41,611 research outputs found
Potential applications of structured commodity financing techniques for banks in developing countries
This paper discusses of a number of innovative financial techniques that can be used by developing country banks to open up new financing possibilities in the commodities sector, for industries servicing the commodity sector, and for financing on the basis of "commoditized" income streams. This includes techniques such as factoring and forfaiting, countertrade, warehouse receipt finance, prepayments, export receivables finance, Islamic finance, structured import finance, and securitization. A number of practical models for developing country banks are described.agricultural finance structured finance repos banks securitization
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
SODA: Generating SQL for Business Users
The purpose of data warehouses is to enable business analysts to make better
decisions. Over the years the technology has matured and data warehouses have
become extremely successful. As a consequence, more and more data has been
added to the data warehouses and their schemas have become increasingly
complex. These systems still work great in order to generate pre-canned
reports. However, with their current complexity, they tend to be a poor match
for non tech-savvy business analysts who need answers to ad-hoc queries that
were not anticipated. This paper describes the design, implementation, and
experience of the SODA system (Search over DAta Warehouse). SODA bridges the
gap between the business needs of analysts and the technical complexity of
current data warehouses. SODA enables a Google-like search experience for data
warehouses by taking keyword queries of business users and automatically
generating executable SQL. The key idea is to use a graph pattern matching
algorithm that uses the metadata model of the data warehouse. Our results with
real data from a global player in the financial services industry show that
SODA produces queries with high precision and recall, and makes it much easier
for business users to interactively explore highly-complex data warehouses.Comment: VLDB201
The impact of economic and supply chain trends on British warehousing
Purpose: Warehouses are key nodes in many supply chains and typically represent
over 20% of logistics costs. However, other than property market studies, there
has been relatively little research on warehousing, particularly as regards how
trends in warehouses may relate to changes in such parameters as wider economic
and supply chain factors. The purpose of this paper is to examine this area in
order to explore how trends in warehousing may relate to existing warehousing
and supply chain theory so as to facilitate further research into the
relationship between warehousing and "smarter" logistics strategies and
efficient supply chain performance.
Research approach: The paper is based on a longitudinal study examining the
take-up (i.e. occupation) of new large warehouses in Great Britain over the past
16 years covering some 700 records. For the purposes of this study, large
warehouses are classified as those over 100,000 square feet (9,290 square
metres) in area. These trends, together with those of total warehouse stock, are
then related to national statistics, warehouse surveys, supply chain changes and
other relevant data over that period.
Findings and Originality: This is a rare longitudinal study of this subject. It
is found that, until the recent recession, the total warehouse stock, as well as
the take-up of large warehouses, has been increasing and this can be associated
with such factors as economic growth, retail spending and globalisation. Both
the footprint and height of large warehouses has been rising and this may be due
to such factors as network economies and warehouse technology. The locations of
warehouses are becoming more dispersed, possibly due to the growth in e-commerce
and port-centric logistics. In addition, it was found that large warehouses have
been increasingly taken up by retailers and manufacturers rather than logistics
companies.
Research impact: This paper examines the possible influence of economic and
supply chain trends on warehousing in Great Britain. As well as testing existing
theories, the data provides a sound foundation for future research. For example,
there have been conflicting evidence in previous research regarding economies
and diseconomies of scale and this discussion can now be set against trends in
warehouse footprint and height.
Practical impact: The paper provides a better understanding and basis for
decision making by planners, developers, funding corporations, operators and end
users. For example, topics such as size and height of buildings are examined, as
well as trends in port-centric logistics, rail connections and e-fulfilment. The
changing nature of warehouse designs in terms of wider economic and supply chain
trends is particularly important for practitioners as warehousing costs are to a
large extent determined at the design phase and have a major impact on the
effectiveness of the overall supply chain of which they are a part
Farmers and farmersâ associations in developing countries and their use of modern financial instruments
This paper starts with an overview of the current literature on the cost of price risk exposure to developing country farmers. It then discusses market-based price risk management instruments (such as futures and options) that can be used by farmers, as well as various mechanisms through which farmers' associations can facilitate farmers' access to price risk management tools as well as lower-cost financing (using warehouse receipt finance, repos and other structured financings). The experiences with use of such modern financial tools by farmers in several developing countries (Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, Uganda) are described. The report concludes with a discussion of the practicalities of farmers' associations starting to use such financial instruments, including the potential of new technologies such as smart cards.farmers structured finance warehouse receipts price risk management
PhyNetLab: An IoT-Based Warehouse Testbed
Future warehouses will be made of modular embedded entities with
communication ability and energy aware operation attached to the traditional
materials handling and warehousing objects. This advancement is mainly to
fulfill the flexibility and scalability needs of the emerging warehouses.
However, it leads to a new layer of complexity during development and
evaluation of such systems due to the multidisciplinarity in logistics,
embedded systems, and wireless communications. Although each discipline
provides theoretical approaches and simulations for these tasks, many issues
are often discovered in a real deployment of the full system. In this paper we
introduce PhyNetLab as a real scale warehouse testbed made of cyber physical
objects (PhyNodes) developed for this type of application. The presented
platform provides a possibility to check the industrial requirement of an
IoT-based warehouse in addition to the typical wireless sensor networks tests.
We describe the hardware and software components of the nodes in addition to
the overall structure of the testbed. Finally, we will demonstrate the
advantages of the testbed by evaluating the performance of the ETSI compliant
radio channel access procedure for an IoT warehouse
New types of non-trade related participation in commodity futures markets
This paper explores the growing involvement of new types of non- commodity-sector-related players in commodity futures markets. This includes a discussion on the role of managed funds, the impact of the use of commodity warrants, and the direct involvement of banks. The impact of this new form of "speculation" on the price formation process on commodity futures markets is then examined, and conclusions are drawn as to the use of these markets by commodity sector actors.commodity futures market, futures, options, speculation, market efficiency
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