Kühne Foundation Endowed Chair of Logistics Management
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The trucking industry is at the beginning of a radical change due to several megatrends which will reshape the industry significantly. Based on the targets of the Paris Climate Agreement, the German government adopted its own Climate Action Plan 2050 which includes sector- specific reduction targets to reach a greenhouse gas neutral society by the middle of the 21st century. By 2030, the German Climate Action Plan specifies a reduction target of 40% from transportation compared to the reference year 1990. While emissions from other sectors such as energy or industry have decreased significantly since then, emissions from transportation remained stable. Among the various modes of transportation, passenger cars and commercial vehicles are by far the largest emitters of greenhouse gas emissions. As of January 2019, 99.7% of heavy-duty trucks registered in Germany run on diesel while the number of alternative fuel- powered passenger cars increases steadily. Apart from rising emissions, the industry faces a severe shortage of qualified truck drivers. According to the German Association of Freight Forwarders and Logistics Companies, the industry was facing a shortage of 45,000 drivers in Germany in 2017 with increasing tendency due to higher trade volumes and e-commerce.
This dissertation aims to discuss the transition of road transport in Germany toward innovative heavy-duty trucks. The main body of this dissertation consists of three research papers each of them focusing on autonomous and/or alternative fuel-powered heavy-duty trucks. The first research paper presents the results of a Delphi study with experts from industry and academia on factors affecting the purchasing decision and operation of alternative fuel-powered heavy-duty trucks in Germany. In the second study, a choice-based conjoint experiment with employees from freight companies was conducted to test how customers value the main attributes of innovative heavy-duty trucks. The Generalized Bass diffusion model was applied in the third study to investigate the future diffusion of battery electric heavy-duty trucks considering total-cost-of-ownership reduction effects.
In this thesis, we(1) use operations research methods to provide insights into three areas associated with health care operations management. In Chapter 2, we use a discreteevent supply chain simulation to asses if coordination among partners is beneficial in a supply chain with the characteristics of the German pharmaceutical market. We find that the greatest cost savings and service levels could be achieved through a highly integrated collaboration although most of its impact could already be achieved through sharing point-of-sales demand information. Results suggest that coordination is most beneficial in situations where product shelf life is short and demand variation is high.
In Chapter 3 we consider quality-of-life maximizing sequences of prophylactic surgeries for female carriers of a BRCA1/2 genetic mutation, who face a significantly elevated breast and ovarian cancer risk. Using a Markov Decision Process model, we determine the optimal surgery sequence that maximizes the carrier’s expected lifetime qualityadjusted life years (QALYs). Baseline results demonstrate that a QALY-maximizing sequence recommends a bilateral mastectomy between ages 30 and 60 and bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy after age 40 for BRCA1 carriers. Surgeries are recommended later for BRCA2 carriers, as their cancer risk is lower. The model’s structural properties show that when one surgery has already been completed, there exists an optimal control limit after which performing the other surgery is always QALY-maximizing.
In Chapter 4, we develop a two-stage model for optimizing when and where to assign Ebola treatment unit (ETU) beds—across geographic regions—during an infectious disease outbreak’s early phase. The first stage includes a dynamic transmission model that forecasts occurrence of new cases at the regional level, thus capturing connectivity among regions; in this stage we introduce a coefficient for behavioral adaptation to changing epidemic conditions. The second stage includes two approaches to efficiently allocate intervention resources across affected regions. Such an allocation could have prevented up to 3,434 infections over an 18-week period during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, a 58% improvement compared with the actual allocation.
(1) In Chapter 2, 3, and 4, the term ’we’ refers to the authors of Nohdurft & Spinler (2016), Nohdurft et al. (2016a), and Nohdurft et al. (2016b), respectively.
The combined impact of changing global demand and supply dynamics, extensive trading and speculation as well as global recessionary fears, has led to an environment of unprecedented volatility in worldwide commodity markets. As a result, effective risk management has become an increasingly important topic on the agenda of top management in a broad range of industries. While practical evidence shows that successful firms integrate both operational decision making and financial hedging in a firm-wide, coordinated risk management strategy, this entails managerial challenges. On the one hand, quantifying a firm’s exposure to raw material cost risk necessitates a sound understanding of the stochastic commodity market dynamics. On the other hand, once the exposure to different sources of risk is understood, executives face an intricate optimization problem over their operational and financial decision variables with the ultimate goal to reduce profit variability, while maintaining attractive business opportunities.
