Managing components for assemble‐to‐order products with lead‐time‐dependent pricing: The full‐shipment model

We study a component inventory planning problem in an assemble‐to‐order environment faced by many contract manufacturers in which both quick delivery and efficient management of component inventory are crucial for the manufacturers to achieve profitability in a highly competitive market. Extending a recent study in a similar problem setting by the same authors, we analyze an optimization model for determining the optimal component stocking decision for a contract manufacturer facing an uncertain future demand, where product price depends on the delivery times. In contrast to our earlier work, this paper considers the situation where the contract manufacturer needs to deliver the full order quantity in one single shipment. This delivery requirement is appropriate for many industries, such as the garment and toy industries, where the economies of scale in transportation is essential. We develop efficient solution procedures for solving this optimization problem. We use our model results to illustrate how the different model parameters affect the optimal solution. We also compare the results under this full‐shipment model with those from our earlier work that allows for multiple partial shipments. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2007     

Inventory management with advance capacity information

An important aspect of supply chain management is dealing with demand and supply uncertainty. The uncertainty of future supply can be reduced if a company is able to obtain advance capacity information (ACI) about future supply/production capacity availability from its supplier. We address a periodic‐review inventory system under stochastic demand and stochastic limited supply, for which ACI is available. We show that the optimal ordering policy is a state‐dependent base‐stock policy characterized by a base‐stock level that is a function of ACI. We establish a link with inventory models that use advance demand information (ADI) by developing a capacitated inventory system with ADI, and we show that equivalence can only be set under a very specific and restrictive assumption, implying that ADI insights will not necessarily hold in the ACI environment. Our numerical results reveal several managerial insights. In particular, we show that ACI is most beneficial when there is sufficient flexibility to react to anticipated demand and supply capacity mismatches. Further, most of the benefits can be achieved with only limited future visibility. We also show that the system parameters affecting the value of ACI interact in a complex way and therefore need to be considered in an integrated manner. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2011     

Stability of information‐sharing alliances in a three‐level supply chain

In their recent article, Leng and Parlar (L&P) (2009) analyze information‐sharing alliances in a three‐level supply chain (consisting of a manufacturer, a distributor, and a retailer) that faces a nonstationary end demand. Supply chain members can share demand information, which reduces information distortion and thus decreases their inventory holding and shortage costs. We expand the results from L&P by considering dynamic (farsighted) stability concepts. We use two different allocation rules and show that under some reasonable assumptions there should always be some information sharing in this supply chain. We also identify conditions under which the retailer in a stable outcome shares his demand information with the distributor, with the manufacturer, or with both remaining supply chain members. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2010     

The Serbian defence institution: the need for clear policy guidance to improve the Serbian defence planning,management, and command processes

ABSTRACT

The uncritical layering of western liberal defence governance norms and concepts on top of existing legacy concepts has impeded achieving coherent military capabilities and capacities when Serbia’s political and military leadership tried to reform the defence system using Western benchmarking principles and Western countries’ best practices. The process of this change has been more valuable than its actual output, as defined by increased capabilities. Such outcomes should be reflective of policy guidance, and can be thought of as closing the trinity loop of a defence planning system: plans, money and execution. This article addresses two key functional areas of the Serbian defence institution. First, it assesses the current state of defence planning to discern its strengths and weaknesses to ascertain if plans are tied to financial decision-making. Second, a full examination of current Serbian defence management is conducted to discern whether weaknesses exist that distract from producing operational capabilities. Both areas are analyzed thoroughly and some solutions for change are proposed. Also, the article analyzes the appearance of two negative phenomena in the planning process – economization and managerialism.     

‘Kadyrovtsy’: Russia’s Counterinsurgency Strategy and the Wars of Paramilitary Clans

This article analyses the steps taken by the Russian government, with the aid of a powerful local clan, the so-called Kadyrovtsy, to subdue the Chechen insurgency. It highlights the strategy used by Russia, under whose patronage former anti-Russian guerrilla fighters were transformed into paramilitary allies of the Russian government; later these former insurgents were incorporated into the regular Russian army and other state security forces. The article also identifies problems that are connected with the activities of the Kadyrovtsy in Chechnya and Russia, and the spillover into the diaspora; it also contextualises the issues faced by the contemporary Chechen ruling clan and the geopolitics of the Caucasus within the research framework of paramilitarism and counterinsurgency.     

Panel Causality Analysis Between Defence Expenditure and Economic Growth in Developed Countries

There is much controversy in the literature over whether military expenditures have a positive, negative or no relation impact on economic growth. The aim of this paper is to determine the relationship between GDP and defence expenditure. The study analyses GDP and defence expenditures of the developed countries with cross-sectional ADF and SURADF unit root tests using annual data for the years 1980–2007. We conclude that in the long term, according to the Pedroni cointegration test, there exists a relationship between defence expenditure and economic growth. Furthermore, by utilizing the Granger causality test, we find that defence expenditure is a factor in economic growth. In other words, our study validates the hypothesis that defence spending by economically developed countries positively contributes to their economics.     

Some implications of pricing bundles

In this article, we consider a problem in which two suppliers can sell their respective products both individually and together as a bundle, and study the impact of bundle pricing. Four pricing models (centralized, decentralized, coop–comp, and comp–coop) are analyzed with regard to the competition formats and sequences. As one would expect, the firms are always better off when pricing decisions are centralized. However, rather surprisingly, we find that firms may be worse off if the bundle prices are set in a cooperative way; we provide analytical characterization of those instances. Numerical studies show that these insights also hold for some nonlinear demand. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2013     

The causes of trust and distrust in the military

Trust in institutions is an important issue of political science and sociology. This article contributes to the discussion by exploring public trust in the military at the global, regional and national levels, and the causes of trust and distrust in the military. Analyses of public opinion data reveal that the military is a highly trusted social institution across the world. In Slovenia, the trust in the military is high as well; however, it is lower than international data would suggest, averaging at 50%. Against this background, the article focuses on the causes of trust. The original empirical survey was accomplished and shows that the most significant causes of a high level of trust in the military are its frequent and successful involvement in disaster relief, its professional qualifications and high performance, as well as its national defense role. Whereas the key causes of distrust are: the poor levels of transparency in its procurement process; the politicization of the military and organizational problems.     

Multivariate meta analysis with potentially correlated marketing study results

A univariate meta analysis is often used to summarize various study results on the same research hypothesis concerning an effect of interest. When several marketing studies produce sets of more than one effect, multivariate meta analysis can be conducted. Problems one might have with such a multivariate meta analysis are: (1) Several effects estimated in one model could be correlated to each other but their correlation is seldom published and (2) an estimated effect in one model could be correlated to the corresponding effect in the other model due to similar model specification or the data set partly shared, but their correlation is not known. Situations like (2) happen often in military recruiting studies. We employ a Monte‐Carlo simulation to evaluate how neglecting such potential correlation affects the result of a multivariate meta analysis in terms of Type I, Type II errors, and MSE. Simulation results indicate that such effect is not significant. What matters is rather the size of the variance component due to random error in multivariate effects. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 47: 500–510, 2000.