Offshore & Onshore contracts

We study the buyer-seller relationship in a supply chain from the perspective of quality. In particular, we examine situations where quality levels of the product can be observed, yet, conformance cannot be enforced unless the buyer engages in costly, legally-binding activity, which we call audit. We assume that the cost of audit is borne by the buyer. We examine three types of remedies that can be taken in case an audit confirms the existence of quality problems, namely â Full Rebate", â Compensate" and â Repair" contracts. Under the Full Rebate regime, the seller rebates the buyer the purchase price of defective units. Under the Compensate regime (Expectation Damages), the buyer is compensated for his loss of profit due to defects. Finally, under the Repair regime (Specific Performance), the seller is made to repair all the defective units at his own expense. We examine the effects of these contracts on the performance of the supply-chain, and point out the implications for offshore and onshore supply networks, respectively. Our results indicate conditions where the buyer is not motivated to â squeeze" all the profits out of the supply chain, even in a setting of complete information, and even if the relationship is short-term. We extend the analysis to examine supply-chains which include more than one seller or buyer. Also, as part of the analysis, we study a problem, which we call the â Crime and Punishment" problem that is interesting in its own right.Operations Management Working Papers Serie

Offshore & Onshore contracts

We study the buyer-seller relationship in a supply chain from the perspective of quality. In particular, we examine situations where quality levels of the product can be observed, yet, conformance cannot be enforced unless the buyer engages in costly, legally-binding activity, which we call audit. We assume that the cost of audit is borne by the buyer. We examine three types of remedies that can be taken in case an audit confirms the existence of quality problems, namely â Full Rebate", â Compensate" and â Repair" contracts. Under the Full Rebate regime, the seller rebates the buyer the purchase price of defective units. Under the Compensate regime (Expectation Damages), the buyer is compensated for his loss of profit due to defects. Finally, under the Repair regime (Specific Performance), the seller is made to repair all the defective units at his own expense. We examine the effects of these contracts on the performance of the supply-chain, and point out the implications for offshore and onshore supply networks, respectively. Our results indicate conditions where the buyer is not motivated to â squeeze" all the profits out of the supply chain, even in a setting of complete information, and even if the relationship is short-term. We extend the analysis to examine supply-chains which include more than one seller or buyer. Also, as part of the analysis, we study a problem, which we call the â Crime and Punishment" problem that is interesting in its own right.Operations Management Working Papers Serie

A NEW POLICY FOR THE SERVICE REQUEST ASSIGNMENT PROBLEM WITH MULTIPLE SEVERITY LEVEL, DUE DATE AND SLA PENALTY SERVICE REQUESTS

We study the problem of assigning multiple severity level service requests to agents in an agent pool. Each severity level is associated with a due date and a penalty, which is incurred if the service request is not resolved by the due date. Motivated by Van Meighem (2003), who shows the asymptotic optimality of the Generalized Longest Queue policy for the problem of minimizing the due date dependent expected delay costs when there is a single agent, we develop a class of Index-based policies that is a generalization of the Priority First-Come-First-Serve, Weighted Shortest Expected Processing Time and Generalized Longest Queue policy. In our simulation study of an assignment system of a large technology firm, the Index-based policy shows an improvement of 0-20 % over the Priority First-Come-First-Serve policy depending upon the load conditions.

The Greed and Regret Problem

In this paper, we study a model, called the Greed and Regret (GR) problem that provides a unified approach for analyzing numerous situations in a wide range of areas including studies of crime, fraud, aggression and threats, “take it or leave it” offers and ultimatums, optimal bidding, service levels, buffers, and inventory, sales force compensation, and more. We model these situations as continuous decision problems, where the decision maker seeks to set the level of his activity as high as possible without crossing the line and going overboard. A special case of this problem, which we call the Market Price Newsvendor (MNV), involves a Newsvendor whose selling price depends on whether the supply or demand is tight. The (MNV) problem bears an interesting and surprising relation to the “Selling to the Newsvendor ” problem studied by Lariviere and Porteus (2001). In general, the (GR) problem need not be concave. Our main results are to prove several monotonicity properties for the (GR) problem and to identify a sufficient condition for uniqueness of the optimal solution, which we call Increasing Composite Failure Rate (ICFR), and study its properties. The condition is a relaxation of the IGFR property introduced by Lariviere and Porteus (2001) but is stronger than the IFR property. We extend the analysis to a larger class of incentive and disincentive functions and to the finite horizon version of the problem

Artistična intervencija klovnov zdravnikov kot inovativno dopolnilo h kreativni terapiji za hospitalizirane pediatrične paciente

We consider a supply chain where the quality level can be observed by the buyer(s) only after the purchase is completed (experience good). If the delivered quality is below the levels agreed in the contract, the buyer(s) may take action to seek remedy, but this effort is costly. Obviously, this fact can be exploited by the seller. In the case of a single buyer, we show that the buyer may not be motivated to appropriate all the channel profits but, rather, is able to pay a higher purchase price in order to induce the seller to provide higher quality. The set of purchase prices that support trade split into different regions. We identify regions where counterintuitive behavior is exhibited, for example, the buyer prefers higher purchase price, while the seller prefers lower purchase price. For the case of more than one buyer, we examine and contrast the behavior of two remedy regimes: In the case of individual enforcement, each buyer must work individually to enforce her own quality. In the case of joint enforcement, all buyers benefit from enforcement by a single buyer. We examine the externalities that arise in this supply chain and identify how the market share, enforcement costs and purchase price affect the quality level

Indian Auto Supply Chain at the Cross-roads

We focus on the auto industry supply chains in India. The Indian auto industry is small in size, compared to the world markets ($6.73 billion compared to a world market of$ 737 billion) but has experienced a growth rate of 20-25 % the past few years. Over 13 Indian companies have won the Deming prize and quality has improved significantly. We focus on empirical data in this industry and explain the seemingly counterintuitive trends such as falling margins, no distinct financial advantage for the Deming firms and, in some cases, declining total factor productivity. We then compare the Indian auto industry to the industry in China, which provides an interesting contrast. We conclude with some insights regarding the future of the Indian auto industry – which is an industry at the crossroads

New Developments in Culinary Computational Creativity

Abstract In this paper, we report developments in the evaluation and generation processes in culinary computational creativity. In particular, we explore the personalization aspect of the quality and novelty assessment of newly created recipes. In addition, we argue that evaluation should be a part of the generation process and propose an optimization-based approach for the recipe creation problem. The experimental results show a more than 41% lift in the objective evaluation metrics when compared to a sampling approach to recipe creation

Kriptografija in varnost slovenskih e-trgovin

Operations Management Working Papers Serie