Olli Pekka Hilmola

Supply chain management in fashion and textile industry

In fashion and textile business, the demand changes rapidly due to fashion trends and a volatile market situation. This demand is unpredictable and could vary and change completely in a short time, creating high difficulties for supply chain. To create a leagil (lean and agile) supply chain is one observed way for a fashion and textile retailing company to optimise its performance and to remain competitive. One good example from such is fashion retailer Zara, which has adopted leagile approach and combined this with key success factors for fashion retailing. However, in this paper, we argue that the leagile approach is not a universal solution in the fashion and textile business. For some fashion and textile companies, the lean approach is more adequate. Case study findings and simulation results reveal that the lean and leagile approach could coexist as different strategy alternatives – simulation results favour leagile strategy, while five year profitability analysis shows lean apparel retailer H&M to have higher profitability than Zara.

Using Eurasian landbridge in logistics operations: building knowledge through case studies

This research concerns about the use of Eurasia as a landbridge for container traffic. We present case study findings concerning European-Asian transportation, and this reveals that the lead time a ...

New product creation process of KIBS firms: a case study

The trade-off between standardisation and customisation is one of the crucial issues in new service development. In this paper, we first review some earlier theoretical works on the formalisation of the new service development process and its impact on firm success. Thereafter, we examine existing theoretical process models for service productisation and discuss their similarities and differences regarding proposed generic design processes. A case study of productisation process in a Finnish KIBS firm operating in internet communications and marketing business highlights the usability of developed theoretical framework in a real-life context; the small-sized company has been able to capture double digit growth path in recent years.

Deregulation of Railroads and Future Development Scenarios in Europe: Analysis of the Privatisation Process Taken Place in the USA, the UK and Sweden

A decade ago, the European Union decided that railways should be privatised and deregulated (effective from 2007 onwards). Due to the recent enlargements of the EU and the risk of failures in the decision-making process, it is important to examine early adopters of deregulation policies. We analyse literature and use second-hand quantitative material to thoroughly review this process concerning three different countries (USA, UK and Sweden). In all three cases, the deregulation process has brought positive performance improvements in the long-term perspective, but in the short to medium term, there are a number of problems and warning examples, especially arising from UK case.

Multi-agent-based supply chain management: a case study of requisites

Supply Chains (SCs) are becoming increasingly complex, and intensified competition in the end markets has started to create a situation where cooperation requirements between companies are increasing, and old mechanistic operations management solutions are becoming obsolete. In this paper we analyse a real-life situation in Alphas manufacturing plant in Sweden, which serves northern European countries in consumer markets. Case study findings reveal that the product-mix flexibility requirements are high and lead-time requirements in manufacturing as well as purchasing take weeks or months, not days. Based on the empirical observations, we propose an agent system for this company and discuss different levels of decision making, operative responsibilities and decision time horizons.

Linking moral disengagement to supply chain practices

The purpose of this paper is to identify if and how supply chain practices are linked to moral disengagement techniques and thus might cause moral decoupling (MD). The research uses a literature review and multiple case study approach to investigate this issue. The literature review links moral disengagement to supply chain practices, while the case study observes the existence of the practices, and in what supply chain configurations those practices might arise. Identified configurations that might cause MD are suppliers and external partners responsible for upstream activities, division of tasks, aggregation of materials, auction-like settings, long supply chains, production in low-cost countries, production where people are not considered as equals, and configurations made to reduce costs.

North European companies and major Eurasian countries – future outlook on logistics flows and their sustainability

In this research work we analyse transportation volume development in major Finnish and Swedish companies using two times completed empirical survey (during years 2006 and 2009). Findings indicate that companies are identifying medium-term volume growth of container transports in Russian and Chinese markets, and partially with India. However, most of the concern is traffic imbalance, particularly developing in unwanted direction with India and China. Interestingly, Russian market, with some exceptions, is still going to be served from European factories in the medium-term too. However, in limited amount of companies it seems that Russian factories start to serve also larger European demand. As economic recession turns into Eurasian led growth during the next decade, it is questionable whether delayed investments are made in time to support further growth in trade and transport. Also large-scale usage of road transport in the forthcoming decade increases concerns about the environmental sustainability of this sector.

Supply chain management in emerging market economies: a review of the literature and analysis of the Russian grocery retail sector

There exists a vast amount of research concerning Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) in developed countries; with most of the papers considering the implementation of new IT systems and tightly coordinated as well as centralised retail–manufacturer supply chains. However, population rich as well as rapidly developing emerging markets have gained less attention. According to our literature survey, most of the published journal articles in this area concentrate on Asia or Latin America. Interestingly, research related to Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) is very meagre and less contemporary, although these countries have a fairly large population base near to Europe, and are demonstrating rapidly increasing wealth. In the empirical part of this paper, we show the results of a qualitative content analysis of 330 selected articles from leading Russian language business news, and enlarge the examination of key players with second-hand financial and business data. Based on empirical data analysis, we argue that the retail sector faces increasing pressure regarding restructuring, the management of growth and the implementation of modern retail management concepts. We also identified the internationalisation of this sector by German, French and Turkish-based companies. However, domestic retail companies are also making interesting moves in terms of Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) and acquisitions.

Operating as a third-party logistics integrator without any distribution operations ownership

Third-Party Logistics (3PL) providers have usually developed themselves through transportation ownership (mainly road or sea), and/or warehousing/freight forwarding capability. However, among these actual operations, there exists a number of other routes, e.g. by offering administrative/indirect work of sales, purchasing, business control and inventory management. With increased service level expectations among OEMs, there is a clear need for these kinds of well-defined and performed non-tangible logistical services. In this paper three case studies are presented, which show that a 3PL integrator could arise from this new service context, and could operate all logistical issues, even without any distribution operations ownership.

Logistics outsourcing and supply management in Finland, Sweden and UAE

Success factors and state of operating principles are well reported from larger countries and corporations. However, globally, an interesting pool of countries is economically prospering including small ones, and their respective companies. This is the motivation behind our research work – to gain understanding from the scope of logistics outsourcing and strategic supplier management in defined countries. The completed survey shows that transportation function, warehousing and customs brokerage are typical functions for outsourcing activity. Further analysis reveals that transportation is the key decision in the logistics outsourcing path. In the supplier network side, it seems to be the case that UAE differs considerably from North European countries and it is a question whether the first mentioned should absorb practises from the latter.