Portability is key for services running in the Cloud to prevent vendor lock-in. Today, many Cloud services are portable and can thus be moved from one Cloud provider to another. However, the management of these services is often bound to provider-specific management tooling. Thus, the way of management of a particular Cloud service may completely change when moving it to another Cloud provider....

The Control theory provides a useful theoretical foundation for examining the coordination between the client and the vendor in information systems development outsourcing (ISD-outsourcing). Recent research has identified two control mechanisms: structural (structure of the control mode) and process (the process through which the control mode is enacted). Yet, control theory research to-date do...

Data from the 2002 Supermarket Panel are used to estimate a supermarket production function with weekly gross margin as the output measure and store selling area and total labor hours as variable inputs. The model also includes productivity shifters describing format and service offerings, store ownership structure, unionization, and adoption of new information technologies and related business...

Arkansas implemented a primary-care case-management program in February 1994. This study evaluates the program during its first 17 months. Using quarterly data collected for the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), a pooled cross-sectional time series analysis (1991:4-1995:2) estimates the effect of eligibles' program enrollment on expenditure (total, inpatient hospital, outpatient hosp...

This paper considers the performance of a production or distribution-scheduling algorithm termed Automatic Pipeline, Inventory and Order Based Production Control System (APIOBPCS) embedded within a Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) supply chain where the demand profile is deemed to change significantly over time. A dynamic model of the system using causal loop diagrams and difference equations is ...

The strategy of integration known as VMI (Vendor-Managed Inventory) allows the coordination of inventory policies between producers and buyers in supply chains. Based on a new proposed model for the implementation of VMI in a chain of two links composed of a producer and a buyer, this paper studies the evolution of individual strategies of the producer and the buyer by a formalism derived from ...

In the telecoms industry, the need for standardised interfaces and independent network elements is of paramount importance, especially with the rapidly evolving 3G. In 3G telecoms systems, the number of network elements to be managed will increase compared to 2G. Investing in vendor and implementation independent network elements is crucial to minimise hardware, development and maintenance cost...

Both academicians and practitioners have extensively explored the important topic of supply chain collaboration. Most research, however, has focused on unilateral coordination via pricing signals or tactical opportunities such as Vendor Managed Inventory or Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR). Our research fills a gap in the current literature by quantifying the opportu...

The literature on supply chain management has long extolled the virtues to be gained by organizations seeking to integrate their supply chain. These gains include greater data and information visibility, leaner and more efficient processes, vendor managed inventories, and higher profitability. Globalization and global supply chain operation, and supply chain visibility have become buzzwords for...

Managing inventories is crucial to the objective of minimizing supply chain costs. This paper presents an approach for setting inventory norms in context of a real-life case of an industry which practices Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI). The role of warehouses and the inventories held by them becomes significant in such an environment. This paper presents a two-phase approach to determine variou...