The Role of Maintenance and Facility Management in Logistics: A Literature Review

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to provide a literature review on the different ways of carrying out Facility Management and related topics in order to uncover that there is limited research regarding the impact of Facility Management on the logistics and operational performance of warehouses. Design/methodology/approach - Four different focus areas have been identified and for each one different methodologies and streams of research have been studied. Findings - The study underlines the importance of Facility Management for the logistics operations; therefore it supports the notion that investments aiming at preserving the status of the building and service components of warehouses are crucial. Originality/value - This paper aims to suggest to Facility Management managers that they can contribute to enhance business performance by designing effective Facility Management strategie

Regional Data Archiving and Management for Northeast Illinois

This project studies the feasibility and implementation options for establishing a regional data archiving system to help monitor and manage traffic operations and planning for the northeastern Illinois region. It aims to provide a clear guidance to the regional transportation agencies, from both technical and business perspectives, about building such a comprehensive transportation information system. Several implementation alternatives are identified and analyzed. This research is carried out in three phases. In the first phase, existing documents related to ITS deployments in the broader Chicago area are summarized, and a thorough review is conducted of similar systems across the country. Various stakeholders are interviewed to collect information on all data elements that they store, including the format, system, and granularity. Their perception of a data archive system, such as potential benefits and costs, is also surveyed. In the second phase, a conceptual design of the database is developed. This conceptual design includes system architecture, functional modules, user interfaces, and examples of usage. In the last phase, the possible business models for the archive system to sustain itself are reviewed. We estimate initial capital and recurring operational/maintenance costs for the system based on realistic information on the hardware, software, labor, and resource requirements. We also identify possible revenue opportunities. A few implementation options for the archive system are summarized in this report; namely: 1. System hosted by a partnering agency 2. System contracted to a university 3. System contracted to a national laboratory 4. System outsourced to a service provider The costs, advantages and disadvantages for each of these recommended options are also provided.ICT-R27-22published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

CERN openlab Whitepaper on Future IT Challenges in Scientific Research

This whitepaper describes the major IT challenges in scientific research at CERN and several other European and international research laboratories and projects. Each challenge is exemplified through a set of concrete use cases drawn from the requirements of large-scale scientific programs. The paper is based on contributions from many researchers and IT experts of the participating laboratories and also input from the existing CERN openlab industrial sponsors. The views expressed in this document are those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the view of their organisations and/or affiliates

Optimal Supply Network with Vendor Managed Inventory in a Healthcare System with RFID Investment Consideration

Supply Chain Management in the healthcare sector faces several significant challenges, including complexity in healthcare systems, high supply chain costs, balancing quality and costs, delay in delivery, product availability from vendors, inventory waste, and unpredictability and uncertainty. Among those challenges, having an effective inventory management system with an optimal supply network is important to improve the match between supply and demand, which would improve the performance of for healthcare firms. Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) system is a replenishment solution in which the vendor monitors and decides the time and the quantity of the inventory replenishment of their customers subject to their demand information exchange. A VMI contract in the location-inventory assignment problem is a decision tool for management in the healthcare industry, in which it enables the management to have a cost and service effective decision tool to critically re-evaluate and examine all areas of operations in a SC network looking for avenues of optimization. This dissertation is based on a real-world problem arising from one of the world\u27s leading medical implant supply company applied to a chain of hospitals in the province of Ontario. The chain of hospitals under study consists of 147 hospitals located in Ontario, Canada. The vendor is a supplier of three types of medical implants (a heart valve, an artificial knee, and a hip). In Chapter 2 of this dissertation, we present an optimal supply healthcare network with VMI and with RFID consideration, in which we shed light on the role of the VMI contract in the location-inventory assignment problem and integrate it with both the replenishment policy assignment and the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) investment allocation assignment in healthcare SC networks using both VMI and direct delivery policies. A numerical solution approach is developed in the case of the deterministic demand environment, and we end up with computational results and sensitivity analysis for a real-world problem to highlight the usefulness and validate the proposed model. We extend our research of integrating the VMI contract in the location-inventory assignment problem with the replenishment policy assignment under a deterministic demand environment to include the stochastic demand environment. The impact of the uncertainty of the demand as a random variable following two types of distributions, normal and uniform distributions, is studied in Chapter 3. Motivated by the lack of investigations and comparative studies dealing with the preference of dealing with VMI contracts to other traditional Retailer Managed Inventory (RMI) systems, we provide in Chapter 4 of this dissertation a comparative study in which we compare the total cost of the VMI system with another two situations of traditional RMI systems: first, a traditional RMI system with a continuous replenishment policy for all hospitals and with assigned storage facilities and second, a traditional RMI system with a direct delivery policy for all hospitals without assigning a storage facility. Computational results, managerial insights, sensitivity analysis, and solution methodologies are provided in this dissertation. Keywords: Vendor Managed Inventory, healthcare system, location-inventory, RFID technology, supply-chain network, stochastic demand, location-inventory assignment problem, and retailer managed Inventory

