"No-Till" Farming Is a Growing Practice

Most U.S. farmers prepare their soil for seeding and weed and pest control through tillage—plowing operations that disturb the soil. Tillage practices affect soil carbon, water pollution, and farmers’ energy and pesticide use, and therefore data on tillage can be valuable for understanding the practice’s role in reaching climate and other environmental goals. In order to help policymakers and other interested parties better understand U.S. tillage practices and, especially, those practices’ potential contribution to climate-change efforts, ERS researchers compiled data from the Agricultural Resource Management Survey and the National Resources Inventory-Conservation Effects Assessment Project’s Cropland Survey. The data show that approximately 35.5 percent of U.S. cropland planted to eight major crops, or 88 million acres, had no tillage operations in 2009.Tillage, no-till, Agricultural Resource Management Survey, ARMS, U.S. crop practices, National Resources Inventory-Conservation Effects Assessment Project, NRI-CEAP, carbon baseline, carbon sequestration, Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management, Land Economics/Use, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, Risk and Uncertainty,

Inventory management practices: A key success towards supply chain performance among industries in Malaysia

Today, logistics networks and supply chain are seen as a matter of survival and competitive advantage.Effective supply chain management has become a potential way nowadays to improve performance through matching supply chain practices and competitive advantages in the competitive world.There are many researches were conducted on the area of supply chain practices and its implication towards supply chain performance.However the researched finding seems contradicting.These contradicting finding may results from different reasons such as the level of management commitment, the costs incurred and also due to its level of workers skills.Inventory management across the supply chain is a big challenge for improving coordination among value chain. Controlling inventory is need of the hour as it formulates the business success/failure as competition is intense, growing day-by day. This research conceptualizes and develops the role of inventory management strategies and inventory management practices in fostering supply chain performance. The relationships among different factors are going to be tested in proposed framework using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to improve the performance of the supply chain. The insight from this proposed framework will help supply chain managers in implementing inventory management strategies and practices to enhance the overall performance of supply chain

Automation of inventory management

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management; and, (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; in conjunction with the Leaders for Manufacturing Program at MIT, 2002.Includes bibliographical references.Qualcomm Wireless Business Solutions (QWBS) provides communication equipment and services used to track trucking fleets and other capital assets via satellite. Order fulfillment and inventory management practices in QWBS were non-uniform and manually intensive. Buyers used their own intuition and rules-of-thumb to decide how many parts to order and how many parts should be held in stock to buffer against unexpected demand fluctuations. Non-uniform, manual inventory management practices resulted in higher inventory levels, lower customer service, and higher operational costs than can be achieved with uniform, formal management practices. This thesis describes the design and implementation of an automated inventory management system that optimizes inventory levels and alleviates manual effort. Benchmarking was used to show how a similar firm used inventory management techniques to improve efficiency and reduce costs. Quantitative analysis was used to develop an inventory management simulator that allowed alternative management strategies to be tested before implementing changes to the real system. Simulation results showed that QWBS inventories for fiscal year 2001 (FY01) could have been reduced by 40% had an automated inventory management policy been in place. In addition, automation would have reduced the manual effort of buyers by about 32%. Results from the simulator motivated the formation of the Automated Inventory Manager (AIM) project team. AIM is designed to automate order fulfillment and inventory management tasks and allow procurement's human resources to be redirected from low level transaction processing tasks to more value-added tasks. AIM is expected to liberate $700K in working capital and save approximately$240K per year in ongoing inventory and labor cost reductions, representing a 1-year ROI of 200%. However, AIM represents only the first step in a recommended cost reduction program to streamline the fulfillment of customer orders and reduce organizational redundancies.by James Robert Anderson.S.M

Development of replenishment and inventory management practices

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management; and, (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering; in conjunction with the Leaders for Manufacturing Program at MIT, 2001.Includes bibliographical references (p. 47).by Joshua B. Miller.S.M.M.B.A

Riparian habitat on the Humboldt River, Deeth to Elko, Nevada

A map inventory of the major habitat types existing along the Humbolt River riparian zone in Nevada is described. Through aerialphotography, 16 riparian habitats are mapped that describe the ecological relationships between soil and vegetation types, flooding and soil erosion, and the various management practices employed to date. The specific land and water management techniques and their impact on the environment are considered

The Power of Point of Sale Improving Growth, Profit, and Customer Service in a Retail Business

