pool (nSA-pool), which provides repairable components to the repair stage. The nSA-pool helps to streamline the workflow before components reach several repair shops and has a direct impact on the repair process. Therefore, a model that allows the comprehension of interactions within the internal supply chain was developed and expedient pooling strategies were derived. Furthermore, the related pool stock dimensioning of preceding pools (nSA) before the repair stage and following pools (SA) are put into perspective

Tax efficient supply chain

This case started with the following question: How supply chains and tax policy interact? This question was the starting point for this study and was developed under the areas of Logistics and International Tax Policy. In order to support this study, the adopted methodology was the selection of a Multinational company – LPR Portugal – which has the transportation and distribution in the European Union as a scope of service and the customer satisfaction as the main value. LPR is a market leader, with business in 12 countries of European Union and also has subsidiaries in 8 countries. It is established in the market for more than 15 years, with a good market consolidation and high reputation. The study of LPR, as a case study, will allow a better understanding of the situation of an international company in terms of logistics and international policy. During this study, qualitative data were used and obtained through LPR Portugal and EY Portugal. The results from the data shows that supply chain management and international tax policy are not a well developed topic. As short, this study requires a reflection about how logistic and tax policy interacts, taking into consideration the international perspective. This study presents as a useful and practical tool by collecting questions that will allow a better understanding and analyzis of the problem.O presente caso de estudo teve como ponto de partida a seguinte questão: Como é que cadeia de abastecimento e a fiscal interagem? Esta questão serviu como ponto de partida à elaboração deste estudo e foi desenvolvida no âmbito da Fiscalidade e da Logística. A metodologia adoptada baseou-se na selecção de uma multinacional portuguesa, a LPR, que exerce uma actividade na área de transporte e de distribuição em toda a União Europeia, e que tem como principal valor, a satisfação do cliente. A LPR é uma empresa líder de mercado, está presente em mais de 12 países e têm filiais espalhadas por 8 países. Está presente no mercado há mais de 15 anos, uma boa consolidação de mercado e uma elevada notoriedade. O estudo da LPR, irá permitir uma maior compreensão da realidade de uma empresa internacional e os seus problemas em termos fiscais e logísticos. A análise do presente estudo integrou dados qualitativos, que foram obtidos através da LPR Portugal e da EY Portugal. Os resultados dos dados demonstram que a implementação de uma cadeia de abastecimento que tenha em consideração a política fiscal internacional ainda se encontra numa fase embrionária. Em suma, o estudo apresentado exige uma reflecção sobre a forma como as áreas de logística e fiscalidade estão relacionadas, tendo em conta, a realidade internacional. Este estudo apresenta-se assim como um instrumento útil e prático, sistematizando questões que permitam a consolidação dos conhecimentos e o desenvolvimento da capacidade de análise

Improvement of packaging as one of the key terms of the efficient economy development

This paper presents the analysis of the modern packaging technology in the United States, summarizing and featuring the important points and aspects that can be implemented in Russia. The paper emphasizes the important role of packaging in advertising, marketing, distribution and shipping of products, as well as its necessity in order to maintain the products and packaging integrity during shipment and distribution. The level of packaging identity in Russia is close or may be a little bit above zero; the paper gives the detailed analysis of current state of the Russian packaging industry, food distribution and the current trends in packaging improvement. The study provides the basic ideas on structuring logistics management in the US, which plays an important role in business process in the majority of the industrialized countries, giving specific examples and figures from the latest scientific sources

Holdout transshipment policy in two-location inventory systems

In two-location inventory systems, unidirectional transshipment policies are considered when an item is not routinely stocked at a location in the system. Unlike the past research in this area which has concentrated on the simple transshipment policies of complete pooling or no pooling, the research presented in this thesis endeavors to develop an understanding of a more general class of transshipment policy. The research considers two major approaches: a decomposition approach, in which the two-location system is decomposed into a system with independent locations, and Markov decision process approach. For the decomposition approach, the transshipment policy is restricted to the class of holdout transshipment policy. The first attempt to develop a decomposition approach assumes that transshipment between the locations occurs at a constant rate in order to decompose the system into two independent locations with constant demand rates. The second attempt modifies the assumption of constant rate of transshipment to take account of local inventory levels to decompose the system into two independent locations with non-constant demand rates. In the final attempt, the assumption of constant rate of transshipment is further modified to model more closely the location providing transshipments. Again the system is decomposed into two independent locations with non-constant demand rates. For each attempt, standard techniques are applied to derive explicit expressions for the average cost rate, and an iterative solution method is developed to find an optimal holdout transshipment policy. Computational results show that these approaches can provide some insights into the performance of the original system. A semi-Markov decision model of the system is developed under the assumption of exponential lead time rather than fixed lead time. This model is later extended to the case of phase-type distribution for lead time. The semi-Markov decision process allows more general transshipment policies, but is computationally more demanding. Implicit expressions for the average cost rate are derived from the optimality equation for dynamic programming models. Computational results illustrate insights into the management of the two-location system that can be gained from this approach

Integration and coordination in after-sales service logistics

Maintenance and after-sales service logistics are important disciplines that have received considerable attention both in practice and in the scientific literature. This attention is related to the often high investments and revenues associated with capital-intensive assets in technically advanced business environments. Different maintenance services such as inspections and preventive maintenance activities are executed with the goal to maximize the availability of these expensive assets. However, unavoidable failures may still happen, which means that, in addition to preventive maintenance and services, repair actions (corrective maintenance) are necessary. Spare parts, service engineers and tools are typically the main resources for executing the repair actions and their availability has a major impact on overall system downtime. In this dissertation, we analyze a multi-resource after-sales service supply chain consisting of a service provider and an emergency supplier. The service provider is contractually responsible for the timely repair of some randomly failing capital intensive assets. To execute a repair, the service provider needs both service engineers and spare parts to replace the malfunctioning parts. In case of spare parts stock out, the service provider can either wait for the regular replenishment of parts or decide to hand over the entire repair call to an emergency supplier. For the latter case, a contract between the service provider and the emergency supplier is necessary to specify the compensation. In the first part of this dissertation, we focus on the optimal integrated planning of spare parts and engineers, considering an asset availability constraint. We evaluate the system performance using Markov chain analysis and queueing models, and employ different optimization algorithms to jointly determine the optimal capacity of the resources. This integrated planning results in considerable cost savings compared to the separate planning of spare parts and engineers. In the second part, we investigate the best contract the supplier can offer to the service provider. Furthermore, we propose different coordinated contracts to achieve optimal revenues for both partners in this after-sales service supply chain, under both full and asymmetric information scenarios. Cooperative games, the dominance of one party over the other (Stackelberg game), and information sharing aspects are the tools included in the second part of this dissertation