Enterprise Systems Analysis and Modelling

In ES implementations, process modelling is a critical and often overlooked activity. This paper proposes a framework for process modelling of ES. The four steps method involves: Current Situation Analysis, Business Process Improvements and Requirements, Gap Analysis, and To-be process to develop. Outputs of the methodology are an interdependent set of organizational and system proposed changes, and feedback loops to the ES vendors and to the strategy of the firm. In-depth case studies and extensive literature review provides methodological support. For practitioners, this study provides useful insights into one of the reasons by which companies could be frustrated with ES implementation.E-business, ERP

Analysis to Reduce Potential Dead Stock of Maintenance Repair & Operation (MRO) Inventory in PT Badak NGL

Abstract. PT Badak NGL is a non profit company to operate the Bontang LNG Plant in East Kalimantan, the main job is to liquify the natural feed gas to become the Liquified Natural Gas (LNG). As the operator with at cost scheme, the efficiency and effectiveness of budget utiliziation is one of PT Badak NGL’s performance KPI, including the efficiency of material Inventory stored in Warehouse. PT Badak NGL’s main inventory consist only the Maintenance Repair & Operation (MRO) material such as chemical and sparepart of equipment. According to the 2017 benchmarking result, Inventory performance of PT Badak NGL is below the average, especially on the Inventory Value aspect. Last 5 years data shows that total Inventory Value is around US$ 35 Million, but 73% of them is classified as the Potential Dead Stock (PDS); materials that more than 5 years stay in the warehouse. The Turnover Ratio is around 70% which means, only 70% come out (utilized) while the remaining 30% stays in warehouse, this happen every years and makes contribution to the PDS. According to this condition, the business problem in this paper is “Inefficient MRO Inventory due to large PDS Materials over the years in PT Badak NGL. Using the Ishikawa (fishbone) Diagram and Focus Group Discussion, the main contributor of the problem is the Inventory Method and Policies. Several alternative solutions have been developed and using Kepner-Tregoe Decision Analysis there are two solutions that should be conducted immediately to reduce the PDS; Apply Impairment Method and Recategorize Materials. Potential Problem Analysis is also conducted for those two solutions to anticipate any potential problem occurred and the choice of contingency plans. The implementation plan has also developed with the target can be finished by six months.Keywords: inventory, Kepner-Tregoe, MRO, PT Badak NGL, LNG, Potential Dead Stock

Security Issues in Data Warehouse

Data Warehouse (DWH) provides storage for huge amounts of historical data from heterogeneous operational sources in the form of multidimensional views, thus supplying sensitive and useful information which help decision-makers to improve the organization’s business processes. A data warehouse environment must ensure that data collected and stored in one big repository are not vulnerable. A review of security approaches specifically for data warehouse environment and issues concerning each type of security approach have been provided in this paper

Philosophical and methodological reflection on database capacity planning: a controllership standpoint

This paper analyzes the capacity-planning process of database management systems focusing the theoretical decision models that considers the variables constraints that could be taken slightly and other variable constraints that are indispensable during upgrade. In order to proceed with the aforementioned, we assume that capacity planning decision, which considers the general corporate, technical, users and executive views aiming at prioritizing a measurable relative importance of the planning constraints is capable of giving more economic added-value decision elements to the management. Thus, the optimization multicriteria analysis leads us to infer upon the reasonableness of the decision taken in regard to implementing budgetary planning in moment of business uncertainties. Results of this study indicate that corporate strategic views in decision-taking processes some times override some technical, users and executive views as relating to capacity planning in information technology management environment