Y Youssef Boulaksil

Implications of outsourcing on operations planning: findings from the pharmaceutical industry

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to understand the implications of outsourcing at the operational planning level, i.e. how the operational planning function is complicated owing to the strategic outsourcing decisions that have been made in the past.Design/methodology/approach – First, a literature review on outsourcing is conducted. Second, two case studies at three pharmaceutical companies are conducted to gather insights into the planning of outsourced operations.Findings – The paper finds that nothing has been documented in the literature on outsourcing at the operational planning level. Moreover, a number of implications of outsourcing at the operational planning level are discussed. One of the main insights is that in an outsourcing relationship, the order process consists of different, hierarchically connected, decisions in time, hence requiring a richer and more developed communication and ordering pattern than is commonly assumed.Research limitations/implications – The results seem to be gen...

Setting safety stocks in multi-stage inventory systems under rolling horizon mathematical programming models

This paper considers the problem of determining safety stocks in multi-item multi-stage inventory systems that face demand uncertainties. Safety stocks are necessary to make the supply chain, which is driven by forecasts of customer orders, responsive to (demand) uncertainties and to achieve predefined target service levels. Although there exists a large body of literature on determining safety stock levels, this literature does not provide an effective methodology that can address complex multi-constrained supply chains. In this paper, the problem of determining safety stocks is addressed by a simulation based approach, where the simulation studies are based on solving the supply chain planning problem (formulated as a mathematical programming model) in a rolling horizon setting. To demonstrate the utility of the proposed approach, an application of the approach at Organon, a worldwide operating biopharmaceutical company, will be discussed.

Distribution Strategies Toward Nanostores in Emerging Markets: The Valencia Case

In many megacities in emerging markets, customers typically buy products for their daily needs from small retailers (nanostores). Distributing these products, such as water, soap, and cooking oil, to the nanostores is a challenging task, mainly because the nanostores have limited cash availability and they make decisions randomly. In this paper, we compare the performance of two commonly used distribution strategies: the presales strategy and the van sales strategy. Our analysis is based on a study we conducted in Casablanca in collaboration with Valencia, a fruit juice manufacturer. The study reveals several insights that are useful to manufacturers who face challenges in distributing goods in large cities in emerging markets.