Matt Drake | Duquesne University (original) (raw)

Books by Matt Drake

Thanks to the development of internet- and network-based information and communication systems, v... more Thanks to the development of internet- and network-based information and communication systems, virtually every product and service produced today has a supply chain that extends around the globe. For the last twenty-five years, companies such as Wal-Mart, Dell, and Toyota have enjoyed strong competitive advantages in their respective markets as a result of their world-class supply chains. As the supply chain increasingly lengthens, managers at all levels of the organization must understand the unique challenges of working with suppliers and customers located around the world--and the opportunities that can build new competitive advantages. This book will introduce readers at all levels of experience to cutting-edge methods and strategies for global sourcing and global distribution through the discussion of current research and case study vignettes from companies in every corner of the world.

Papers by Matt Drake

This dissertation analyzes the economic incentives involved in three distinct supply chain and re... more This dissertation analyzes the economic incentives involved in three distinct supply chain and revenue management decision environments. The first study examines the adoption of the percent deviation contract in a supply chain to induce the buyer to share some of the demand risk in an environment in which the buyer would typically place her order when she has full knowledge of the customer demand levels.

The paper assesses two approaches for delivery of engineering ethics: a full semester ethics cour... more The paper assesses two approaches for delivery of engineering ethics: a full semester ethics course and an engineering course that includes an ethics module. The Defining Issues Test was used to compare the improvement of a student’s moral reasoning ability in each class as compared to a control class. Our findings were that the module approach used did not provide any improvement in moral reasoning. In addition, although the ethics course showed improvement when compared to the module, it was not significantly different from the control class. We also found that there was little distinction between males and females and no distinction by age, although education level did have an impact. The results suggest that to improve a student’s moral reasoning and sensitivity to ethical issues, engineering ethics must be integrative, delivered at multiple points in the curriculum, and incorporate specific discipline context.

Supply chain management is one of the most complex business disciplines, comprising activities an... more Supply chain management is one of the most complex business disciplines, comprising activities and interactions within and between many of the traditional functional areas of a firm and their channel partners. No longer can a company place its entire focus on its own operations because long-term success is becoming increasingly dependent on actions and decisions of upstream and downstream firms in the supply chain. Organizations that effectively collaborate with their supply chain partners position themselves for success in 21st-century markets. In order to prepare our students to make decisions in this complex environment, educators in operations research and management science must introduce students to the important interactions which are essential to effective supply chain management.

We have developed a classroom supply chain simulation incorporating Lego™ bricks to highlight the flow of materials, products, and information through the channel. Students assume the responsibilities of various supply chain functions and must work together to provide finished products according to a production schedule and a rush customer order. The exercise was designed for an undergraduate introductory course in supply chain management, transportation and logistics, or management science in a business or industrial engineering school. It reinforces lectures and discussions about the different functional areas of the supply chain and serves to energize students about the remainder of their curriculum in the field. The follow-up assignments included with the simulation allow students to execute the major steps of the production planning process within the familiar context of the company used in the simulation exercise.

Quantitative models for inventory decision making in a multi-echelon distribution system are very... more Quantitative models for inventory decision making in a multi-echelon distribution system are very challenging for most undergraduate business or engineering students. To expose students to the challenges of managing multi-echelon inventory levels in an uncertain environment, we have created the Inventory Control at Spiegel Grove classroom exercise, which simulates the inventory management process for a single product in a serial supply chain. Shipments are subject to both transportation quality variability and product quality variability, and students are challenged with adjusting their levels of safety inventory appropriately without carrying an inordinate amount of stock.

Like airlines and hotels, sports teams and entertainment venues can benefit from revenue manageme... more Like airlines and hotels, sports teams and entertainment venues can benefit from revenue management efforts for their ticket sales. Teams and entertainment venues usually offer bundles of tickets early in their selling horizon and put single-event tickets on sale at a later date; these organizations must determine the best time to offer individual tickets because both types of ticket sales consume the same fixed inventory. We model the optimal a priori timing decision for a seller with a fixed number of identical tickets to switch from selling the tickets as fixed bundles to individual tickets to maximize the revenue realized before the start of the performance season. We assume that bundle and single-ticket customers each arrive according to independent, nonhomogeneous Markovian death processes with a linear death rate that can vary over time and that the benefit from selling a ticket in a package is higher than from selling the ticket individually. We characterize the circumstances in which it is optimal for the seller to practice mixed bundling and when the seller should only sell bundles or individual tickets, and we establish comparative statics for the optimal timing decision for the special case of constant customer arrival rates. We extend our analytical results to find the optimal time for offering two groups of tickets with high and low demand. Finally, we apply the timing model to a data set obtained from the sports industry.