For many small businesses, creating a captivating retail experience is the key to success, and finding the right technologies to enable that experience is crucial for sustaining a competitive advantage. This project is a case study designed to evaluate and select a Point of Sale (POS) system and Inventory Management (IM) system for a small business based upon its specific industry needs. The project creates a three step framework leading up to the real world implementation of these systems and uses the Rhode Island based company - Wildwood Inc. - as the subject of the study. Wildwood Inc. is a garden center and nursery that uses manual processes for both its checkout and inventory management practices, but due to its growth is experiencing difficulties in serving its customers effectively. The project looks at specific challenges facing Wildwood and creates a roadmap for POS and IM implementation that can be generalized for businesses looking to upgrade their systems. The framework for the implementation includes (1) initial research and current process analysis, (2) new system evaluation and process comparison, and (3) a final recommendation for management. The project explores the necessary capabilities of POS and IM systems within the retail agriculture industry; creates a comparison matrix of potential product offerings based upon hardware components, software features, technical support, and price points; and develops a final recommendation for Wildwood considering its specific needs. Upon completion, Wildwood will have the information necessary to purchase a computerized system that can: (1) Maintain a database of all inventory, including plant characteristics, units in stock, price, supplier, and SKU number, (2) facilitate a more efficient checkout method that eliminates handwritten receipts of purchases and digitally records all sales within the system, expedites the checkout process for both customers and employees, and 4 communicates with the IM system to allow for real-time inventory updates upon completion of POS transactions, and (3) runs a variety of reports on the collected data so that management has greater accuracy and success when making business decisions

Isotopes in hydrology and hydrogeology

The structure, status, and processes of the groundwater system, which can only be acquired through scientific research efforts, are critical aspects of water resource management. Isotope hydrology and hydrogeology is a genuinely interdisciplinary science. It developed from the application of methods evolved in physics (analytical techniques) to problems of Earth and the environmental sciences since around the 1950s. In this regard, starting from hydrogeochemical data, stable and radioactive isotope data provide essential tools in support of water resource management. The inventory of stable isotopes, which has significant implications for water resources management, has grown in recent years. Methodologies based on the use of isotopes in a full spectrum of hydrological problems encountered in water resource assessment, development, and management activities are already scientifically established and are an integral part of many water resource investigations and environmental studies. The driving force behind this Special Issue was the need to point the hydrological and water resource management societies in the direction of up-to-date research and best practices

Measuring the impact of inventory control practices: A conceptual framework

Inventory control provides method to manage the flow of materials or goods in the supply chain. Since controlling inventory is not the only mechanism to ensure an adequate inventory levels, it is also able to reduce inventory related cost. The manufacturing sector holds large inventories with quite complicated process and policy related to inventory control, especially when involving external party whether they are supplier or customer The manufacturing companies always confront with issues related to inventory management, which includes bullwhip effect on demand, increase of inventory cost, late delivery, and inventory shortage. Therefore, a key challenge for manufacturing company is to determine how to control the inventory flows effectively as to get the best overall inventory performance. Since inventory control manages to cover a wide range of aspects, it is chosen to focus on specific element such as inventory monitoring and ordering; control limits; and replenishment decisions.Lacking of an inventory control practices that normally occurred among manufacturing companies had lead this paper to propose a framework on inventory control practices to acquire that knowledge

Corporate social responsibility and inventory policy

In this article, we study the impact of implementing corporate social responsible (CSR) practices on a firm’s inventory policy. Our proposal is that there is an inverted U-shape relationship between firms’ CSR and their inventory levels. Two elements explain such proposal. First, stakeholders have different interests regarding the outcome of the inventory system. Specifically, we hypothesize that customers pressure firms to increase inventories; employees have conflicting views regarding inventories and, for this reason, they do not pressure firms in a particular direction; and environmental activists force firms to reduce inventories. The second reason is that there is different level of stakeholder proactiveness contingent on the intensity in the implementation of social responsible policies. In particular, we posit that for low levels of CSR, customers are more relevant, while for larger levels other stakeholders gain more importance. We test this theoretical prediction by crossing two databases, COMPUSTAT, for financial data, and KLD for data on social responsibility. Our final database contains data on 1881 different US companies for the period 1996-2006. The results found conform to our theoretical prediction. Our analysis will be helpful to strategic and tactical decision-making processes on inventory management and will allow researchers to offer concrete advice on the likely outcomes of various stakeholder relationship practices in order to improve the effectiveness of inventory systems. Additionally, the connection between CSR and inventory policies has interest at a macroeconomic level given that, on the one hand, there is a growing tendency for firms to behave in a socially responsible way. On the other, inventories are responsible for up to 87% of the total peak-to-trough movement in GDP. Thus, our results suggest that this tendency to incorporate the social dimension in firms’ strategy should smooth out the overall economic cycle given that firms apply more intensive CSR policies in the expansive periods (decreasing inventories) rather than during the downturns (increasing inventories).Corporate social responsibility, Stakeholders, Inventories

Employee Participation in Pollution Reduction: Preliminary Analysis of the Toxics Release Inventory

Can the amount of toxic waste released into the environment by manufacturing facilities be reduced by formally involving employees in pollution prevention? Pursuant to the Pollution Prevention Act of 1990, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began requiring that manufacturers report human resource management strategies related to source reduction (reduction of waste at the source), as part of the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). These strategies often involve employee participation in some form. Here we report the preliminary findings of an ongoing study of the effect of employee participation on source reduction, based on the 1991-1992 TRI database. We find, for example, that manufacturers using a certain combination of three formal employee participation practices had triple the reduction in emissions of manufacturers using none of these practices. We also discuss competing predictors of source reduction, and future research directions