Information sharing in procurement occurs in rich and varied industry contexts in which managerial decisions are made and organizational strategy is formulated. We explore how information sharing ought to work in procurement contexts that involve investments in inter-organizational information systems (IOS) and collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment (CPFR) practices. How and under what circumstances does a firm that plays the role of a supply chain buyer decide to share information on key variables, such as point-of-sale consumer demand data with its supplier, up the supply chain? This is a key issue that crosses the boundary between supply chain management and information systems (IS) management. The answers that we provide are based on our use of a game-theoretic signaling model of buyer and supplier strategy in the presence of uncertainties about final consumer demand. We also explore the connection between operational costs that are associated with the firm’s information sharing and information withholding strategies. Our results provide normative guidance to supply chain buyers about how to interpret different demand uncertainty scenarios to improve their decisions and generate high value. From the IS management perspective, we show the impacts on the firm of different information sharing approaches that are made possible by present day technologies.

This paper studies a two stage supply chain with a dominant upstream partner. Manufacturer is the dominant partner and operates in a Just-in-Time environment. Production is done in a single manufacturing line capable of producing two products without stopping the production for switching from one product to the other. The manufacturer imposes constraints on the distributor by adhering to his favorable production schedule which minimizes his manufacturing cost. Distributor on the other hand caters to retailers’ orders without incurring any shortages and is responsible for managing the inventory of finished goods. Adhering to manufacturer’s schedule may lead to high inventory carrying costs for the distributor. Distributor’s problem, which is to find an optimal distribution sequence which minimizes the distributor’s inventory cost under the constraint imposed by the manufacturer is proved NP-Hard by Manoj et al. (2008). Therefore, solving large size problems require efficient heuristics. We develop algorithms for the distribution problem by exploiting its structural properties. We propose two heuristics and use their solutions in the initial population of a genetic algorithm to arrive at solutions with an average deviation of less than 3.5% from the optimal solution for practical size problems.

This paper introduces a knowledge construction model called the i-System for knowledge integration and creation and its relation to the new concept of the Creative Space. The five ontological elements of the i-System are Intelligence, Involvement, Imagination, Intervention, and Integration corresponding to five diverse dimensions of the Creative Space. The paper discusses the meanings and functions of these dimensions in knowledge integration and creation, and presents applications of the i-System to technology roadmapping and archiving.

Inspired by the ideas of Swarm Intelligence and the “global brain”, a concept of “community intelligence” is suggested in the present paper, reflecting that some “intelligent” features may emerge in a Web-mediated online community from interactions and knowledge-transmissions between the community members. This possible research field of community intelligence is then examined under the backgrounds of “community” and “intelligence” researches. Furthermore, a conceptual model of community intelligence is developed from two views. From the structural view, the community intelligent system is modeled as a knowledge supernetwork that is comprised of triple interwoven networks of the media network, the human network, and the knowledge network. Furthermore, based on a dyad of knowledge in two forms of “knowing” and “knoware”, the dynamic view describes the basic mechanics of the formation and evolution of “community intelligence”. A few relevant research issues are shortly discussed on the basis of the proposed conceptual model.

In this paper, a steady-state Markovian multi-server retrial queueing system with Bernoulli vacation scheduling service is studied. Using matrix-geometric approach, various interesting and important system performance measures are obtained. Further, the probability descriptors like ideal retrial and vain retrial are provided. Finally, extensive numerical illustrations are presented to indicate the quantifying nature of the approach to obtain solutions to this queueing system.

This paper presents a study on the performance of flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs), by using discrete event system (DES) models, considering resource losses modelled by a parameter entitled coverage factor. We conclude that the resources cell loss distribution between the tasks of a FSM is a real function that cannot be integrated, in order to calculate its primitive, in the classical sense of Riemann or Lebesgue, but only in the sense of Henstock-Kurzweil integral. Our result allows one to study more general processes where highly oscillatory functions occur. The method used to deduce the function describing the resources cell loss distribution is compared with a classical method related in the literature, respectively rational interpolants. An example has been constructed to emphasize what we believe to be, new approaches.