Browsing by Subject "Supply Chain"
Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
- Results Per Page
- Sort Options
Item Essays on Supply Chain Finance(2016-10) Chen, YibinThis thesis contains essays addressing three different problems in supply chain finance, studying two important source of financing – trade credit and crowdfunding. In the first essay, we model a web-based retailer offering direct financing to its capital-constrained supplier who sells its products on a consignment basis. The supplier has access to bank financing and the retailer can specify debt-seniority. We show that if the retailer requires debt-seniority, then the supplier will use either bank or direct financing (but not both), and it may produce more than the first-best quantity. In contrast, if the retailer does not request seniority, the supplier may take both bank and direct financing, but it always produces less than the first-best quantity. We find that the retailer does not always prefer debt-seniority. In the second essay, we study variants of net-terms trade credit contracts in a traditional market, with market frictions of bankruptcy costs, information asymmetry and transaction costs. We provide a possible explanation for the prevalence of debt forgiveness in practice. We show that the supplier, by contracting and preannouncing forgiveness, can use one type of friction to mitigate another, and benefit both supply chain partners. The third essay studies the social proof effect in the rapidly diffused crowdfunding market. We study how prior capital accumulation and the volume of owner-issued referrals impact subsequent fundraising. By analyzing a campaign-level web traffic data set, we show that higher capital accumulation increases the probability of contribution for the owner-referrals, the volume of organic visitors and the total volume of organic contributors, although it may decrease probability of contribution from the organic visitors. To study the optimal policy for entrepreneurs to use their referrals, we build a Markov-decision-process model and calibrate its parameters using our data. Our finding indicates that entrepreneurs in general should distribute their referrals over the course of the entire campaign.Item Identifying and mitigating the antecedents of supply chain disruptions - 3 essays(2009-07) Habermann, MarcoGlobalization facilitated by information technology has changed the nature of work; work in today's economy is increasingly performed in geographically dispersed and loosely connected networks of firms, shifting competitive basis from individual firms to supply chains. Managing supply chains effectively and efficiently is critical to succeed in the current business environment. At the same time, breakdowns in supply chains, frequently referred to as supply chain disruptions, are cited as one of the main threats to firm profitability, both in terms of revenue loss and customer dissatisfaction. In this study, we address three research questions: first, what is supply chain disruption and how can we measure it; second, what are the antecedents associated with supply chain disruptions; and third, how can we mitigate the impact of the antecedents on supply chain disruption. We define disruptions as "an unplanned stoppage of the material flow within the supply chain" and identify frequency, duration, spread and impact as four key dimensions to represent the disruption construct. Using insights from Normal Accident Theory, we identify system complexity as a key antecedent that impacts supply chain disruption. Finally, we identify information processing capability as the key characteristic that helps mitigate the impact of complexity on disruption. We use primary data from 189 respondents and employ multivariate analysis to examine our research questions. Results from data analysis show a significant positive relationship between supply chain complexity and disruptions, indicating that more complex supply chains are more susceptible to disruptions. Our results also show that increasing information process capability mitigates the impact of complexity on disruption. This is one of the first studies to empirically examine the causes and effects of supply chain disruption.Item Optimal supply chain and product design of biofuels(2013-08) Marvin, William AlexanderGrowth of a biomass-to-biofuels industry has the potential to reduce oil imports, support agriculture and forestry growth, foster a domestic biorefinery industry, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions compared to gasoline. Successful development of biofuels involves Process Systems Engineering challenges at various scales, including elucidation of complex chemical systems for upgrading biomass in terms of mechanisms, kinetics and thermochemistry, design of novel reactors and reactor networks, synthesis and optimization of novel process flow sheets, and supply chain optimization at the enterprise level. None of these aspects exist in isolation; each choice impacts the others and has an important role in the overall economic potential. The aim of this thesis has been to approach these multi-scale challenges by developing optimization models for biofuel supply chain and product design problems, specifically mixed integer linear programs. The biofuel supply chain optimization problems were formulated to determine economical and environmentally efficient biomass processing facility locations and capacities, simultaneously with biomass harvest and distribution. Focus was put on the production of biofuels in the Midwestern United States from grain, agricultural residues, energy crops and wood resources, and the feasibility of meeting governmental biofuel mandates in 2015. The product design problem investigated was for the production of blended gasoline with biomass-derived components. The strategy consists of i) constructing an exhaustive network of reactions consistent with an input set of chemistry rules and ii) using the network information to formulate and solve an optimization problem that yields an optimal product distribution and the sequence of reactions that synthesize them. This was applied to identify potential renewable oxygenates and hydrocarbons obtained from heterogeneous catalysis of biomass that can be blended with gasoline to satisfy ASTM specifications.Item Palm Oil, Sustainability, and Global Trade: A Focus on Indonesia(2024-08-30) Arifin, Andrea R.; Peterson, Hikaru H.; Sommers, Scott J.