Examples

Limpopo province is one of the poorest regions of South Africa, especially the rural areas and its economy is based on exporting primary products, agriculture and tourism. Smallholder farmers are located throughout the area and they have low levels of productivity and average holdings of 1.5 ha per farmer. Production is adequate for subsistence purposes with little marketable surplus. Survival is extremely difficult in the modern agriculture economy for smallholder farmers. This research aimed to shed more light on the food chain structure in Limpopo province and to provide recommendations in order to improve their performance. Two research methods have been used: literature review and interviews from appropriate stakeholders in South Africa.

There is a problem of coordination with many small farmers, which is exacerbated by their geographic dispersion, low educational levels, and poor access to capital and information. For smallholder farmers it is on the short-term difficult to apply to the food safety standards. Together this has led to exclusion of smallholder farmers from modern value chains. However, studies show that smallholder farmers who were given institutional support and sufficient time, as well as technological (cooling facilities) and organizational arrangements (contractual arrangements with the exporters) managed to successfully participate in high value markets.

International Flavors and Fragrances Inc. (IFF) is a leading global creator of flavors and fragrances. The company needs more insight in the costing registration and pricing calculation of two cost elements: Containers & Packaging and Freight Out. This research aimed to describe the current situation and to design Excel spreadsheets that can give periodically insight in both cost elements. Different research methods have been used: Interviews, questionnaires and data analyses.

Requirements were defined to design spreadsheets for Containers & Packaging: (1) cost split per technology, (2) cost price/kg per technology and (3) insight in the global packaging portfolio. For Freight Out the design was required to (1) split costs per mode of transport, (2) calculate cost price/kg of freight charging deliveries and (3) insight in the costs absorbed in the Customer Selling Prices.

The interviews revealed that the commercial departments within IFF do not have insight in the share of Freight out and Containers & Packaging costs calculated within the customer selling prices. After implementing the designed spreadsheets for a specific year, several differences between countries in the current costing registration were found. In the future, IFF has the intention to register costs globally more conform and to (re-)produce the Excel spreadsheets periodically.

FrieslandCampina Riedel (hereafter ‘Riedel’) is a manufacturer of A-brand juices like Coolbest, Appelsientje, Dubbelfrisss en Taksi. This research, initiated by Riedel’s Logistic department, investigates the batch sizes (also called lot-sizes) for each product at the production department.  The study focussed on the main principle of optimality for lot-sizing, i.e. to find the best compromise between total setup costs on the one hand and total inventory holding costs on the other hand. There are two important issues in batch size decisions: 1) Should the batch sizes increase due to low(er) setup costs? or 2) Should the batch sizes decrease due to high(er) inventory costs? By applying the Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) formula, optimal batch sizes are calculated. In order to deal with the assumption of a constant demand, several scenarios with varying demand are tested. In general, this research shows that Riedel’s current batch sizes are close to the optima. Further research for Riedel should focus on expanding the EOQ model to the whole product assortment and comparing the results of other Operation Research models with the results of this EOQ research. These new approaches should be able to cope with additional constraints regarding restricted availability of warehouse- and production capacity.

This research describes the possibility of analysing the potential for improvement in in-company supply chains by providing an in-company supply chain analysis method. The method is composed for the consultancy firm Ngenious, commissioner of this research. The supply chain analysis provided, is based on literature review and exists of the following steps: determining the scope, a customer value study, a Current state Value Stream Map, a data-analysis, a Future state Value Stream Map and implementation advice. As a part of this research, the first three steps of the in-company supply chain analysis were tested in practice by means of a pilot study. For determining the scope, the customer value study and the Current state Value Stream Map necessary instructions and formats were made to test the steps in the pilot study. All three steps performed well in practice, although alterations have been made to the instructions and formats of determining the scope and the customer value study based on the results of the pilot. 

This research, in the field of operations management, is conducted for LambWeston, one of the top three frozen potato products producers in the world. LambWeston has one international business unit in Europe and one in the Unites States. These business units are selling to customers in respectively Europe, Africa and the Middle-East, and in South America, Asia and the Pacific. Urbanisation, rising incomes, changing lifestyles and expanding tourism in emerging countries are factors which lead to the globalization of the frozen potato industry and its customers. Therefore, the frozen potato industry currently invests in worldwide capacity to meet the demands of these upcoming consumption regions. The research objective is providing recommendations to LambWeston, concerning developments for the two international business units, to reach globalization. By means of literature research, information was gathered about key success criteria of corporate strategy, collaboration and coordination, which are necessary to reach globalization. Result from an observation of a meeting of the senior management of both business units, a questionnaire for employees on operational level and interviews with the management, indicate which barriers might have an influence on the development in a global organization and which developments both business units should take to develop into a global organization.

. HelloFresh is the leading global supplier of fresh ingredients to consumers. Its main product is the HelloFresh food box. One of the main cost components within the logistics operation of HelloFresh are the

. This encompasses all the hours spent at the last mile hubs that are not standard driving hours to deliver the product to the customer. The labor hours account for 20 to 30 % of the total hours of work performed by a hub. The goal of this research is to identify short- and long-term improvement points to make the use of labor at the hubs of HelloFresh more cost-efficient. The focus was put on how Hub Managers and Team Leaders approach the management of their hub. This was achieved by using qualitative and quantitative research techniques. The qualitative approach existed of interviews and observations at several hubs and at the Transport HQ at Nieuwegein. The quantitative approach consisted of exploratory data-analysis of the historic route data and labor hours data of 2019 using excel. Literature was reviewed to explain the findings. The results show that especially the larger hubs are less efficient compared to the medium and smaller sized hubs. A table with short-, medium- and long-term improvement projects is presented.

Bio-economic farm models aim to simulate farmer’s behavior and to evaluate the consequences of future changes. The capacity of the model to reproduce historical decisions is crucial for increasing confidence to model’s results. In many cases, farmers decision making involve multiple conflicting objectives. To ensure a good forecasting performance multiple objectives should be taken into account. Non-interactive multi-objective calibration methods has been proposed to calibrate on historical farm decisions. The forecasting capacity of farm models calibrated based on these multi-objective calibration techniques has not been fully evaluated. Our objective is to assess the forecasting capacity of a bio-economic farm model calibrated with non-interactive methods in ex-post exercises. The model is used to simulate two arable Dutch farm types. It is calibrated for year 1999 and used to predict the changes occurred in year 2003.The capacity of the model to predict the changes was evaluated by comparing observed and simulated cropping patterns.. We conclude that

including gross margin maximization, labour hour minimization and some area of onion as the main objectives which could best simulate the farmers` decision making style resulted in acceptable forecasts (23% of PAD values).