On multi-stage production/inventory systems under stochastic demand

This paper was presented at the 1992 Conference of the International Society of Inventory Research in Budapest, as a tribute to professor Andrew C. Clark for his inspiring work on multi-echelon inventory models both in theory and practice. It reviews and extends the work of the authors on periodic review serial and convergent multi-echelon systems under stochastic stationary demand. In particular, we highlight the structure of echelon cost functions which play a central role in the derivation of the decomposition results and the optimality of base stock policies. The resulting optimal base stock policy is then compared with an MRP system in terms of cost effectiveness, given a predefined target customer service level. Another extension concerns an at first glance rather different problem; it is shown that the problem of setting safety leadtimes in a multi-stage production-to-order system with stochastic lead times leads to similar decomposition structures as those derived for multi-stage inventory systems. Finally, a discussion on possible extensions to capacitated models, models with uncertainty in both demand and production lead time as well as models with an aborescent structure concludes the paper

‘Keeping on the move without letting pass’: Rethinking biopolitics through mobility"

“This is the sixth time that I am coming back to the border, in Ventimiglia, after being taken by force to the city of Taranto. I am now trying again to cross to France, I really hope that this time I make it, as I have no money and no energies left”. M., a Sudanese national who arrived in Italy in 2018 from Libya, is one of the many migrants who try to cross to France, along the coast, passing through the Italian city of Ventimiglia. Yet, most of those who try are pushed back to Italy by the French police, sometimes being held for hours in the police station at the border, without being allowed to claim asylum. On the Italian side of the border, some migrants are randomly caught by the police and put on one of the coaches and, on a weekly basis, transferred to Taranto, a city located 1200 kilometres southern of Ventimiglia. Migrants are taken to the Hotspot of Taranto and, after being identified, they are usually released few days later; the majority of them goes back to the Italian-French border, by train or by bus, despite they might be exhausted and running out money. Such a routinised police practice of internal forced transfers does not discourage migrants from going back to Ventimiglia and from trying again and again; nor are migrants taken to Taranto with the goal of detaining them for long time. And yet, they are kept on the move, forced to divert their routes and to repeat the same journey multiple times. The forced hyper-mobility of the migrants who try to cross to France from Ventimiglia is not an exceptional case study; rather, the focus on Ventimiglia sheds light on the dramatic migrants’ goose game , that is, on the convoluted geographies that they are forced to undertake due to legal restrictions, police measures, spatial blockages and ad-ministrative violence

Internationalisation and Mental Borders

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The political autoimmunity of the COVID-19 response: how national borders and patents undermine a sustainable and equitable global health

We argue that the COVID-19 pandemic response has been characterised by a Derridean ‘political autoimmunity’, undermining a sustainable and equitable protection of global health.This self-harming immunisation politics has been driven by a coalesce of national borderism, which excludes people on the basis of national borders, and patentism, which privileges the treatment of wealthy countries and people who can afford the patented medicines and vaccines.To globally counter these politically autoimmune strategies now and in the future, we argue to remind political leaders and patent holders of today of the classical physician’s Hippocratic oath, and to strive for a truly inclusive, pandemocratic health politics beyond national origin and income

’I am German when we win, but I am an immigrant when we lose’. Theorising on the deservedness of migrants in international football, using the case of Mesut Özil

‘I am German when we win, but I am an immigrant when we lose’. With this powerful statement Mesut Özil resigned from Germany’s national football team. His resignation act not only highlights growing contro- versies and uneasiness around the representation of the football nation by players with migration backgrounds, but also marks the fragility of national belonging. In this article, we deconstruct in detail Özil’s pow- erful resignation elaborating upon Norbert Elias and John Scotson’s (1994 (1965)) ‘established–outsider model’. With this, we will analyse the power dynamics underlying the processes of national belonging. Moreover, we extend the established-outsider approach by using the fluid and contextual borders between formal and moral deservedness of citizenship. In our conclusion, we revisit Özil’s statement and reca- pitulate our theoretical explanations on the sensitivities of this case as well on how to navigate a way out of the contested competition between nationalities in the context of international football

’I am German when we win, but I am an immigrant when we lose’. Theorising on the deservedness of migrants in international football, using the case of Mesut Özil

‘I am German when we win, but I am an immigrant when we lose’. With this powerful statement Mesut Özil resigned from Germany’s national football team. His resignation act not only highlights growing contro- versies and uneasiness around the representation of the football nation by players with migration backgrounds, but also marks the fragility of national belonging. In this article, we deconstruct in detail Özil’s pow- erful resignation elaborating upon Norbert Elias and John Scotson’s (1994 (1965)) ‘established–outsider model’. With this, we will analyse the power dynamics underlying the processes of national belonging. Moreover, we extend the established-outsider approach by using the fluid and contextual borders between formal and moral deservedness of citizenship. In our conclusion, we revisit Özil’s statement and reca- pitulate our theoretical explanations on the sensitivities of this case as well on how to navigate a way out of the contested competition between nationalities in the context of international football

Bordering, Ordering and Othering

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