Decision Support Tools for Managing Unpredictability in the Supply Chain

Mapping Intimacies ◽

10.1115/imece2000-1183 ◽

2000 ◽

Author(s):

Carol Vesier

Keyword(s):

Supply Chain ◽

Decision Support ◽

Inventory Management ◽

Production Scheduling ◽

Capital Investment ◽

Investment Strategy ◽

Decision Support Tools ◽

Business Outcomes ◽

Support Tools

Abstract Effectively managing unpredictability requires decision support tools that can predict the financial and business outcomes of various supply chain strategies. This paper will discuss the role of these decision support tools and their characteristics as well as review a case study. In the case study, decision support tools facilitated development of strategies that increased after tax profit by $140 Million. These strategies included: • Reliability improvement strategy: Identifying the reliability improvements that offered the biggest profitability impact. • Supply chain strategy: Defining inventory management and production scheduling rules that ensured order shipment within two days. • Capital investment strategy: Defining when new capacity should come on line as well as the minimum capital investment.

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Inventory Management, a Decision Support Framework to Improve Operational Performance

Supply Chain Management ◽

10.4018/978-1-4666-2625-6.ch034 ◽

2012 ◽

pp. 581-600

Author(s):

Jan van den Berg ◽

Guido van Heck ◽

Mohsen Davarynejad ◽

Ron van Duin

Keyword(s):

Supply Chain ◽

Decision Support ◽

Inventory Management ◽

Enterprise Resource Planning ◽

Resource Planning ◽

Performance Improvements ◽

Decision Support Framework ◽

Comparable Performance ◽

Potential Benefits

Enterprise Resource Planning systems have been introduced to support the efficient and effective execution of business processes. In practice, this may not fully succeed. This also holds in particular for inventory management (IM), which forms a part of supply chain management. Within this research, by analyzing the IM business process theoretically, eleven potential benefits are indicated. Next, by using a Business Intelligence approach, key performance indicators (KPIs) are selected to measure the performance of IM sub-processes. Integration of these approaches yields an IM performance decision support framework that can be used to obtain a generic, coherent picture of the fundamental IM processes in an organization. In addition, by tracking and analyzing KPI measurements, adequate decisions can be prepared towards the improvement of the operational IM performance. The proposed framework is validated using experts’ opinions and a comparative case study. The experts’ comments yielded a list of top-10 KPIs, based on the measurements of which a set of quick wins can be determined. The case study results show that some of the identified potential benefits are also observed in practice. Future research may reveal that comparable performance improvements are possible in other IM environments (and even in other supply chain domains) based on similar decision support frameworks.

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Exploring Public Sector Managers’ Motivations in Deploying Decision Support Tools to the Street Level

Policy Quarterly ◽

10.26686/pq.v15i1.5298 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 15 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Chris McIntyre

Keyword(s):

Decision Support ◽

Public Sector ◽

Digital Tools ◽

Decision Support Tools ◽

Structured Interviews ◽

Senior Managers ◽

Street Level ◽

Support Tools ◽

Public Sector Managers

This article explores the motivations of public sector managers in developing and deploying digital tools to support decision making at the front lines of public service delivery. Two digital decision support tools created by New Zealand’s Ministry of Social Development are presented as a case study, drawing primarily on semi-structured interviews with senior managers. Results provide empirical evidence that public sector managers deploy digital tools not to curtail, but to support street-level bureaucrats’ discretion. Managers appear to be motivated not by increased control over front-line staff, but, rather, by improving clients’ experience of the system and decreasing longterm service costs.

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