While the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has certainly benefit... more While the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has certainly benefitted Mexico in many ways over the past fifteen years, many obstacles to developing efficient logistics operations still exist. This paper discusses these major challenges—governmental policies and insufficient transportation infrastructure—as well as several minor impediments, and it provides some suggestions for improving organizations’ ability to conduct trade through Mexico.

Technological advancements in information systems over the past few decades have enabled firms to... more Technological advancements in information systems over the past few decades have enabled firms to work with the major suppliers and customers in their supply chain in order to improve the performance of the entire channel. Tremendous benefits for all parties can be realized by sharing information and coordinating operations to reduce inventory requirements, improve quality, and increase customer satisfaction; but the companies must collaborate effectively to bring these gains to fruition. We consider two alternative methods of managing these interfirm supply chain relationships in this article. The first, which we have named “dictatorial collaboration,” occurs when a dominant supply chain entity assumes control of the channel and forces the other firms to follow its edicts. We compare and contrast this method with “sustainable collaboration,” in which the parties share resources and engage in joint problem solving to improve the performance of the system as a whole. We use a virtue ethics lens to describe these methods of relationship management to suggest that sustainable collaboration is preferable to dictatorial collaboration both operationally and ethically in the long run.

Previous authors have shown that if demand that cannot be filled from stock is partially backorde... more Previous authors have shown that if demand that cannot be filled from stock is partially backordered, then using the full-backordering model or assuming that all stockouts will result in lost sales can lead to substantial increases in cost relative to using a model that specifically recognizes the percentage of the stockouts that will be backordered. The models that these authors developed resulted in procedures or equations that are relatively difficult to use. In this paper we take a different approach to modeling the deterministic EOQ with partial backordering that results in equations that are more like the comparable equations for the basic EOQ and its full-backordering extension.

Several authors have developed models for the EOQ when only a percentage of stockouts will be bac... more Several authors have developed models for the EOQ when only a percentage of stockouts will be backordered. Most of these models are complicated, with equations unlike those for the EOQ with full backordering. In this paper we extend work by Pentico and Drake [The deterministic EOQ with partial backordering: a new approach. European Journal of Operational Research 2008; in press] that developed equations for the EOQ with partial backordering that are more like those for the EOQ with full backordering to develop a comparable model for the EPQ with partial backordering.

To assess ethics pedagogy in science and engineering, we developed a new tool called the Engineer... more To assess ethics pedagogy in science and engineering, we developed a new tool called the Engineering and Science Issues Test (ESIT). ESIT measures moral judgment in a manner similar to the Defining Issues Test, second edition, but is built around technical dilemmas in science and engineering. We used a quasi-experimental approach with pre- and post-tests, and we compared the results to those of a control group with no overt ethics instruction. Our findings are that several (but not all) stand-alone classes showed a significant improvement compared to the control group when the metric includes multiple stages of moral development. We also found that the written test had a higher response rate and sensitivity to pedagogy than the electronic version. We do not find significant differences on pre-test scores with respect to age, education level, gender or political leanings, but we do on whether subjects were native English speakers. We did not find significant differences on pre-test scores based on whether subjects had previous ethics instruction; this could suggest a lack of a long-term effect from the instruction.

In companies’ constant quest to find ways to maintain or improve customer service levels while si... more In companies’ constant quest to find ways to maintain or improve customer service levels while simultaneously reducing their investment in inventory, apparel companies in the mid-1980s focused on the problem of long lead times between product design and availability in retail stores. They developed the strategy of quick response (QR) to shorten this lead time and to create a supply chain that was more responsive to customers’ demand for fashion items. In this chapter we define QR programs, discuss the origins of these programs in the apparel industry, and compare QR with subsequently developed methods of inventory control widely used across industries.

