Niels Gorm Malý Rytter

Conceptualizing operations strategy processes

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present insights into operations strategy (OS) in practice. It outlines a conceptualization and model of OS processes and, based on findings from an in‐depth and longitudinal case study, contributes to further development of extant OS models and methods which presently mainly focus on OS content, as distinct from process issues.Design/methodology/approach – The methodology combines action research and a longitudinal single site case study of OS processes in practice.Findings – The paper conceptualises an OS process as: events of dialogue and action; taking place in five dimensions of change – technical‐rational, cultural, political, project management, and facilitation; and typically unfolding as a sequential and parallel, ordered and disordered, planned and emergent as well as top‐down and bottom‐up process. The proposed OS conceptualization provides a useful tool for describing and analyzing real‐time OS processes unfolding in practice.Research limitations/impli...

An investigation of forecast horizon and observation fit's influence on an econometric rate forecast model in the liner shipping industry

This paper evaluates the influence of forecast horizon and observation fit on the robustness and performance of a specific freight rate forecast model used in the liner shipping industry. In the first stage of the research, a forecast model used to predict container freight rate development is presented by exploring the relationship between individual company’s rates and aggregated market rates, and thus assists in dealing with uncertainty and market volatility for a given business situation. In the second stage, a design of experiment approach is applied to highlight the influence of the forecast horizon and observation fit and their interactions on the forecast model’s performance. The results underline the complicated nature of creating a suitable forecast model by balancing business needs, a desire to fit a good model and achieve high accuracy. There is strong empirical evidence from this study; that a robust model is preferable, that overfitting is a true danger, and that a balance must be achieved between forecast horizon and the number of observations used to fit the model. In addition, methodological guidance has also been provided on how to test, design, and choose the superior model for business needs.

A Design of Experiments Approach to Investigating the Sensitivity of the Re-order Point Method

This paper investigates the re-order point inventory management models sensitivity to demand distributions, demand dependencies and lead time distributions. The investigated performance measures are four different versions of service level. The conclusion is for all measures that the single most critical aspect adversely affecting service level performance is the presence of asymmetrically distributed demand.

Challenges of Measuring Revenue, Margin and Yield Optimization in Container Shipping

We present in this paper some initial ideas of Revenue and Yield Management in the container shipping industry, namely a regression study of the behavior of the currently used indicator for measuring pricing and revenue performance in a leading shipping line. We consider the properties of the indicator used and discuss options of developing a better indicators of revenue or yield optimization, being either revenue or yield per available unit. At the end we also formulate implications for a future research work to be done on development of relevant measures for the industry.

Case-based approaches for knowledge application and organisational learning

In dealing with the strategic issues within a manufacturing system, it is necessary to facilitate formulating the composing elements of a set of strategic manufacturing practices and activity patterns that will support an enterprise to reinforce and increase its competitive advantage. These practices and activity patterns are based on learning and applying the knowledge internal and external to an organisation. To ensure their smooth formulation process, there are two important techniques designed – an expert adaptation approach and an expert evaluation approach. These two approaches provide structured processes to execute the organisational learning and knowledge application, which intend to guide the practitioners during the process of manufacturing competence development and improvement. They are based on Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) methodology and rely on cases as the primary knowledge supply. This paper aims to present the two approaches; introduce two types of tests on these approaches to verify their functionality: role-play testing and real world application testing; and summarises the applicability of the two approaches.