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A consultancy project to develop an information systems (IS) strategy for a copper mine located in South Africa is described. The mine is operated by the UK based mining company RTZ, the world's largest mining company. The approach taken was based on an earlier project at Sainsbury's, a major food and grocery retailing chain in the UK. At Sainsbury's a participative approach made use of a number of...
Experiential and analytical research output from a number of sources suggests that the inclusion of `pipeline' information in an inventory and production (or supply) ordering rule leads to a reduction in production and supply on-costs and improved customer service levels. The evidence is provided by consideration of the dynamics induced in an ordering system due to existence of delays between an order...
We present a taxonomy of the research that includes the relationship between quality and inventory. A literature review of over forty-five books and journal articles provides a basis for understanding the research in this area. Our goal is not to review all variants of this relationship or to describe all of the results, but rather to provide a broad overview of the major problems in the literature...
The continued movement towards a global economy has contributed to the tremendous growth of competition in many industries. In order for many of these entrants to remain competitively viable, considerable attention must be focused on the impact of service quality, both on the cost side and the demand side. While a considerable literature exists on the impact of service quality and reliability on demand...
This memorandum offers an extension of the work of Chiang et al., (Omega, The International Journal of Management Science, 1996, 24, 205-215) by investigating the issue of the standard backpropagation neural network model for regression analysis. It provides an analytical insight which shows how a regression result based on a simple back-propagation neural network may be adversely affected. It also...
This research was undertaken to resolve inconsistent findings on the effectiveness of group support systems (GSS) by investigating the effect of task type, which is, arguably, the most important moderator variable. A qualitative review of the literature was conducted to identify task dimensions that may explain the impact of task type on the effectiveness of GSS. The relationship between task dimension...
Elasticity estpdeltimates provide the brand manager with useful diagnostics for evaluating competitive market structure. However, an econometric model must often be simplified due to the limited amount of data available to estimate the model's parameters. This results in a reduction in the structural insight one can gain from the model. Capitalizing on the forecasting ability of neural networks, we...
This case study reports the development and implementation process of a production planning system for a carbon products manufacturer. The model developed for the company provides an optimal production sequence by minimizing the setup costs. Initially, the optimal sequence obtained faced hurdles at the implementation stage due to : (i) lack of integration of information systems among different corporate...
As a consequence of the 1978 Chinese economic reforms, there have been a number of changes within China's industry. First, firms have been given limited autonomy in management. Second, firms now have control over the scale of production and production profitability after fulfilling the required plan. Third, some production factors have become firm controllable. Fourth, firms are now faced with...
This paper combines data envelopment analysis (DEA) with regression analysis to evaluate the efficiency of central government-owned hospitals in Taiwan over the five fiscal years between 1990 and 1994. Efficiency is first estimated using DEA with the choice of inputs and outputs being specific to hospital operations. A multiple regression model is then employed in which the efficiency score obtained...
This paper presents a performance evaluation for the global semiconductor industry. The evaluation is conducted via a series of comparative analyses based upon company-level variables. It includes the comparisons of market share and economic growth, employment and labor productivity, cost efficiency measured by the DEA approach, profit margin, R&D expenditure ratio, and growth trend of company's...
This paper proposes a new search model to deal with public sector decisions in which intangible factors need to be considered along with tangible ones. Such problems are often found in a wide range of administrative investigations and criminal inspections in Japan. In an effort to manage such problems, this article first constructs an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) model to deal with the intangible...
Since August 1990, land-scarce Singapore has held monthly public auctions to allocate Certificates of Entitlement (COE) or rights to vehicle ownership. Successful COE recipients pay the lowest successful bid in their vehicle category. This paper uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) to assess the relative technical efficiencies and the returns to scale of COE bidding in the five car categories. ...
The paper investigates excesses and deficits in Chinese industrial productivity for the years (1953-1990), by combining data envelopment analysis (DEA) with other management science approaches. Improvement factors are examined with the incorporation of a priori information through Delphi, AHP and assurance region (AR) techniques. Various multiple input and multiple output sets are selected to study...
Portfolio managers can face cash outflows and possible job loss if their short-term performance temporarily lags behind the competition. The practical relevance of this problem is accentuated in New Zealand where the small number of predominantly resource-based companies has meant that a few unfortunate stock picks by New Zealand fund managers have often led to sharp and sudden divergences amongst...
A range-adjusted measure (RAM) of efficiency, as recently developed in data envelopment analysis (DEA), is used to evaluate the performance of entities that supply water services in Japan. Its robustness properties are tested and pointed up for uses in improved accountability, and are further pointed up in terms of the potential for help in conducting performance and efficiency audits. The results...
This article is concerned with an empirical approach for bilateral performance comparison of Japan agriculture (JA) co-operatives, using data envelopment analysis (DEA). In this study, three new indexes (comparative production index, comparative cost index, and comparative cost reduction ratio) are proposed to measure comparative advantages in terms of production and cost analyses. The concept of...
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