Supply chain horizontal collaboration has captured the attention of many researchers and practitioners. Horizontal collaboration offers multiple benefits in creating competitive advantages for companies and leveraging their sustainability in the long term. Although collaboration creates value for the supply chain, there is no evidence of what makes companies adopt these...
Over the past several years, there has been severe market volatility in the truckload industry leading to cost increases and efficiency losses for shippers and carriers. Previous research has investigated the many factors that contribute to such market conditions. One topic that has yet to be analyzed is “ghost freight.”...
The nature of the apparel industry is enigmatic. Customers want differentiated products and agility, yet apparel is mainly produced in low-income countries with long lead times to compete on cost. This mismatch leads to poor planning, simultaneous over- and understocking, resulting in markdowns and lost sales. Supply chain segmentation has...
The Consumer Product Goods (CPG) industry such as the bottled water business is subject to bottlenecks, due in part to both product characteristics, stochastic nature of the demand of products, and customer lead time volatility. Nevertheless, CPG companies are expected to be able to serve customers that rely on their...
In developing countries, small mom-and-pop grocery stores called nanostores are one of the main grocery market channels. Cash constraints are a severe issue that affects these small businesses, preventing them from buying enough inventory to meet client demand, and forcing them to reject orders from suppliers due to a lack...
Throughput is a critical performance metric for warehouse operations in the food industry. Accurate throughput estimations are necessary for effectively planning replenishments, inventory levels, and labor resources to meet the needs of customers. General Mills, who manages a large variety portfolio with different packaging, demand volatility, storage requirements, and outbound...
Companies are often faced with the need to make supply chain investment decisions to support new product introductions while there is still significant uncertainty in the demand expectations. This situation forces tradeoffs in supply chain capacity investments versus the risk of lost sales. To address this tradeoff, we have proposed...
The Great Lakes region is a convenient transportation route for the suppliers and the customers in North America. Various types of goods are being transported in the region including dry bulk commodities such as iron ore, coal, grain, and salt. The sponsor company for this project is a provider of...
Information sharing is one of the established approaches to improve demand forecasting and reduce the bullwhip effect, but it is infeasible to do so effectively in a long supply chain. Using the polystyrene industry as a case study, this thesis explores the usage of modern natural language processing (NLP) techniques...
With the rising adoption of e-commerce and online shopping, many retailers are facing the challenge of transitioning across channels to offer a seamless customer experience. One way of addressing this challenge consists of leveraging omnichannel retailing. Our sponsor company, a large US grocery retailer, is striving toward providing an omnichannel...
Driver dwell time is an important challenge the U.S trucking industry faces. High, unplanned dwell times are costly to all stakeholders in the industry as they result in detention costs, declining performance and decreased driver capacity. With the increasing demand for these services, it is important to maximize the driving...
Supply chain sustainability has increased in importance for companies of all sizes, public and private, across a wide range of industries. While there has been increased excitement in tandem with proclamations of lofty goals around the topic of supply chain sustainability, it has proven challenging to operationalize sustainability when many...
Consumer preferences are driving changes within the retail space. E-Commerce is growing rapidly and there are increased pressures on companies to be environmentally friendly, yet still cost-competitive. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance for retailers to adjust their distribution network to accommodate these new customer preferences. Four key steps...
The pharmaceutical industry is subject to many unique constraints, due in part to both product characteristics and regulatory guidelines. Nevertheless, pharmaceutical companies are expected to be able to serve customers that rely on their products, even as demand can be unpredictable and erratic. Pharmaceutical companies have choices in how they...
Malnutrition is a global issue that affects millions of people across the world. Malnutrition is not just the lack of food, but also consists of the overabundance of unhealthy food due to a lack of healthy food. This instance of malnutrition is particularly troublesome for cities in the United States...
Companies spend significant resources on digital transformation projects that do not always meet expectations. This thesis contends that these projects fail or fall short because organizations do not consider the three fundamental flows of a supply chain; materiel, information, and payment. To address the issue, this thesis develops a lens...
Building deep, strategic supplier relationships has come to the forefront of companies’ goals in recent years. There are many different strategic sourcing methodologies available to procurement professionals. However, there is a gap in identifying the reasons and motivations as to why companies develop their suppliers, and how suppliers are developed...
Global supply chains are becoming increasingly complex systems that drive significant investments in inventory throughout the network. Our sponsor for this project uses a multi-echelon inventory optimization (MEIO) model to manage safety stock inventory across its network. The MEIO model helps them optimize inventory based on upstream and downstream supply...
The coffee industry generates annual revenues of approximately US$250 billion, with more than 60 million people depending on it globally. However, coffee farmers in producing countries are operating at a loss due to selling at low prices to intermediaries who control the downstream channels. Recent studies highlighted the need to...
Over the past five years, immunization coverage in Sub-Saharan Africa has stagnated at 72%. Immunization supply chains are expensive and complicated, and creating a model that helps optimize these supply chains is of great importance not only for people’s health but also for the efficient use of limited budget in...
The world is facing a grave plastic waste problem. It is not new that we hear about oceanic death and morbid landfills. Only 8% of all the plastic produced is recycled in the US. This grotesque situation has been worsened by the Chinese ban of plastic waste imports from the...
The US truckload transportation industry goes through phases of over and under supply of capacity, causing a dramatic impact on freight rates and transportation budgets. External factors like macroeconomic conditions, unexpected market forces, and changing regulatory policies tend to influence the velocity of these phases. We present an analysis of...
The second machine age is reshaping the way we work, do business, and collaborate. Today collaboration is switching from just among humans to between humans and machines. Mundane and repetitive tasks will be done by machines automatically, while humans can develop insights and make wise decisions supported by data streaming...
Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) in recent years has developed from a novel concept to practical applications throughout the global economy. AI increasingly performs cognitive tasks and has evolved into the role of a human’s teammate. However, algorithms are not designed to facilitate a teaming process. Many firms do not adequately investigate...
Humanitarian organizations play a crucial role in providing aid to the victims of disasters – whether natural or man-made. One of the leading organizations is the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which saves lives and alleviates the suffering of those affected by armed conflicts. The relief action to...
