Paul O’Reilly

Logistics customer service: performance of Irish food exporters

Customer service in logistics, through its direct impact on a firm’s market share, its total logistics costs and ultimately its profitability, is a critical determinant of competitiveness. Examines what customer service means from a logistics perspective and traces out UK retailers’ changing requirements. It provides the results of a survey which investigates the importance UK grocery retailers place on particular elements of customer service and assesses Irish food exporters’ relative performance, vis‐a‐vis their competitors on the UK market. A comparison of these results with previous research by the same authors concerned with Irish food exporters’ internal measurement of customer service finds that Irish food exporters are perceived to lack flexibility by their grocery customers and that internal measures of customer service are limited. Furthermore, the measures exporters employ for monitoring purposes are not appropriately aligned with those logistics variables which UK retailers consider important. Reconfiguring the supply chain with respect to inventory location is found to be one means of improving perceived flexibility.

The impact of coupled‐consolidation: experiences from the Irish food industry

The Irish food industry is of significant importance to the Irish economy. Given its dependence on UK multiple retailers, their supply chain management practices have considerable implications for the whole of the Irish economy. Retailers’ attempts at improving efficiency at their regional distribution centres have resulted in the growing use of consolidation centres whereby food products from several manufacturers are consolidated into full loads for delivery into RDCs. Results of three case studies suggest that the use of a particular form of consolidation (i.e. coupled‐consolidation where in‐bound logistics are coupled with consolidation services) results in the imposition of costs, especially in terms of lost flexibility, to food manufacturers. The distribution of these costs is asymmetric, with smaller firms bearing the greater costs.

Publicly Funded Principal Investigators as Transformative Agents of Public Sector Entrepreneurship

National governments consistently implement an array of public sector entrepreneurship policies and activities, seeking to generate further economic activity and create new networks and market opportunities that reduce market risks and uncertainties for market-based technology exploiters. This means that scientists taking on the role of being a publicly funded principal investigator (PI) is at the nexus of science, government and industry, and can have a significant influence and impact on shaping and delivering outcomes of public sector entrepreneurship policies and activities. Within the emerging public sector entrepreneurship literature (see Leyden and Link 2015; Link and Link 2009), we argue that publicly funded PIs as key public sector entrepreneurship transformative agents, through scientific novelty and originality involving some creative and innovative processes that can be exploited for opportunities with good market or societal potential. Publicly funded PIs are key agents of what Leyden and Link (2015:14) define as public sector entrepreneurship:

What factors inhibit publicly funded principal investigators’ commercialization activities?

ABSTRACT This paper examines what factors publicly funded principal investigators (PIs) perceive as inhibiting their involvement in commercialization activities. PIs are important knowledge brokers in public science but while the emerging literature on PIs has primarily focused on identifying their multitude of roles and responsibilities, much less is known about their experiences in commercialization specifically. It remains unknown what challenges inhibit PIs from pursuing commercialization when shaping their competitive research proposals. To begin to address this topic, this study draws on semi-structured interviews with 24 funded health science PIs in New Zealand. The study found that a lack of confidence in the expectations and consistency of funding body review processes, as well as a lack of appropriate support and resources within the university, can deter PIs from incorporating commercialization activities in their research agendas. The implications of these findings for the literature and practice are also discussed.

Enablers and barriers to university technology transfer engagements with small- and medium-sized enterprises: perspectives of Principal Investigators

ABSTRACT This paper seeks to bring forward the Principal Investigator (PI) observations on the enablers and barriers to successful technology transfer of university research to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), taking a micro-perspective which has not been the focus of any research attention to date. Using a qualitative approach set in an Irish research context, this exploratory study found personal relationships, asset scarcity and proximity issues as barriers and enablers to technology transfer engagements with SMEs. The exploratory study also found that PIs were frustrated with their dealings with technology transfer offices and their research relationships with SMEs were not sufficiently valued by their universities.

Theoretical modeling of the effect of polymer chain immobilization rates on holographic recording in photopolymers

This paper introduces an improved mathematical model for holographic grating formation in an acrylamide-based photopolymer, which consists of partial differential equations derived from physical laws. The model is based on the two-way diffusion theory of [Appl. Opt.43, 2900 (2004)10.1364/AO.43.002900APOPAI1559-128X], which assumes short polymer chains are free to diffuse, and generalizes a similar model presented in [J. Opt. Soc. Am. B27, 197 (2010)10.1364/JOSAB.27.000197JOBPDE0740-3224] by introducing an immobilization rate governed by chain growth and cross-linking. Numerical simulations were carried out in order to investigate the behavior of the photopolymer system for short and long exposures, with particular emphasis on the effect of recording parameters (such as illumination frequency and intensity), as well as material permeability, on refractive index modulation, refractive index profile, and grating distortion. The model reproduces many well-known experimental observations, such as the decrease of refractive index modulation at high spatial frequencies and appearance of higher harmonics in the refractive index profile when the diffusion rate is much slower than the polymerization rate. These properties are supported by a theoretical investigation which uses perturbation techniques to approximate the solution over various time scales.

Optimising Copying Accuracy in Holographic Patterning

We propose a partial differential equations model for the formation and evolution of a holographic grating in a photopolymer system and use perturbation methods and numerical simulations in order to investigate the dynamical mechanism by which distortions of the illumination pattern arise during recording. The parameters of interest are diffusion and photopolymerization rates as well as exposure time, for which we seek to determine regimes which allow for high fidelity copying.