A location‐inventory model with lateral transshipments

We study an infinite horizon periodic stochastic inventory system consisting of retail outlets and customers located on a homogenous line segment. In each period, the total demand, generated by the customers on the line, is normally distributed. To better match supply and demand, we incorporate lateral transshipments. We propose a compact model in which the strategic decisions—the number and locations of retail outlets—are determined simultaneously with the operational decisions—the inventory replenishment and transshipment quantities. We find the optimal balance between the risk‐pooling considerations, which drive down the optimal number of retail outlets, and lateral transshipments, which drive up the optimal number of retail outlets. We also explore the sensitivity of the optimal number of retail outlets to various problem parameters. This article presents a novel way of integrating lateral transshipments in the context of an inventory‐location model. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2011     

Impact of transfer pricing methods for tax purposes on supply chain performance under demand uncertainty

Transfer pricing refers to the pricing of an intermediate product or service within a firm. This product or service is transferred between two divisions of the firm. Thus, transfer pricing is closely related to the allocation of profits in a supply chain. Motivated by the significant impact of transfer pricing methods for tax purposes on operational decisions and the corresponding profits of a supply chain, in this article, we study a decentralized supply chain of a multinational firm consisting of two divisions: a manufacturing division and a retail division. These two divisions are located in different countries under demand uncertainty. The retail division orders an intermediate product from the upstream manufacturing division and sets the retail price under random customer demand. The manufacturing division accepts or rejects the retail division's order. We specifically consider two commonly used transfer pricing methods for tax purposes: the cost‐plus method and the resale‐price method. We compare the supply chain profits under these two methods. Based on the newsvendor framework, our analysis shows that the cost‐plus method tends to allocate a higher percentage of profit to the retail division, whereas the resale‐price method tends to achieve a higher firm‐wide profit. However, as the variability of demand increases, our numerical study suggests that the firm‐wide and divisional profits tend to be higher under the cost‐plus method than they are under the resale‐price method. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2013     

The future of the defence firm: the case of the UK aerospace industry

The focus of this paper is the future of the defence firm within the context of the UK aerospace industry and its supply chain. The analysis considers aerospace markets and the aerospace industry in the UK before assessing the future of the defence/aerospace firm as a case study. The paper concludes that its future in terms of the strategic and important aerospace industry is uncertain. The corporate governance of the defence firm will have to change to reflect the hollowing‐out of the firm as the industry experiences significantly less vertical integration. The emphasis of the future defence/aerospace firm will be on ‘buy’ and not necessarily ‘make’. There will also be fewer independent defence aerospace firms as horizontal integration will occur across air, land and sea platforms as well as civil and defence aerospace firms. Indeed, conglomerate integration may even occur with cost pressures and market forces ensuring that merger activity goes beyond defence and aerospace into wider manufacturing industries and, in some cases, service industries in global markets.     

9/11: WHAT DID WE KNOW AND WHEN DID WE KNOW IT?

In February 1998, Osama Bin Laden published a signed statement calling for a fatwa against the United States for its having ‘declared war against God’. As we now know, the fatwa resulted in the unprecedented attack of 9/11. The issue of whether or not 9/11 was in any way predictable culminated in the public debate between Richard Clarke, former CIA Director George Tenet and the White House. This paper examines whether there was any evidence of a structural change in the terrorism data at or after February 1998 but prior to June 2001, controlling for the possibility of other breaks in earlier periods. In doing so, we use the standard Bai–Perron procedure and our sequential importance sampling (SIS) Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method for identifying an unknown number of breaks at unknown dates. We conclude that sophisticated statistical time‐series analysis would not have predicted 9/11.     

The defence industry supply chain: Linkage patterns in the south west of england 1

In this paper, new data from the south west of England are used to illustrate that defence dependent firms are likely to purchase more inputs locally than less defence‐dependent firms. The results confirm that the defence industry's supply chain has unusual characterises and that defence industrial restructuring is therefore, likely to produce different outcomes to previous rounds of manufacturing restructuring.     

远海作战装备供应链体系架构

信息化使战争的节奏加快,如何满足快节奏战争对装备的需求,无疑是军事保障领域值得研究的一个问题.供应链思想被引入军事物资保障系统后,已在多个领域发挥了显著的效用.建立装备供应链网络对提升远海作战装备供应能力既有现实意义又是可行的,这是因为：一方面信息化条件下远海作战需要更有效率的装备供应体系,另一方面企业供应链为装备供应链提供了可以借鉴的模式.本文通过对远海作战装备供应链目标和特征的分析,参照企业供应链和美军海上供应链建设的情况,建立了远海作战装备供应链网络,并对供应链流程进行了说明.     

Coping with shortages caused by disruptive events in automobile supply chains

Unpredictable disruptive events significantly increase the difficulty of the management of automobile supply chains. In this paper, we propose an automobile production planning problem with component chips substitution in a finite planning horizon. The shortage of one chip can be compensated by another chip of the same type with a higher-end feature at an additional cost. Therefore, the automobile manufacturer can divert the on-hand inventory of chips to product lines that are more profitable in the event of shortages caused by supply chain disruptions. To cope with this, we propose a max-min robust optimization model that captures the uncertain supplies of chips. We show that the robust model has a mixed-integer programming equivalence that can be solved by a commercial IP solver directly. We compare the max-min robust model with the corresponding deterministic and two-stage stochastic models for the same problem through extensive numerical experiments. The computational results show that the max-min robust model outperforms the other two models in terms of the average and worst-case profits.     

基于Monte Carlo方法的一对二马尔可夫随机格斗模型

讨论了一对二马尔可夫随机格斗双方获胜概率计算问题。提出了一种新颖的一对二马尔可夫随机格斗任意对抗回合双方获胜概率的计算方法,该方法首先基于Monte Carlo仿真计算各个对抗回合中双方发射次序的概率分布,再利用全概率公式确定马尔可夫链的状态转移概率矩阵,从而克服了马尔可夫随机格斗模型往往只能提供无限对抗回合之后格斗双方获胜概率的缺点,为运用马尔可夫随机格斗研究火力运用和弹药分配提供了新途径,并用实例说明了该方法的有效性。     

美军作战构想及其生成方法

随着战争复杂性剧增,作战构想的地位和作用日益凸显。美军以逻辑链为作战构想的基本表现形式,以作战设计为作战构想生成的思维工具,强调发挥作战艺术,提升作战构想质量,并构建了"四步一体"的作战构想生成流程。     

基于FMECA的信息系统软件失效安全风险评估与预测

随着大量软件产品应用于信息系统,不可避免地增大了软件失效对系统安全的影响概率。本文以某信息系统文电收发的处理过程为例,引入FMECA法,对其文电收发处理过程中由软件造成的风险进行分析,同时分析了引起风险常见的失效模式,并引入Markov模型对软件失效造成系统严重危害的风险进行预测,通过Markov模型与FMECA法结合能够迅速定位软件失效的原因,减少因软件失效造成的系统损失。