Red meat from pasture : sustainable livelihoods for small mixed farmers in China's Yunnan Province : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master in Applied Science in Agribusiness Management at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

China's pattern of food consumption is changing. The demand for high quality red meat is rapidly increasing, especially in the more affluent coastal regions. The pastoral livestock farmers in Southwest China have low and declining incomes, and operate in a highly uncertain environment. This environmental uncertainty is derived from the seasonal climate, land tenure policies, and a dealer-dominated supply chain in which information is scarce, ambiguous, and untimely. The researcher spent two years in China's Yunnan Province working on a pastoral development project. During this assignment, the researcher undertook a case study of the small, mixed livestock and cropping farmers involved in the project, together with an evaluation of alternative strategies for pastoral development and enhancing livestock production. The case study also involved an overview of agricultural extension and the red meat supply chain in the study area. The current farm production systems are environmentally, financially and socially unsustainable. Farm output is low and achieved inefficiently at considerable cost to future productive potential. Farmers are not investing in farm improvements because they lack confidence in their ability to generate a return from such investments. Confidence is low because farmers do not trust other supply chain participants, and they perceive a low level of control over the operating environment. This is resulting in a vicious cycle of unsustainability. There are numerous market opportunities emerging due to changes food consumption. Farmers have three broad strategic options for taking advantage of these opportunities: invest in technologies to raise output and quality, further process to add value and increase consumer acceptance of red meat and co-operate within the supply chain. The technologies extended as part of the development project were demonstrated to yield significant benefits in terms of production and profit. However, adoption has been low because many of the technologies did not consider local constraints, extension has not widely occurred and uncertainty in the operating environment did not encourage investment. For farmers to be able to successfully implement these strategies farmers need to be empowered and a more enabling environment created. This empowerment involves changing farmers' perception of locus of control, sharing control and supply chain participants learning about each other. Co-operation between farmers and the rest of the supply chain should provide benefits along the whole chain. A model for co-operative and sustainable development is proposed and limitations of this model are discussed. Title: Red Meat from Pasture: Sustainable Livelihoods for Small Mixed Farmers in China's Yunnan Province. Degree: Master of Applied Science in Agribusiness Management Author: Alan Kent McDermott Year: 2001 Keywords: Southwest China; pastoral livestock systems; supply chain management; sustainable livelihoods; trust; perceptions of control; extension of technology

Supply Chain Management in High-Tech Industries Clusterization: Market Monopoly or Development of Competitive Advantages?

Abstract— With the rapid industrial cluster development, in particular the development of high-tech cluster, the supply chain management strategy in cluster is also undergoing profound changes. The study uses open-source statistical data, as well as research results and world rankings as the basis for a descriptive analysis of the external environment for the development of high-tech industries. Two main indicators were selected for the analysis: the GDP per capita growth rate and the level of information and communication development, which are used to assess competitiveness, the level of economic development, innovation and entrepreneurship. The purpose of the study is to examine the features of the innovation policy of developed countries and its impact on supply chain management in high tech industries for clustering them. As a result, it was concluded that the modern macroeconomic environment is characterized by digital transformation trends, as well as decreased geographical influences. Industrial supply chain managements are developed based on the interaction of environmental factors, demand conditions, production factors, and auxiliary industries

Effective Supply Chain Management: A Strategic Tool for Profitability Enhancement in the Competitive Marketing Environment (An Empirical Evidence in the Nigerian Food and Beverage Industry 2005 - 2014)

