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Countries are faced with huge responsibilities for building and effectively managing their critical transportation infrastructures, such as roads, seaports, and airports because these important infrastructures play a pivotal role in their economic development and growth. Effective development management and administration of these infrastructures involves many parties with different objectives and interests. Because of these complexities, a strong partnership among the stakeholders is essential for the successful development and management of these important transportation infrastructures.

We examine vendor-managed inventory (VMI) systems with stockout-cost sharing between a supplier and a customer using an EOQ model with shortages allowed under limited storage capacity, in which a stockout penalty is charged to the supplier when stockouts occur at the customer. In the VMI systems the customer and the supplier minimize their own costs in designing a VMI contract and making replenishment decisions, respectively. We compare the VMI systems with an integrated supplier–customer system where the supply chain total cost is minimized. We show that VMI with stockout-cost sharing and the integrated supplier–customer system result in the same replenishment decisions and system performance if and only if the supplier's reservation cost is equal to the minimum supply chain total cost of the integrated system. On the other hand, we also show how VMI along with fixed transfer payments as well as stockout-cost sharing can lead to the supply chain coordination regardless of the supplier's reservation cost. We also provide several interesting computational results.

Because the mobile services is composed of heterogeneous attributes, it is hard to find out customer`s potential needs and more difficult to analyze customer`s satisfaction factors toward mobile services. Therefore, this study approached this issue from a new viewpoint and applied Kano Model in analyzing customer`s satisfaction and dissatisfaction factors toward mobile services. By using Kano Model, it tried to find out how differently customers perceive the mobile services. Firstly, we found out perception gaps of Korean and American customers toward mobile services. While Korean customers perceived most mobile services as indifferent service attributes, American customers perceived them as attractive service attributes. We could find main reasons of these perception differences from different national backgrounds and adoption rates of smart phones between two countries. Secondly, based on TRI scores, we categorized subjects into four groups and named as Pioneers, Explorers, Skeptics and Laggards. And then we examined the perception differences to mobile services among four groups. We found that there were no significant perception differences among four groups.

This paper presents a comparative study of the levels of complexity, development, and organizational demographics of purchasing in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Denmark and two states in the United States. SMEs are strongly dependent on the efficiency of the purchasing function and also very dependent on existing suppliers because they have difficulties in finding viable substitutes. Additionally, the time spent on routine transactions and problem solving instead of strategic sourcing and long-term relationships with key suppliers is relatively high in SMEs. Using structural equation modeling with survey data, we demonstrate that in the United States, purchasing complexity indeed determines the level of purchasing development in SMEs. The evidence in Denmark is not so clear, however.

PurposeThis study attempts to determine the relative contribution of each of the causes of the bullwhip effect and to identify which causes of the bullwhip effect have relatively significant impacts on the variability of orders in supply chains.Design/methodology/approachComputer simulation models are developed. A fractional factorial design is used in collecting data from the simulation models. Statistical analyses are conducted to address the research objectives.FindingsWhen all of the nine possible causes of the bullwhip effect are present in the simulation models, the following six factors are statistically significant: demand forecast updating, order batching, material delays, information delays, purchasing delays and level of echelons. Among these six factors, demand forecast updating, level of echelons, and price variations are the three most significant ones.Research limitations/implicationsSimulation models for the beer distribution game are developed to represent supply chains. Different supply chain structures can be constructed to examine the causes of the bullwhip effect.Practical implicationsIn order to mitigate the bullwhip effect, supply chain managers need to share actual demand information and coordinate production and distribution activities with their partners.Originality/valueThis study measures the relative contribution of each of the causes of the bullwhip effect and provides evidence that transparent and accurate information flow and supply chain coordination could be a key to reduce the amplification of demand in supply chains.

This research attempts to determine the relative contribution of each of the causes of the bullwhip effect and to identify which causes of the bullwhip effect have relatively significant impacts on the variability of orders under different supply chain structures. When there are three or more levels of echelons in a supply chain, demand forecast updating is the most significant factor for the bullwhip effect. When there are two levels of echelons in a supply chain, however, price variation is the most significant one. This implies that, when there are three or more levels of echelons in a supply chain, supply chain managers need to share actual demand information and coordinate production and distribution activities with their partners. When there are only two levels of echelons, agility or market responsiveness would be a key to mitigate the bullwhip effect

Development and management of ports is a major objective of economic development in many countries. As ownership and operations of seaports have traditionally been in the public sector, restructuring has often been slow and frustrating. Public‐private partnership has been offered by many as a solution. This paper reviews a project at Pusan port, South Korea where close public‐private partnership was the key to success. Relying on the experience gained from the Pusan port, a process model has been offered that many other ports in developing countries can use to achieve successful public‐private collaboration.

The purposes of this study are to obtain information about the current status of purchasing development in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), to examine the relationship between the level of purchasing development and the purchasing performance, and to determine which purchasing development components are more related to their purchasing performance. This study found that the level of purchasing development is related to the purchasing performance of SMEs. Beyond that, certain components of purchasing development are identified as being more relevant than others to this relationship.