Knowledge that Transforms

Conference scheduling involves organizing presentations into sessions which are assigned to time periods and rooms. This includes assuring a feasible utilization of time periods and rooms, and avoiding individual schedule conflicts. The problem increases in complexity by considering the preferences of presenters: for time periods, for rooms, etc. A greater level of complexity comes from considering the preferences of conference attendees, which we define as preference‐based conference scheduling (PBCS). This article provides a structure on which PBCS problems are founded, including empirical demonstration of solution techniques. In addition, real‐world strategic planning issues of flexibility and preference detail are explored.

There is little understanding as to why firms have various degrees of cell usage. The intent of this study was to identify factors that had arrested continued implementation of cells at surveyed manufacturing plants. We found no dominant factor that had prevented the firms from continued cellularization. However, by sub‐dividing the plants into those with low and high degrees of direct labor hours spent in cells, short and long experience with cells, and those with and without plans for further cells, a clearer pattern emerged. The inability to find families with high and stable demand, lack of time to implement more cells, the existence of service processes, and the difficulty of cost justifying new cells were the most important factors, although their relative importance varied. The findings support the notion that cellular manufacturing has broad applicability as a form of work organization and that cell users pursue further implementations until no more viable cells with sufficient utilization, demand stability, or economic value can be found.

The decision of a firm to set up a plant network is influenced by a number of factors, including demand fluctuations across its portfolio of products, logistics costs, and service level requirements. Product plant networks offer the benefits of consolidated production and reduced transshipment costs; on the other hand, process plant networks allow intensive dedication to process expertise and economies of scale. In this paper, we show that, aside from these benefits, process plant networks offer significant risk pooling advantages under a wide range of conditions. We analytically demonstrate that, even without accounting for economies of scale advantages, firms may prefer the process plant network configuration due to the risk pooling benefits offered.

Research in Supply Chain Management and Electronic Commerce has grown dramatically in the past decade as firms have intensified efforts to streamline operations and improve service to a diverse and demanding customer base. Central to this theme is the need for firms to look outside of their organizations for opportunities to collaborate and coordinate with partners to ensure that the supply chain is both efficient and responsive to dynamic market needs. Such collaboration and coordination opportunities introduce new challenges and complexities as a result of increased problem scale and scope, and potentially conflicting incentives among different supply chain players. Motivated by these new challenges, this special issue explores a range of coordination and collaboration problems, stressing the role of information and associated technologies in facilitating and enabling supply chain integration.

The prevalence of fluctuating demand is increasingly seen as a serious and ongoing issue facing the health services industry. Volume flexibility in a health care setting represents a means to improve service delivery and it allows organizations to leverage their scarce resources for optimal utilization in response to fluctuations in patient demand. This paper develops a research framework that describes four volume flexible strategies based on literature reviews and structured field interviews of health care administrators at a Carnegie I research and teaching hospital. This prescriptive framework and the propositions that are developed create a foundation to help guide future research on the important relationships between demand uncertainty, volume flexible strategies, and organizational performance.

This paper investigates empirically antecedents of the adoption of web‐based processes (e‐processes) by service providers. We examine whether rational efficiency (expressed by expected performance benefits and access to new markets), the bandwagon effect (expressed by external pressure), and barriers (both internal and customer related) influence Internet use for transactions (e‐transactions) and/or to extend the relationships between service providers and their customers (e‐CRM). The findings, based on a sample of 338 service firms, show that rational efficiency and the bandwagon effect drive both types of e‐processes. Conversely, only internal barriers have a negative impact on adoption of e‐processes, while barriers related to customers do not have a significant impact. These findings have important academic and managerial implications, given the limited evidence regarding the implementation of e‐processes in services.

Retailers often stock competing products from multiple manufacturers. When the retailer stocks out of a particular item, customers who prefer the item are likely, with some probability, to switch to a substitute product from another manufacturer at the same store. In such an event, a “lost sale” for the manufacturer is not a “lost sale” for the retailer. This exacerbates differences in manufacturer's and retailer's stockout costs for the item. Such differences in stockout cost influence the optimal contract between the manufacturer and the retailer and also impose agency costs on the channel. Such contracts, in turn, determine equilibrium inventory levels and fill rates. We study these issues in a single‐period supply chain, consisting of a manufacturer and a retailer, under three different scenarios (when the two firms are integrated into a single entity, when the retailer makes stocking decisions, and when the manufacturer makes stocking decisions). We compare, and present a methodology for comparing, stocking quantities, manufacturer efforts, and supply chain profits across different scenarios. We find that VMI performs better when manufacturer effort is a substantial driver of consumer demand and when consumers are unlikely to substitute to another brand in case of a stockout. On the other hand, if non‐contractible manufacturer effort is unimportant, or when substitution is significant, VMI can exacerbate, rather than mitigate, channel inefficiencies, and can perform worse than traditional Retailer Managed Inventory.

Several articles have been written during the past few years examining performance improvement paths and various forms of efficiency frontiers in operations strategy. These articles focus primarily on defining and describing these frontiers and raise questions concerning how to improve operations. In this paper, we provide one of the first empirical studies aimed at validating these earlier studies. Using a database on the 10 largest U.S. airlines for a period of 11 years, we test and validate some of the models presented in the operations literature. The 10 major airlines are separated into 2 groups for analysis: geographic specialists and geographic generalists. Our analysis shows that better performing airlines (in terms of cost‐quality position) in both groups confirm the predictions of the sand cone model when operating further away from their asset frontiers, although trade‐offs do occur when operating close to asset frontiers.

In this paper, we develop a process model for assessing and managing e‐service quality based on the underlying components of the e‐service system and, in turn, address the growing need to look in more detail at the system component level for sources of poor quality. The proposed process model is comprised of a set of entities representing the e‐service system, a network defining the linking between all pairs of entities via transactions and product flows, and a set of outcomes of the processes in terms of quality dimensions. The process model is developed using Unified Modeling Language (UML), a pictorial language for specifying service designs that has achieved widespread acceptance among e‐service designers. Examples of applications of the process model are presented to illustrate how the model can be use to identify operational levers for managing and improving e‐service quality.

The Bullwhip Effect is problematic: order variability increases as orders propagate along the supply chain. The fundamental differential delay equations for a retailer's inventory reacting to a surge in demand are solved exactly. Much of the rich and complex inventory behavior is determined by the replenishment delay. The analytical solutions agree with numerical integrations and previous control theory results. Managerially useful ordering strategies are proposed. Exact expressions are derived for the retailer's orders to the manufacturer, and the Bullwhip Effect arises naturally. The approach is quite general and applicable to a wide variety of supply chain problems.