To compete successfully in today’s fierce and challenging business environment, companies need to focus on supply chain management components that have impact in enhancing profitability. The study examined Effective Supply Chain Management: A Strategic tool for Profitability Enhancement in the Competitive Marketing Environment ( An Empirical Evidence in the Nigerian Food and Beverage Industry 2005-2013). The problem x-rayed here stems from the huge cost burden and poor performance of industries in Nigeria which was made manifest by its low Profit After Tax and poor contribution of 6% to the Gross Domestic product (GDP) and also holding the fact that many firms have gone extinct from the marketing environment and only four companies (Honeywell flour mills Plc, Flour mills of Nigeria Plc, Northern Nigeria Flour Mill Plc and Lafarage Dangote Flour Mill Plc) control 50% of the entire flour mills market share among the 22 surviving firms. The major objective of this study is examining the relationship between Supply Chain Management cost components and Profitability of Food and  Beverage industry in Nigeria and their impact on firm’s survival as measured by the Profit After Tax (PAT) and other source document. Specifically, the objectives were to; examine the nature of relationship existing between supply chain management and profitability of the flour mills, ascertain if the volume of Goods in Transit affects the profitability of the flour mills and ascertain the supply chain management strategy/model adopted by the selected flour mills. Data collected from Annual reports of various issues were analyzed using inferential statistics such as Pearson correlation model and simple regression analysis. The results of the findings showed firms after investing heavily in their supply chain component does not  reflect significantly in their profitability. The study concludes that there is a significant relationship between Effective SCM and Profitability growth, that to ensure sustainable supply chain management operation which will ensure increased profitability in the industrial sector, Supply Chain operational inefficiencies ultimately will have adverse effects upon profits. Turning the situation round, difference in the efficiency of the inventory control for a given level of flexibility affects the level of investment required in inventory. The less efficient is the inventory control, the greater is the investment required. Excessive investment in inventories increase cost and reduce profits, thus, the effects of inventory control of flexibility and on level of investment required in inventories represent two sides of the same coin. This will also help in reducing the high cost burden which lies on the ability to reduce production cost Various recommendations were made which includes that production firms should adopt the SCM integration model that was specified in the study, to become competitive strategic weapon in such a way that it enhances their sales and profitability and also should adopt the Supply chain strategy/models that was developed in this study as it will best align with their operations and target customers, supply chain operations must abandon fragmented approaches

Supply chain analysis of Gabilan Manufacturing Inc.

MBA Professional ReportThe purpose of this MBA Project was to investigate and provide alternative supply chain management strategies to assist Gabilan Manufacturing Inc. in reducing supply chain costs. This project was conducted with the sponsorship and assistance of Gabilan Manufacturing Inc. There were two primary goals of this project. The first was to identify and document the impact of forecasting errors in an environment where customer forecasts are available to the vendor. The second was to investigate the costs associated with relocating cutting operations as well as the procurement impact of a new cutting machine. Both of these goals relate directly to the overall effort to reduce supply chain costs without a loss of service level to Gabilan's customer.http://archive.org/details/supplychainnalys109459821Lieutenant Commander, United States NavyLieutenant, United States NavyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Kuluttajatuotteiden toimitusketjun kehittäminen: tapaustutkimus suomalaisessa energiayhtiössä

