Browsing SCALE Working Paper Series by Title
Now showing items 1-20 of 21
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Corporate Supply Chain Disclosures and Factors Determining the Disclosure Approaches: A Palm Oil Case Study
(2019-09-29)Palm oil is one of four big commodities contributing to rapid deforestation. Companies face stakeholder pressure to produce and source palm oil sustainably and to disclose their commitments and actions. This study analyses ... -
A Decision Making Framework for Reverse Logistics Network Design
(2016-10-05)The main objective of this research is to answer the following research question “How should a company design their reverse logistics network in a more efficient or responsive way?” In this research, a conceptual ... -
A Discrete Simulation-Based Optimization Algorithm for the Design of Highly Responsive Last-Mile Distribution Networks
Online and omnichannel retailers are proposing increasingly tight delivery deadlines, moving closer towards instant on-demand delivery. To operate last-mile distribution systems with such tight delivery deadlines efficiently, ... -
Elephants or Goldfish?: An Empirical Analysis of Carrier Reciprocity in Dynamic Freight Markets
(MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics, 2020-01-23)Dynamic macroeconomic conditions and non-binding truckload freight contracts enable both shippers and carriers to behave opportunistically. We present an empirical analysis of carrier reciprocity in the US truckload ... -
Eliciting and representing a supply chain strategy
(2016-09-09)Purpose. The purpose of this paper is two-fold: first, to propose a framework that can be used to represent a supply chain strategy for a business unit in a clear and actionable manner; second, to propose a method that can ... -
The End of “Set It and Forget It” Pricing? Opportunities for Market-Based Freight Contracts
(2022-03-22)In the for-hire truckload market, firms often experience unexpected transportation cost increases due to contracted transportation service provider (carrier) load rejections. The dominant procurement strategy results in ... -
Estimating Demand for Substitutable Products when Inventory Records are Unreliable
(2016-10-21)We present a procedure for estimating demand for substitutable products when the inventory record is unreliable and only validated infrequently and irregularly. The procedure uses a structural model of demand and inventory ... -
Expanding the Freight Contract Portfolio: Index-Based Freight Contract Design Under Uncertainty
(2022-03-23)Long-term, fixed-price contracts in the truckload transportation sector have been the prevailing relationship form between firms and their for-hire transportation service providers. While advantageous for planning and ... -
Financing the SME Value Chains
(2017-02-14)This research work is built upon case studies from Malaysia and India and surveys conducted on the supply and demand of SME finance in Malaysia. Addressing SMEs’ needs for finance, it is assessed that formal financial ... -
Forecasting Long Haul Truckload Spot Market Rates
(2020-03-23)The objective of this paper is to predict long haul truckload spot market rates for the near future. Short term spot rate forecasts help with making operational decisions, estimating budgets for shippers and cash flow for ... -
A Framework for Implementing Blockchain Technologies to Improve Supply Chain Performance
(2018-01-19)The objective of this paper is to describe the contemporary issues that supply chains face using the information sharing dimension and analyze blockchain technology’s capabilities to address these issues. We discuss select ... -
The Hidden Costs of Not-So-Friendly Ghost Lanes
(2022-07-04)Firms’ (shippers’) procurement of truckload (TL) transportation services is a costly, time-intensive process. The result of these months-long procurement events is typically thousands of contracts between the shipper and ... -
Internet of Things and Supply Chains: A Framework for Identifying Opportunities for Improvement and Its Application
(2017-05-26)Management and technology experts believe that the internet of things (IoT) has the potential to radically transform today’s supply chains. Several practice-focused publications describe various ways in which IoT capabilities ... -
Modeling Causal Effects of Disasters and Disaster Relief Activity on Truckload Spot Rates
(2024-01-04)Freight transportation is an important part of the US economy, of which 60% is movement of goods by trucks. We are particularly interested in full truckloads that move goods for a single customer, from a single origin to ... -
A proposed set of criteria for supply chain strategy evaluation
(2016-09-09)This note explores the applicability of evaluation criteria to the problem of evaluating the supply chain strategy of an organization. A discussion of supply chain strategy evaluation is relevant today, as the validity of ... -
Quantifying the impact of urban road networks on the efficiency of local trips
(2019-07-31)City-level circuity factors have been introduced to quantify and compare the directness of vehicular travel across different cities. While these city-level factors help to improve the quality of distance approximation ... -
Rethinking supply chain strategy as a conceptual system
(2016-03-07)Changes to the strategy, context or environment of a business unit may necessitate a revision of its supply chain strategy. However, rethinking a supply chain strategy is not an easy problem, and has no clear answer in the ... -
Rethinking your supply chain strategy: a brief guide
(2016-04-10)Rethinking a supply chain strategy is not a trivial problem. Supply chains tend to be rather complex entities, and the act of thinking strategically about them, what we call supply chain 'strategizing', reflects this ... -
Revenue Mangement in Last-Mile Delivery: State-of-the-Art and Future Research Directions
(2018-03-13)This paper explores future avenues of research for revenue management in last-mile delivery. First, we review earlier efforts in this field, which have focused primarily on the problem of attended home deliveries (AHD) of ... -
A Systems-Level Technology Policy Analysis of the Truck-and-Drone Cooperative Delivery Vehicle System
This paper concerns a systems-level assessment of the truck-and-drone cooperative delivery system and its integration into urban environments. The analysis is grounded in an assessment of the regulatory environment currently ...
