Avetta, a supply chain risk management & compliance firm, is introducing a new ESG (Environmental, Social, & Governance) offering to better support clients on their sustainability journeys, as they look to increase transparency and ensure compliance across the supply chain. In support of this new program, Avetta requires an understanding...
Plastic waste has been a growing source of environmental concern, and the CPG industry is the largest consumer of plastic while also having the highest plastic consumption to waste ratio. Consequently, under greater levels of public scrutiny, many CPG firms have publicly committed to source fractions of their plastic consumption...
Maintaining high on-time delivery performance is critical for third-party logistics providers. Not only does reliable on-time delivery function as a competitive edge and allow logistics providers to serve their customers more effectively, but it can also improve operational efficiency for the provider itself. Our sponsor company is a third-party logistics...
In every company, determining an optimal inventory level balances the desired service level with the costs of holding too much inventory. For the medical device industry, the stakes are high as risks in the supply chain of devices used by hospitals and operating rooms can have a devastating impact. In...
Globalization, demand uncertainty, and shorter life cycles have increased the risks in pharmaceutical supply chains. To mitigate these risks, firms can carry safety stock. Classic theory on stochastic safety stock strategies assume that demand forecast errors are normally distributed with no bias or, in other words, have an expected value...
Today, small retailers in Latin America account for 70% of the market share. Convenience stores play a crucial role, as people look for more convenience with modern lifestyles. Most of these stores are managed by people without experience or formal education in business management. A challenging problem for small retailers...
Millions of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) fail every year in the United States, and in many instances the root cause of failure is more often due to operational inefficiencies than external factors. One way SMEs can overcome operational inefficiencies is by implementing inventory management strategies, such as modularization and...
Shippers utilize routing guides to tender shipments to carriers at contracted rates. They also tender loads on the spot market, where they compete with other shippers for carrier capacity and market pricing. Although previous studies have looked at routing guides and shipper procurement practices, none have explored the resiliency of...
The automotive industry is an exemplary leader in the use of returnable cases for the transportation of inbound freight. Their use reduces the need of expensive and expendable packing and contributes to lower greenhouse gas emissions. However, the utilization of returnable cases is hindered when there is high variability in...
In the United States, long-haul trucking is the main mode of transportation of goods. The trucking industry has been facing a shortage of drivers in the past few years and it is only increasing every year. Previous studies have found that multiple reasons are contributing to the driver shortage. These...
The pharmaceutical industry relies on cold chain supply infrastructure to preserve the integrity of temperature-sensitive products. Specifically, passive controlled temperature solutions present an increased challenge as the inherent uncertainty of ambient temperatures and process lead time variations in the delivery dramatically increase the risk of inactivating the product. Despite the...
Ocean freight represents more than 70% of the global trade by volume. Given the price increases in transportation rates, companies are more interested in driving efficiencies and cost optimizations through supply chain synchronization. In this document, synchronization refers to the optimal coordination of transportation costs, inventory, and service level, while...
According to an OECD report, micro and small enterprises (MSEs) constitute 99.5% of all firms in Latin America and employ approximately 60% of the LATAM population. However, despite their economic and social importance, MSEs are subject to high failure rates, primarily stemming from low productivity, lack of managerial skills and...
As more and more multinational companies are exploring low-cost countries to purchase commodities from, it has become critical for companies to calculate the total landed cost before making a purchasing decision. This capstone project establishes a model for the sourcing team of GE Gas Power to capture costs such as...
Inventory management is one of the key elements of supply chain management for any organization to manage costs versus service level tradeoffs. Product segmentation for inventory is therefore a key lever for inventory management. Traditionally, this segmentation is done using only a single criterion. This paper presents a framework that...
With air passenger traffic projected to increase significantly over the following decades, the airline catering industry urgently needs to explore the underlying causes of food waste produced in their kitchens and develop concrete strategies to manage it better going forward. Spanning over 60+ countries, operating 200+ catering units, and serving...
The trucking industry hauled 72.5% of all freight transported in the U.S. and served an essential function in transporting cargo nationwide from one place to another. Recently, the industry has suffered from significant disruption, such as a shortage of drivers and carriers. One of the leading causes of these issues...
Companies make inventory decisions based on well-established safety stock methodologies. In these methodologies, a key assumption is that transit times are normally distributed. Although previous studies have shown a nonnormality in transit time distributions in ocean freight, it is still unclear how transit time is distributed in land freight and...
Manufacturing companies are under pressure to build faster and more efficient decision-making capabilities due to the rapidly changing customer demand and expectations. The conventional analytical models are no longer sufficient to capture the complexities of the supply chain. Companies are looking to embark in a digital transformation to address these...
The production growth and short life cycle of plastics has created concerns around its waste management process. Despite efforts to increase recycling over the years, the rate of recycling does not come close to the rate of plastics production. This capstone project develops an innovative and convenient business model that...
This capstone addresses how an FMCG company should go about automating inbound decision making in one of their warehouses. The capstone focuses only on the inbound side of the distribution center because it was determined that it was an area with big opportunities for improvement. Efficiency inside a warehouse depends...
The transportation sector is the third largest contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, accounting for over 28% of total U.S. emissions and over 14% of global emissions in 2018. As climate change and its negative effects have grown significantly, efforts to reduce GHG emissions have become an important objective on...
Supply chain networks in the retail industry have become increasingly complex, giving rise to challenges in product flow from distribution centers to fulfillment locations. Product allocation, in particular, has emerged as a critical challenge for grocery retail companies as it helps them determine the shipping location and the shipping type...
The truckload transportation industry is an established industry, in the US, with annual revenue for for-hire truckload reaching greater than 300 billion dollars in 2019. A major problem encountered by for-hire truckload carriers is a sudden, unexpected and sustained reduction in shipment volume over lanes referred to as ‘churn’. Churn...
WHO reports that in the South Asian region, the number of undernourished has hardly decreased in the last decade. This situation calls for a concerted effort to combat malnutrition the world over. The effort must be grounded in nutrition and executed through a robust distribution mechanism to reach all segments...