This master’s thesis studies how a non-manufacturing firm should design and manage a supply chain for consumer products in a global environment where the firm has limited experience and competence on managing material flows to consumer customers. Existing literature on supply chain design and management is highly focused on manufacturing companies and thus, this study tries to fill this knowledge gap by addressing non-manufacturing companies with purchasing-intensive operations. The study follows a problem-solving focused research approach, design science, by dividing the research into two main phases. First, a literature review is conducted focusing on the themes of supply chain design and management in order to highlight the major elements is prior research and to form a theoretical foundation for the practical solution. Second, a case study is conducted in a Finnish utility company to develop, test and evaluate the solution’s applicability in the context of the case company. Research indicates that supply chain design process starts by analyzing product types, customer needs and marketplace requirements, and linking the supply chain strategy and type to the firm’s context. It was found that a supply chain combining lean and agile, leagile, was most suitable for the case company. After determining the supply chain type, the actual supply chain structure is formed. A primary decision factor is the degree of logistics postponement which determines the number and location of warehouses and distribution channel choices in the supply chain. Finally, supply chain management must be ensured by defining the basic processes and the required level supply chain integration with external actors. The proposed solution provides concrete guidelines and decision factors related to supply chain design and management to be utilized in a purchasing-intensive supply chain environment solving the case company’s problem. Additional benefits for the case company include increased supply chain understanding, more efficient and simple material flows, and probable operational performance improvements. Research partly confirms existing theory by showing that certain elements in traditional supply chain design and management theory can also be applied in a purchasing-intensive environment lacking manufacturing operations. In addition, research identifies elements and decisions factors that are relevant especially for non-manufacturing companies such as the high focus on inventory management.Diplomityö tutkii miten hankintaan keskittyvän yrityksen tulisi suunnitella ja hallita toimitusketjuaan ympäristössä, jossa sillä ei ole aikaisempaa kokemusta tuotteiden toimittamisesta kuluttaja-asiakkaille. Aikaisempi tutkimus toimitusketjun suunnittelun ja hallinnan alueilla on painottunut valmistaviin yrityksiin, joten tutkimus pyrkii luomaan uutta tietoa tutkimalla yrityksiä, joilla ei ole omaa valmistusta ja näin keskittyen valmiiden tuotteiden hankintaan toimittajilta. Tutkimus noudattaa suunnittelutieteen (design science) lähestymistapaa pyrkien ratkaisemaan yrityksen konkreettisen ongelman ratkaisuehdotuksella. Tutkimusprosessi aloitettiin kirjallisuuskatsauksella keskittyen pääosin toimitusketjun suunnitteluun ja hallintaan liittyvään kirjallisuuteen tavoitteena tunnistaa tutkimusalueen pääteemat sekä luoda teoreettinen pohja ratkaisuehdotukselle. Tutkimuksen toinen vaihe suoritettiin tapaustutkimuksena suomalaisessa yrityksessä, missä ratkaisuehdotusta kehitettiin edelleen ja lopulta sen toimivuutta arvioitiin tapausyrityksen kontekstissa. Tutkimus osoittaa, että toimitusketjun suunnittelu tulee aloittaa tuotetyyppien, asiakastarpeiden sekä toimintaympäristön analysoinnilla. Lisäksi on tärkeää, että toimitusketjustrategia ja -tyyppi linkitetään aina yrityksen kontekstiin. Tehokasta (lean) ja ketterää (agile) yhdistävän toimitusketjutyypin havaittiin olevan paras ratkaisu tapausyritykselle. Toimitusketjutyypin valitsemisen jälkeen määritetään ketjun varsinainen rakenne, joka hankintaan keskittyvillä yrityksillä liittyy vahvasti siihen kuinka paljon logistiikkaa viivästytetään. Viivästyttämisen aste pääosin määrittää varastojen määrä ja paikan sekä jakelukanavat toimitusketjussa. Viimeisenä on määritettävä prosessit toimitusketjun hallintaan sekä missä määrin on tarpeen tehdä yhteistyötä yrityksen ulkopuolisten toimijoiden kanssa. Esitetty ratkaisu tarjoaa tapausyritykselle konkreettisia suuntaviivoja ja ohjeita toimitusketjun suunnitteluun ja hallintaan hankintaan painottuvassa toimintaympäristössä. Ratkaisu tarjoaa lisäksi yritykselle lukuisia käytännön hyötyjä kuten lisääntyneen toimitusketjutuntemuksen, tehokkaammat ja yksikertaisemmat materiaalivirrat sekä todennäköisesti kasvavan toimitusketjun suorituskyvyn. Tutkimus osaltaan vahvistaa olemassa olevaa teoriaa näyttäen, että valmistaviin yrityksiin keskittyvää teoriaa ja malleja voidaan hyödyntää myös hankintaan keskittyvässä toimitusketjussa. Lisäksi tutkimus tuottaa uutta hyödyllistä tietoa mitkä elementit ja kriteerit ovat erityisen tärkeitä nimenomaan hankintaan keskittyville yrityksille ilman omaa tuotevalmistusta

SUPPLY CHAIN RISK MANAGEMENT IN AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY

The automotive industry is one of the world\u27s most important economic sectors in terms of revenue and employment. The automotive supply chain is complex owing to the large number of parts in an automobile, the multiple layers of suppliers to supply those parts, and the coordination of materials, information, and financial flows across the supply chain. Many uncertainties and different natural and man-made disasters have repeatedly stricken and disrupted automotive manufacturers and their supply chains. Managing supply chain risk in a complex environment is always a challenge for the automotive industry. This research first provides a comprehensive literature review of the existing research work on the supply chain risk identification and management, considering, but not limited to, the characteristics of the automotive supply chain, since the literature focusing on automotive supply chain risk management (ASCRM) is limited. The review provides a summary and a classification for the underlying supply chain risk resources in the automotive industry; and state-of-the-art research in the area is discussed, with an emphasis on the quantitative methods and mathematical models currently used. The future research topics in ASCRM are identified. Then two mathematical models are developed in this research, concentrating on supply chain risk management in the automotive industry. The first model is for optimizing manufacturer cooperation in supply chains. OEMs often invest a large amount of money in supplier development to improve suppliers’ capabilities and performance. Allocating the investment optimally among multiple suppliers to minimize risks while maintaining an acceptable level of return becomes a critical issue for manufacturers. This research develops a new non-linear investment return mathematical model for supplier development, which is more applicable in reality. The solutions of this new model can assist supply chain management in deciding investment at different levels in addition to making “yes or no” decisions. The new model is validated and verified using numerical examples. The second model is the optimal contract for new product development with the risk consideration in the automotive industry. More specifically, we investigated how to decide the supplier’s capacity and the manufacturer’s order in the supply contract in order to reduce the risks and maximize their profits when the demand of the new product is highly uncertain. Based on the newsvendor model and Stackelberg game theory, a single period two-stage supply chain model for a product development contract, consisting of a supplier and a manufacturer, is developed. A practical back induction algorithm is conducted to get subgame perfect optimal solutions for the contract model. Extensive model analyses are accomplished for various situations with theoretical results leading to conditions of solution optimality. The model is then applied to a uniform distribution for uncertain demands. Based on a real automotive supply chain case, the numerical experiments and sensitivity analyses are conducted to study the behavior and performance of the proposed model, from which some interesting managerial insights were provided. The proposed solutions provide an effective tool for making the supplier-manufacturer contracts when manufacturers face high uncertain demand. We believe that the quantitative models and solutions studied in this research have great potentials to be applied in automotive and other industries in developing the efficient supply chains involving advanced and emerging technologies

