Leanness and agility as means for improving supply chains. A case study on Egypt

Supply chain management has received greater attention from the academics and the practitioners, however the literature review lacks a comprehensive view for supply chain management practices and how its members should act to contribute to its overall success (Li el at., 2005). In this era, where the business organisations are working in several challenging threats and opportunities, greater attention is given to supply chain management. Nowadays, companies are always searching for means to improve their supply chains. The main aim of this research is to show "how leanness and agility approaches can be used within the same enterprise as complementary means for improving its supply chain". To achieve this research objective, the research has provided an assessment and summarised the literature on the supply chain management, lean thinking and agility thinking including their importance; their definitions; their practices and the relationship between lean and agility. The resulted proposed framework deduced from the literature has been applied in the Egyptian Manufacturing Business to show the relationship between the agility principles, lean principles, entity performance and the successful supply chain

Buyer-supplier partnership in agile supply chains: A conceptual view

The purpose of this paper focuses on achieving agility within the supply chain and seeks to examine the impact of developing an integrated buyer-supplier partnership on achieving agility. It also aims to investigate the moderating role played by information sharing and technology in achieving such a goal. Supply chain management and agility have both been received great attention in recent years. In a highly dynamic and complex business market place the customer is demanding more choice and companies need to possess the means to rapidly adjust to market changes in order to satisfy its customers in an effective manner. Agility has been introduced to the supply chain context to enable companies to face the business environmental changes and deal with them effectively. The methodological approach used in this paper is an analysis and critique to the existing literature, as an initial step for developing the empirical study for the paper

Exploring the supply chain agility attributes in fast moving consumer goods industry: A case study in the Middle East

During the 1990s, supply chain management and agility have both received great attention. This is due to the fact that the business market place is characterized by being highly dynamic and complex. This paper aims to explore the need and the attributes of supply chain agility in FMCG business industry working in the Middle East markets. A case study of a multinational company working in the Middle East was chosen, where it faces the challenges of its business environment and its rapid changes in its markets. The findings show the case study supply chain working within such type of industry needs to be agile and that the attributes required for achieving agility within FMCGs supply chain includes: responsiveness; Customer service; flexibility; innovation; speed; quality; efficiency; and responsible people thinking

Foraging as an evidence accumulation process

A canonical foraging task is the patch-leaving problem, in which a forager must decide to leave a current resource in search for another. Theoretical work has derived optimal strategies for when to leave a patch, and experiments have tested for conditions where animals do or do not follow an optimal strategy. Nevertheless, models of patch-leaving decisions do not consider the imperfect and noisy sampling process through which an animal gathers information, and how this process is constrained by neurobiological mechanisms. In this theoretical study, we formulate an evidence accumulation model of patch-leaving decisions where the animal averages over noisy measurements to estimate the state of the current patch and the overall environment. Evidence accumulation models belong to the class of drift diffusion processes and have been used to model decision making in different contexts. We solve the model for conditions where foraging decisions are optimal and equivalent to the marginal value theorem, and perform simulations to analyze deviations from optimal when these conditions are not met. By adjusting the drift rate and decision threshold, the model can represent different strategies, for example an increment-decrement or counting strategy. These strategies yield identical decisions in the limiting case but differ in how patch residence times adapt when the foraging environment is uncertain. To account for sub-optimal decisions, we introduce an energy-dependent utility function that predicts longer than optimal patch residence times when food is plentiful. Our model provides a quantitative connection between ecological models of foraging behavior and evidence accumulation models of decision making. Moreover, it provides a theoretical framework for potential experiments which seek to identify neural circuits underlying patch leaving decisions

Monte Carlo tomographic reconstruction in SPECT impact of bootstrapping and number of generated events

In Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT), 3D images usually reconstructed by performing a set of bidimensional (2D) analytical or iterative reconstructions can also be reconstructed using an iterative reconstruction algorithm involving a 3D projector. Accurate Monte Carlo (MC) simulations modeling all the physical effects that affect the imaging process can be used to estimate this projector. However, the accuracy of the projector is affected by the stochastic nature of MC simulations. In this paper, we study the accuracy of the reconstructed images with respect to the number of simulated histories used to estimate the MC projector. Furthermore, we study the impact of applying the bootstrapping technique when estimating the projectorComment: 15 pages, 9 figures, 2 table

Evaluating the exact infinitesimal values of area of Sierpinski's carpet and volume of Menger's sponge

Very often traditional approaches studying dynamics of self-similarity processes are not able to give their quantitative characteristics at infinity and, as a consequence, use limits to overcome this difficulty. For example, it is well know that the limit area of Sierpinski's carpet and volume of Menger's sponge are equal to zero. It is shown in this paper that recently introduced infinite and infinitesimal numbers allow us to use exact expressions instead of limits and to calculate exact infinitesimal values of areas and volumes at various points at infinity even if the chosen moment of the observation is infinitely faraway on the time axis from the starting point. It is interesting that traditional results that can be obtained without the usage of infinite and infinitesimal numbers can be produced just as finite approximations of the new ones

Towards a business model for cellular network and telecommunication operators: a theoretical framework

Cellular networks and telecommunications bring major change to the way businesses are conducted. Mobility has become one of the main priorities for users and this has impacted on cellular networks and telecommunication operators (CNTOs). However, entrants into the cellular industry have been confounded primarily by inexistent or weak Business Models (BMs). Designing a BM for a CNTO is complex and requires multiple actors to balance different and often conflicting design requirements. Nevertheless, most research about CNTOs has been technically oriented and has mainly addressed the technological and engineering issues related to their infrastructure. Less attention has been given to the business model of CNTOs. Hence, there is a need to enhance our ability to determine what constitutes the optimal and most viable business model to meet the various strategic objectives and goals for these CNTOs. In this paper an overview of research into the cellular business model and the main issues to be resolved is provided. In particular, the authors propose guidelines as a basis on which to develop a more comprehensive definition which may lead to a consensus. Moreover, a generic model (V4 Model) is proposed for the BM of these companies based on value proposition, value architecture, value network and value finance