New Concept of Container Allocation at the National Level: Case Study of Export Industry in Thailand

This paper presents container allocation technique of which minimizing the total opportunity loss of an export industry in Thailand. This new allocation concept applies as a strategic management tools at the national level since it is consistent to the characteristics of the container supply chain management in Thailand. The first section of this paper presents the review of facts and problems of container supply chain management. It reveals that containerization system is significant to the international trade as it holds good characteristics of sea transportation. It can transport a lot of products while minimize the damage of goods. Supply chain management of the containerization system presents and shows that there are four main players in managing the container – principal, port, container depot, and customer. After an intensive review of containerization system’s problem, the most common problem that all parties have encountered is an imbalance between demand and supply of container. The well-known solution to the stated problem is relocation of containers between various places using optimization technique, which aims to minimize operation cost. Indeed, those solutions are unable solve the containerization system’s problem in Thailand: lacking their own fleets: having no bargaining power in relocating container between areas as needed. In the present, many of Thai exporters face with losses of sales or profit because they cannot find enough or proper containers to transport their goods to the customer. The authors, therefore, have seen that those problems need to be strategically solved by the government. The limited number of containers must be properly allocated to the exporter with regard to the minimum losses to the economics of the country. The main contributions of this paper are two folds. First, the opportunity losses of the various export industry are indicated when lack of containers, Second, the mathematical model has been formulated using linear programming technique with several constraints, such as, demand, supply, obsolete time, operating cost, lead time etc. The authors hope that the new concept presented in this paper will provide the great contribution for other countries, which face the same problem of Thailand. Keywords: Container Management, Opportunity Loss, Allocation Problem, Optimization, International Trad

Balancing Canned Pineapple Supply Chain in Thailand

This research study was aimed at analyzing an imbalance between demand and supply in canned pineapple industry in Thailand. By applying economics theory, it was used for reinforcing the econometric model that describes characteristics of those involving in the canned pineapple supply chain. . The Eviews 2.3 program was used as a tool to analyze a correlation between each formula. In order to identify consumer’s requirement of the canned pineapple, this research investigated any factors affecting to the consumer’s decision making such as selling price of the canned pineapple in Thailand, in Philippines, and Indonesia. In the mean time, factors affecting a quantity of pineapple such as selling price at farm site, agriculture area, rainy quantity, labor cost of storage, and labor cost of harvesting, etc were also identified. It is aimed to analyze imbalance of demand and supply in the canned pineapple industry in Thailand. A ratio of utilization for pineapple was used to fulfill several objectives, as well as ratio of pineapple processing used for canned pineapple was also considered altogether. The results analysis shown that demand of canned pineapple was higher than supply produced by harvesting fresh pineapple on a yearly basis, except harvesting season. It was illustrated that Thai canned pineapple industry shows an imbalance of demand and supply in a market. This research considered the influence factors that were resulted from some varied factors have on cultivation of fresh pineapple. Therefore, increasing or decreasing such factors might cause production cost reduced that partially impacts selling price to be decreased. Even though, it may lead to a change of demand and supply intentionally. It was therefore an opportunity to expand market by developing a systematic transportation network, materials requirement procedure, cultivation promotion, and complete supply chain management development in the future. Keywords: Logistics and Supply Chain, Balancing, Canned Pineapple, Econometric model, Multiple Regression Metho