Understanding Supply Chain Disruptions - Empirical Analysis of Supply Chain Structures

Firms have encountered an ever-increasing number of supply chain disruptions in the past decade, triggered by a wide range of natural and man-made causes. Supply chain risk management is thus an active research area, while the concerning topics mainly focused on the management at the immediate supplier level. In contrast, anecdotes reveal that shortages can oftentimes be traced back to the problems at sub-tier suppliers, i.e., tier-2 or more upstream suppliers. Further, the structure of a supply chain is not exogenously generated. For example, lack of incentives may discourage manufacturers from entering a market and create a highly concentrated industry that could be vulnerable to supply shocks and price manipulation. These two topics, the sub-tier supplier structure and impacts and the entry decisions of manufacturers are the two main themes of this thesis. More specifically, this thesis presents empirical results that improve our understanding of 1) risk propagation from sub-tier suppliers to the connected focal firms and 2) barriers to entry for manufacturers. The first part of the thesis considers the sub-tier suppliers and the network structure that connects the supply chain partners. It demonstrates the financial performance link between firms and their tier-2 suppliers respectively. It also establishes the intermediary effect of network concentration: when a firm’s tier-1 suppliers share tier-2 suppliers. The second part of the thesis focuses on the generic pharmaceutical industry plagued by the high concentration of firms in markets with expired patents. This chapter studies the key determinants of market entry decisions by generic firms and confirms the role of manufacturing process and regulatory environment. Policy simulation result shows the non-monotone relationship between the speed of the government review process and market concentration level.PHDBusiness AdministrationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146024/1/iriswang_1.pd

Bridging the Operational Divide: An Information-Processing Model of Internal Supply Chain Integration

Supply Chain Management, the coordination of upstream and downstream flows of product, services, finances, and information from a source to a customer, has risen in prominence over the past fifteen years. The delivery of a product to the consumer is a complex process requiring action from several independent entities. An individual firm consists of multiple functional departments, each responsible for one aspect of customer service. In the traditional corporate structure of functional silos, there is little communication between Purchasing, Manufacturing, and Logistics, and yet these departments comprise three core supply chain processes of a firm. Ironically, managers report that it is easier for Purchasing to integrate with suppliers and Logistics to integrate with customers than it is for either group to integrate within the firm. This study develops and tests a model of factors that influence the level of internal integration of three key internal supply chain management functions: Purchasing, Operations, and Logistics. These three functions define the internal supply chain because they are responsible for the introduction of raw materials, transformation into product, and movement of the product to the customer. Prior research has established that interdepartmental integration improves performance in various contexts. However, given the vast range of diversity in firms and industry environments, it is unlikely that there is only one way to accomplish interdepartmental integration. The research model is grounded in Organizational Information Processing Theory (OIPT). Conceptually, OIPT posits that the performance of a firm is a function of the fit between the information processing requirements created by the environment and the information processing capabilities created by the organizational design. The purpose of this research is to answer the following research questions. First, what factors influence the level of internal integration within a manufacturing firm? Second, how are these factors interrelated? Third, do the relationships between the factors vary depending on the task environment? The methodology selected was a cross-sectional survey of manufacturers in the United States. Path analysis was used to test the research hypotheses. Results generally support the research model. Several factors included within the research model have significant effects on Collaboration and Strategic Consensus, the outcome variables used as indicators of integration. Hypothesized mediation effects are also supported. Moreover, the level of Uncertainty moderates two of these relationships, supporting the use of the OIPT theoretical lens