Joint determination of process mean, price differentiation, and production decisions with demand leakage: A multi-objective approach

The selection of an optimal process mean is an important problem in production planning and quality control research. Most of the literature in this area has focused on the single objective problem of maximizing the profit for a fixed exogenous price. However, it is known that considering multiple objectives (such as gross income from sales, profit, and expected product uniformity) while allowing process mean, production and pricing to vary can significantly improve the profitability and performance of a firm. This article addresses this multi-objective problem while allowing the firm to sell two classes of products at differentiated prices based on their quality characteristics. These products are sold at differentiated prices depending upon their quality characteristics into primary and secondary markets at full and discounted prices respectively. Any nonconforming items are reworked at an additional cost. Due to customers heterogeneity, the firm experiences demand leakage between the two market segments. The proposed joint decision control for the firm includes the joint determination of full and discounted prices, the process mean selection, and the production quantities for each of the two product classes along with expected reworked items. A mathematical formulation of the objectives is first provided and then the multi-objective problem is transformed into a goal-programming problem. A solution procedure is developed using simulation-based optimization to identify Pareto-optimal solutions. Some important characteristics of the solution procedure are discussed and the performance of the approach is corroborated through detailed numerical experiments. 2016 Elsevier Inc.This publication was made possible by the support of an NPRP grant no. 4-173-5-025 from the Qatar National Research Fund . The statements made herein are solely the responsibility of the authors.Scopu

Information Markets and Nonmarkets

As large amounts of data become available and can be communicated more easily and processed more e¤ectively, information has come to play a central role for economic activity and welfare in our age. This essay overviews contributions to the industrial organization of information markets and nonmarkets, while attempting to maintain a balance between foundational frameworks and more recent developments. We start by reviewing mechanism-design approaches to modeling the trade of information. We then cover ratings, predictions, and recommender systems. We turn to forecasting contests, prediction markets, and other institutions designed for collecting and aggregating information from decentralized participants. Finally, we discuss science as a prototypical information nonmarket with participants who interact in a non-anonymous way to produce and disseminate information. We aim to make the reader familiar with the central notions and insights in this burgeoning literature and also point to some open critical questions that future research will have to address

Penrose and Steindl: Foundations for a general theory of firms and competition

Edith Penrose and Josef Steindl each developed a distinctive analysis of the growth of firms. They undertook to understand the process that was leading to increasing dominance of industry, particularly manufacturing industry, by a small number of large firms. In the present paper, we examine the work of these two authors to detect similarities and differences in the way they deal with the determinants of firm growth and the implications of such growth for the competitive struggle amongst firms.Our particular focus is on the divergent conceptualisations of the notion of capacity between Penrose and Steindl, referring to the quantity and quality of productive services from management with experience within the firm in the case of Penrose and to the quantity and quality of physical assets (particularly machinery) in the case of Steindl. We examine the internal logic of each conceptualisation, as well comparing motivations and implications. Our appraisal is that they both provide coherent, but partial, explanations of the forces driving firm growth. We trace the difference in their explanations to different empirical bases motivating each author?s analytical schema. This leads us to suggest an encompassing explanation that focuses on overcoming any of a variety of bottlenecks, including managerial capability, productive capacity and market development, which can impede a firm?s ability to grow

Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Production Systems and Logistics (CPSL 2021)

Proceedings of the CPSL 202

Investment Leakage and Relocation Under the EU ETS: Myth or Reality?

Concerns on carbon leakage, i.e., the rise of emissions in non-regulated regions due to a loss in the competitiveness of regulated firms, have been voiced for decades as environmental regulation has tightened to respond to the ongoing climate crisis. However, the risk of carbon leakage has recently been deemed especially high for industries and firms under the European Union Emissions Trading System. This literature review aims to investigate whether leakage has occurred in the EU ETS. The specific focus is on leakage through the investment channel, so-called investment leakage. An increase in outward investment flows could mean that EU ETS firms are relocating to non-regulated regions, also offsetting a part of the emissions reduction in the EU. These leakage rates have generally been predicted with partial and general equilibrium models, but an empirical approach has also been adopted in the recent years. However, the results of both ex-ante and ex-post studies suffer from a variety of challenges, which also shows in the ambiguous results thus far. Regardless of the lack of evidence on investment leakage, the EU ETS has taken vast measures to ensure that leakage is not realized, for example by adopting various protection mechanisms

Forecast Model for Return Quality in Reverse Logistics Networks

Giving rise to the field of reverse logistics are the governmental legislations mandating used electronics take-backs and sustainable recovery, which often burden manufacturers with the challenge of high implementation costs but no guaranteed profitability. One way to tackle this challenge is to demystify the multi-faceted uncertainties of product returns, namely timing, quantity and quality, that currently inhibit optimal design and operations of reverse logistics networks (RLN). In recognition of the limitations particularly caused by uncertainty of returns’ quality in the strategic, tactical and operational planning of the RLN, this research seeks to develop a forecast model for the prediction of the returns’ quality of future electronics returns. The proposed forecast model comprehensively incorporates three major factors that affect quality decisions which are usage, technological age and remaining economic value of expected product returns to predict its quality grade. While technological age and economic trends can readily be established, the main complexity lies in modeling of usage-dependent reliability distribution of returned electronics. The novelty of the proposed forecast model lies in deducing usage distributions through segmentation of the consumer base by socioeconomic factors such as age, income, educational status and location. These usage distributions are then used to estimate remaining useful life of returned products and their components, the associated repair costs and the subsequent profitability of reprocessing based on economic value in the market. This research develops analytical models of expected return quality based on empirical usage distributions and pricing trends. The analytical models are then applied in Monte Carlo simulations to forecast expected returns’ quality from different regions, including large and small population centers, in Canada

Environmental and climate policy

This book offers an insight into some of the most important questions of environmental policy, along two main themes. First, it offers a general overview of the most important tools of environmental policy and the main features of EU environmental policy. Second, it presents the issue of climate change, including drivers, impacts and the current standing of international efforts to address it. Finally, these two themes are combined in a detailed discussion of the climate policy of the EU. As a guide to both the fundamentals and the current state of play of environmental and, specifically, climate policy, this book can be useful to students, academics and anyone looking to deepen their knowledge about these important issues. Anna Széchy (PhD) is an assistant professor at the Corvinus University of Budapest, where she has been teaching environmental policy, environmental economics and corporate environmental management for over a decade. She has first-hand experience regarding the process of EU environmental policymaking, having previously worked as advisor to a member of the environment committee of the European Parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg

To Negotiate a Carbon Tax: A Rough Map of Policy Interactions, Tradeoffs, and Risks

Sooner or later, the federal government will assign a price to carbon dioxide emissions via legislation. The contents of that legislation will reflect negotiated agreement—built on various political tradeoffs—over a host of policy issues, ranging from taxes to energy efficiency standards. These tradeoffs would implicate not only the scope and price assigned by the carbon pricing policy, but also the policies with which it would interact. This paper anticipates that price will take the form of a carbon tax and describes interactions between that tax and various existing and proposed policies relating to climate change, energy, and environmental protection. Specifically, it proposes a typology for those interactions and applies it to characterize particular policies. It also notes how trading off particular policies for a more robust carbon tax could undermine the climate change mitigation goal of such a tax