Changrui Ren

Supply Chain Finance

In an era of globalization, it is almost impossible for a company to stay competitive with its supply chain locating in a single country ( A. Sabbaghi & N. Sabbaghi, 2004 , Global supply-chain strategy and global competitiveness. International Business & Economics Research Journal, 3 (7), 63–76). On the other hand, increasing global sourcing and selling brings substantial challenges on the material flow, information flow, and financial flow along lengthened supply chains. Many researches in the past decades have illustrated the benefits of supply chain visibility by streamlining information flow ( Eppen, 1979 , Effects of centralization on expected costs in a multilocation newsboy problem. Management Science, 25 (5), 498–501; Lee & Whang, 2000 , Information sharing in a supply chain. International Journal of Manufacturing Technology and Management, 1 (1), 79–93; Vickery, Jayaram, Droge, & Calantone, 2003 , The effects of an integrative supply chain strategy on customer service and financial performance: An analysis of direct versus indirect relationships. Journal of Operations Management, 21 (5), 523–539; Zhang & Zipkin, 1990 , A queueing model to analyze the value of centralized inventory information. Operations Research, 38 (2), 296–307). It is well known that an informational centralized supply chain outperforms its decentralized counterpart through reducing bullwhip effect (Chen, Drezner, Ryan, & Simchi-Levi, 2000, Qualifying the bullwhip effect in a simple supply chain: The impact of forecasting, lead times, and information. Management Science, 46 (3), 436–443; Lee, Padmanabhan, & Whang, 1997 , Information distortion in a supply chain: The bullwhip effect. Management Science, 34 (4), 546–558).

A Novel Approach for Process Mining Based on Event Types

Process mining aims at distilling useful knowledge from the execution logs of process models. It has become a vivid research area in recent years. In this paper, a novel approach for process mining based on two event types, i.e., START and COMPLETE, is proposed. Information about the start and completion of tasks can be used to explicitly detect parallelism. The algorithm presented in this paper overcomes some of the limitations of existing algorithms such as the a-algorithm (e.g., short-loops) and therefore enhances the applicability of process mining in practical situations. Based on the completeness of the given event log and the behavior theory of Petri nets, the correctness of the algorithm can be proved theoretically.

IBM SmartSCOR - a SCOR based supply chain transformation platform through simulation and optimization techniques

Identified as a strategic area, supply chain transformation plays a critical role in todays IBM business. In this paper, we introduce an effort in IBM Research Division named SmartSCOR, which provides a comprehensive framework and methodology for on-demand SCM problem-solving based on the cross-industry process standard supply chain operations reference (SCOR) model and a variety of simulation/optimization techniques. SmartSCOR sees transformation in two different levels, from supply chain strategy design/redesign to supply chain process improvement. Supply chain strategy design/redesign transforms a supply chain in a fundamental manner by means of manufacturing and distribution network reconfiguration, value chain integration, etc. Supply chain process improvement helps align the underlying business processes to strategy setting and get them streamlined. The two levels interact with each other and result in a profound while smooth transformation. SmartSCOR has been successfully applied in two supply chain transformation projects for validation and hardening

Financial supply chain management

To effectively manage a supply chain, we should no longer focus on physical flow and informational flow only, but also the financial flow. The financial supply chain management (FSCM) extracts capital tied to the raw material, work-in-process, inventory in transit, and accounts receivable (accounts payable). In this paper we review a set of supply chain financing solutions tailored by the financial institutions, and introduce a few quantitative works from the operations research society. The survey reveals the benefits of actively managing the financial supply chain and highlights the quantitative decision-making process in FSCM. Moreover, we propose several interesting problems in FSCM which are remained to be explored.

A Comparison of Business Process Modeling Methods

Business process modeling is the basis of business process management. The target of business process modeling is to get an abstract representation of the actual business processes. Although there are many business modeling methods, no well established modeling standard is available in this area. This paper reviews major business process modeling methods. Important aspects of these methods are discussed, including meta-model, graphical notation, serial representation, and tool support

Towards a flexible business process modeling and simulation environment

Business process is crucial to the success of any business. Business process modeling enables a common understanding and analysis of a business process, and simulation is an effective way to diagnose and evaluate complex business processes. There are lots of software tools in market for business process modeling and simulation, however, a common issue for these tools is the conflict between usability and flexibility. The improvement of usability often means the reduction of flexibility. This paper introduces an IBM asset named supply chain process modeler (SCPM), which aims at providing a tailored business process modeling and simulation environment for business users. SCPM tries to achieve a better trade-off between usability and flexibility with two major efforts, a process repository for process modeling, and a flexible environment for process simulation. A case study from real consulting practice is also included to illustrate how SCPM works for business process simulation.

An introduction to IBM general business simulation environment

IBM general business simulation environment (GBSE) is a supply chain simulation tool developed by IBM China Research Lab. It can capture supply chain dynamics with finest level of granularity and provides great insights to a supply chain¿s real operations. GBSE is designed for tactical level decision making; it is proper for supply chain what-if analysis and risk analysis. GBSE implements multiple supply chain processes to considerable details, such as order handling process, inventory control process, manufacturing process, transportation process, procurement process, and planning. The environment is created as a desktop software tool based on Eclipse platform. The backbone framework consists of Presentation Layer, Controller Layer, Service Layer, and Data Layer.

A SCOR-Based Framework for Supply Chain Performance Management

The importance of performance management in supply chains has long been recognized from a variety of functional disciplines. But much of the work has focused on designing performance measures with less concern for the other stages of the entire performance management process. The supply chain operations reference (SCOR) model, developed by the Supply-Chain Council (SCC), is widely accepted as the only cross-industry standard for supply chain management, which not only provides a standard description of supply chain processes, but standard metrics to measure supply chain performance. Based on the SCOR model, a comprehensive framework for supply chain performance management is presented in this paper, which includes all aspects of performance management from performance measurement to performance improvement. The methods for performance model design and performance analysis are mainly discussed

Hybrid collaborative filtering model for improved recommendation

Collaborative filtering (CF) based recommendation system, which can automatically predict unknown preference of a user to certain products and then generate meaningful recommendations using a explicit known ratings matrix, has become one of the most successful approaches in web-based activities such as e-commerce. As users will typically not bother to rate items they bought, data sparsity is one main challenge for CF task. Item-oriented CF algorithm and user-oriented CF algorithm are two state of the art techniques for recommendation system. However, the utilization of singe item similarity matrix or single user similarity matrix always results in poor prediction accuracy because of sparse data. In this paper, a new hybrid collaborative filtering model is proposed by combining item-based CF algorithm and user-based CF algorithm. Both item similarity matrix and user similarity matrix are considered in this hybrid CF model, which is more robust to sparse problem. Experimental results on MovieLens data set show the superiority of our approach over current state of the art methods.

A Research Review on Dynamic Performance Analysis of Supply Chain System

The paper presents a research topic of supply chain dynamic performance analysis, which focuses on analyzing the casual relationships among various key factors in supply chain through simulation method to learn more about the supply chain operational mechanism and complex behaviors and then optimize the key factors for improving the supply chain performance. The presented topic consists of the following three areas: (1) identification of key factors affecting supply chain performance and casual relations among key factors; (2) development of simulation model (casual model) quantitatively describing casual relationships among key factors; (3) development of dynamic performance optimization methods. The paper provides a focused review of literature in above three areas. Some suggestions are made for future research finally.