Within an undergraduate or graduate operations management course, inventory management is a criti... more Within an undergraduate or graduate operations management course, inventory management is a critical area of learning and understanding for all students. This teaching module usually includes a discussion of the differences between continuous (Q) and periodic (P) review inventory systems. In our teaching, we have found that the most difficult concept for students to grasp is the concept of the review interval for the periodic review system. Therefore, in this paper, we develop a simulation using Crystal Ball to demonstrate for students the importance of using the review period of P+L in a periodic review system and how using this interval protects a firm more adequately against stockouts. This tool also provides an opportunity to introduce simulation concepts into operations management courses that do not normally have time to present these concepts.

If some, but not all, customers are willing to wait for an out-of-stock product to become availab... more If some, but not all, customers are willing to wait for an out-of-stock product to become available, sellers may be able to increase their profits by offering a price discount to increase the number of backordered demands rather than losing those sales. We modify an existing model for the deterministic economic order quantity with partial backordering by making the backordering percentage a function of the size of the discount. We combine results about the optimal solution for a partial backordering model with a fixed backorder percentage and a search procedure to determine whether offering a discount is optimal and, if so, how large the discount should be to maximize profit.

While there has been considerable work over the years on multistage lot-sizing models, particular... more While there has been considerable work over the years on multistage lot-sizing models, particularly in an MRP environment, there has been relatively little work on systems recognizing the WIP effects when there is gradual conversion of the components into the final product, as in production planning using the EPQ model for planning the final product. Here we consider lot-sizing planning for a two-stage system in which the final product is planned using an EPQ model with partial backordering and the production of the components is controlled using basic EPQ models without backordering.

In previous work we established a closed-form optimal stocking strategy for an EPQ model with par... more In previous work we established a closed-form optimal stocking strategy for an EPQ model with partial backordering at a constant rate β. Here we extend this work to allow for the possibility that the percentage of demand backordered will increase when production starts again. We show how our previous model can be adapted to find the optimal decision variable values for this new assumption and develop the condition that the initial value of β must meet for partial backordering to be optimal.

A common dilemma for modelers in operations research (OR) involves how to construct ethically sen... more A common dilemma for modelers in operations research (OR) involves how to construct ethically sensitive models. Concern for ethical modeling has recently become more widespread in the OR literature. Arguably, however, this concern has not manifested into concrete frameworks for analyzing models. This paper presents an approach from the organizational ethics field for evaluating models. After first reviewing the state of ethics in OR—its relevance and current applications—a stakeholder framework for evaluating the social performance of the model is presented. Stakeholder theory is effective for assessing the impacts of models in use. The normative core underlying this theory addresses the ethical concerns in decision support systems and provides a prescriptive solution to ethical issues in modeling.

This paper describes a teaching case that integrates logistics network design with an ethical dec... more This paper describes a teaching case that integrates logistics network design with an ethical decision-making process. The ethical issues center on a proposed network design strategy for parcel transportation known as zone skipping, whose implementation in this setting would require the disguising of the identity of freight. The paper describes the case, discusses its pedagogical goals, and provides some recommendations for using the case successfully in a logistics or optimization course.

Our original models for the EOQ and EPQ with partial backordering assumed that the backordering r... more Our original models for the EOQ and EPQ with partial backordering assumed that the backordering rate, b, is a constant. In this paper we extend those models to allow b to increase linearly as the time until delivery decreases. We show how those previous models can be adapted to find the optimal decision variable values for this new assumption and develop, for each model type, a condition that the initial value of b must meet for partial backordering to be optimal.

Models for the basic deterministic EOQ or EPQ problem with partial backordering or backlogging ma... more Models for the basic deterministic EOQ or EPQ problem with partial backordering or backlogging make all the assumptions of the classic EOQ or EPQ model with full backordering except that only a fraction of the demand during the stockout period is backordered. In this survey we review deterministic models that have been developed over the past 40 years that address the basic models and extensions that add other considerations, such as pricing, perishable or deteriorating inventory, time-varying or stock-dependent demand, quantity discounts, or multiple-warehouses.

This case integrates professional ethical dilemmas in the context of a quantitative production pl... more This case integrates professional ethical dilemmas in the context of a quantitative production planning problem. The pedagogical objectives are for students to increase their awareness of ethical dilemmas specific to operations research and management science, understand outcomes and trade-offs of the decisions, and develop the reasoning ability to justify a final solution to the situation. The dilemmas are embedded in a production planning problem that simultaneously gives students practice in technical analysis such as optimization. This emphasizes the role of mathematical models and other forms of quantitative analysis in decision environments that include qualitative concerns such as worker loyalty and environmental responsibility that cannot easily be modeled explicitly.