Linking performance drivers in production planning and inventory control to process choice

This study investigates how process choice relates to production planning and inventory control decisions. We empirically examine the validity of deductively derived patterns about these types of decisions. More importantly, we look for normative insights by exploring how production planning and inventory control decisions affect operations performance. Our findings show that production line and continuous flow plants use more of a level production strategy, and carry less raw material and work-in-process inventory. The performance drivers for these plants, through which the operations function excels, are effective utilization of equipment, reduced finished goods inventory, and reduced setup down time. To gain forward demand visibility and batching economies, job and batch shops rely much more on backlogs in their planning process. These plants use more of a production chase strategy and position inventory lower in the bills of materials. Four performance drivers for top-performing job and batch shops are to find ways that better anticipate customers' orders, have a more responsive chase strategy, carry less raw material or purchased inventory, and shorten production planning horizon, partly through less reliance on backlogs. It is intriguing that top-performing plants not only do the expected things, given their choice of process, but also excel in selected dimensions—some of which fit the profile normally associated with a different process choice. To monitor and continuously improve operations, evaluation ‘scorecards’ should pay particular attention to performance drivers, which change depending on the plant's process choice.     

存货会计政策与成本流动假设的经济学分析

存货是大多数企业的重要流动资产,基于不同的成本流转假设理论,存货计价方法一般可划分为具体辨认法、平均成本法、先进先出法、基本存货法、后进先出法等。存货会计政策选择具有广泛的经济后果,影响企业的财务状况、收益质量、税收成本、现金流量、经营者业绩与其报酬、公司股票价格及报表使用者理解会计信息等。本文认为,各种存货计价政策对企业净利润产生的差异均属于“时间性差异“,在若干个会计期间内,企业无论选择何种会计政策,产生的净利润和经营性现金流量都应该是相等的,企业之所以进行会计政策选择是为了取得上述会计数据不同时间分布带来的各种可能的经济利益。     

非均衡的经济动态模型

本文旨在按现实世界的本来面目建立一个非均衡的内生经济动态模型。在这个模型中 ,源于部门内和部门间关系的内生变量导致资本市场、消费品市场上产量和价格的波动。市场的非均衡过程、存货调节机制以及经济人的最优行为和适应性行为是基于对现实世界的观察进行模拟的。静态性质及其稳定性是作为一般市场动态过程的特例加以讨论的。     

Burnout among university accounting educators in Australia and New Zealand: determinants and implications

Increased teaching workloads combined with pressures to publish in limited outlets has intensified the burnout potential among accounting educators in Australia and New Zealand. However, amongst the few studies on tertiary accounting education, the focus has so far been only on burnout arising from student contact intensity. We broaden this literature by examining how other worklife characteristics contribute to burnout. Based on 158 responses from Australian and New Zealand accounting academics, we find evidence for emotional exhaustion due to high workload. However, professional efficacy continues to remain high. Qualitative responses offer deeper insights on how various burnout factors are interrelated.     

Technological adoption and use after mass market displacement: The case of the LP record

This paper investigates the reasons why some technologies, defying general expectations and the established models of technological change, may not disappear from the market after having been displaced from their once-dominant status. Our point of departure is that the established models of technological change are not suitable to explain this as they predominantly focus on technological dominance, giving attention to the technologies that display highest performance levels and gain greatest market share. And yet, technological landscapes are rife with technological designs that do not fulfil these conditions. Using the LP record as an empirical case, we propose that the central mechanism at play in the continuing market presence of once-dominant technologies is the recasting of their technological features from the functional-utilitarian to the aesthetic realm, with an additional element concerning communal interaction among users. The findings that emerge from our quantitative textual analysis of over 200,000 posts on a prominent online LP-related discussion forum (between 2002 and 2010) also suggest that the post-dominance technology adopters and users appear to share many key characteristics with the earliest adopters of new technologies, rather than with late-stage adopters which precede them.     

Models and metrics to assess humanitarian response capacity

The race to meet vital needs following sudden onset disasters leads response organizations to establish stockpiles of inventory that can be deployed immediately. These government or non-government organizations dynamically make stockpile decisions independently. Even though the value of one organization's stock deployment is contingent on others' decisions, decision makers lack evidence regarding sector capacity to assess the marginal contribution (positive or negative) of their action. To our knowledge, there exist no metrics describing the system capacity across many agents to respond to disasters. To address this gap, our analytical approach yields new humanitarian logistics metrics based on stochastic optimization models. Our study incorporates empirical data on inventory stored by various organizations in United Nations facilities and in their own warehouses to offer practical insights regarding the current humanitarian response capabilities and strategies. By repositioning inventory already deployed, the system could respond to disasters in the same expected time with a range of 7.4%–20.0% lower cost for the items in our sample.     

Sustainable design of a closed-loop location-routing-inventory supply chain network under mixed uncertainty

Considering economic, environmental and social impacts, this paper presents a new sustainable closed-loop location-routing-inventory model under mixed uncertainty. The environmental impacts of CO₂ emissions, fuel consumption, wasted energy and the social impacts of created job opportunities and economic development are considered in this paper. The uncertain nature of the network is handled using a stochastic-possibilistic programming approach. Furthermore, for large-sized problems, a hybrid meta-heuristic algorithm and lower bounds are developed and discussed. Finally, a real case study is provided to demonstrate the applicability of the model in real-world applications, and several in-depth analyses are conducted to develop managerial implications.     

A robust inventory routing policy under inventory inaccuracy and replenishment lead-time

In this paper, we study an inventory routing problem under replenishment lead-time and inventory inaccuracy, which exist extensively in distribution systems for fresh products, but are often ignored in existing research. To solve the problem, a robust inventory routing policy is developed in three steps. At first, we propose the methods of updating the probability of the current net inventory and predicting those in future periods. For each candidate route, we develop a Robust TQL Algorithm to optimize the replenishment time, replenishment quantity and replenishment stage length. Finally, a genetic algorithm-based method is developed to optimize the delivery route.     

Diversification strategy with random yield suppliers for a mean–variance risk-sensitive manufacturer

We consider the diversification strategy for a mean–variance risk-sensitive manufacturer with unreliable suppliers. We first analyze the linear model and find that the suppliers are selected according to the descending order of their contributed marginal expected profit, and increasing the manufacturer’s risk-averseness leads to a more even allocation of demand across the suppliers. Then, we study the general newsvendor model. By approximating the leftover inventory with a normal distribution, we establish the general properties of the active supplier set and show that the supplier selection rule is similar to that under the risk-neutral setting when the demand uncertainty is large. Moreover, we conjecture that the selection rule also applies when the demand uncertainty is low, which we verify with an extensive numerical study. Our paper makes two contributions: First, we establish the properties of the optimal diversification strategy and develop corresponding insights into the trade off between cost and reliability under the mean–variance framework. Second, we perform comparative statics on the optimal solution, with a particular emphasis on investigating how changes in the supplier’s cost or reliability affect the risk-averse manufacturer’s ordering decisions and customer service level.     

烟草商业企业数字仓库的基本流程与系统功能设计研究

数字仓库的应用将协助企业保证供应、压缩库存、提高货物周转效率、节约成本。本文介绍了数字仓库的概念,研究了烟草商业企业数字仓库的基本流程与系统功能结构与设计,并对数字仓库的效益进行了评价。对这些问题的深入研究将有利于提高烟草商业企业的物流水平和服务效率。