In this thesis, the topic of operational and financial risk management is investigated from three different perspectives.
In Chapter 2, a four-factor maximal affine stochastic volatility model of commodity prices is developed, which is consistent with many stylized characteristics of storable commodity markets as well as the historical term structure of commodity futures and option prices. Based on this model, we provide new insights with respect to the structural dynamics of commodity markets and the pricing and hedging of commodity derivatives. As the stochastic model used to describe the uncertain evolution of commodity prices can have important implications also in the valuation and risk management of real assets, a realistic commodity price model is a prerequisite for the integrated risk management models outlined in the subsequent chapters of this dissertation.
Given the previously developed intuition for commodity market dynamics, we model the integrated operational and financial risk management problem of a stylized, single-product industrial firm in Chapter 3. The firm faces risk in the price of commodity inputs and price sensitive, stochastic demand. Within this setting, the firm seeks to maximize inter-temporal utility under downside risk aversion over a multi-period time horizon by dynamically choosing physical procurement volumes, unit selling prices, and a futures hedge. We provide a flexible, simulation-based optimization algorithm, which allows us to solve the firm’s decision problem under realistic, multi-factor commodity price dynamics involving uncertainty in the interest rate and convenience yield as well as stochastic volatility. Based on this model, we characterize the firm’s optimal operating policy and investigate a range of topics including: (a) the value of managerial flexibility and the economic cost of restrictive supply contracts; (b) the importance of accounting for the stochastic nature of costs, interest rates, convenience yields, and volatility in risk management; (c) parameter and estimation risk; (d) the impact of risk aversion and hedging on the distribution of cash flows; and (e) the sensitivity of expected performance to key input parameters.
As opposed to the case of a single-product firm, integrated procurement risk management in a large, multi-divisional organization does not only require the above mentioned cross-functional coordination between, for example, the purchasing, sales, and finance department but also involves a cross-divisional coordination of actions in order to effectively target the firm-wide net risk exposure. To capture the specific aspects of integrated risk management in this type of setting, we extend the above model to a two-product firm in Chapter 4. Within this model, each of the two divisions are subject to cost and demand risk, which can be respectively correlated. Moreover, we allow for dynamic cross-selling to capture the potential complementarity/substitutability of items. The firm has access to futures, call, and put options associated with each of the commodity input markets for financial hedging. Under an intertemporal mean-variance utility function, we are able to provide analytic solutions to the firm’s dynamic procurement, pricing, and financial hedging problem. Based on a complementary numerical study, we analyze the impact of risk correlations and unilateral changes in the market environment of one division on the entire firm. Moreover, we discuss the impact of hedging and risk aversion on optimal policy and assess the effectiveness of different operational and financial hedging strategies for risk reduction.
Flexibilität in der Logistik
(2005)
Logistik und Supply Chain Management haben sich inzwischen zu Funktionen entwickelt, die innerhalb einer globaleren Wertschöpfung entscheidende Erfolgsfaktoren für die Unternehmensführung sind. Dabei trägt die Logistik – gut gestaltet – nicht nur zur Anpassungsfähigkeit von Unternehmen bei. Sie ist in einer immer dynamischeren Umwelt auch selbst erheblichen Flexibilitätsherausforderungen ausgesetzt. Um dem
gerecht zu werden, haben sich in der Praxis verschiedenste Konzepte wie Outsourcing und Postponement etabliert. Gemessen an ihrer allgemeinen Marktdurchdringung sind demgegenüber die Potentiale von Personaldienstleistungen in Deutschland bisher nur in ersten Ansätzen realisiert worden.
Um die entsprechenden Potentiale für den Bereich der Logistik zu konkretisieren und den Grenzen des Einsatzes von Personaldienstleistungen gegenüberzustellen, wurde von der WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management eine Untersuchung in Kooperation mit Randstad Deutschland durchgeführt. Mit fast 1.200 teilnehmenden Unternehmen, die das ganze Spektrum von Nichtnutzern bis hin zu sehr starken Nutzern von Zeitarbeit abdecken, gehört sie in der Logistik zu den größten ihrer Art.
Die Ergebnisse dieser Studie, zeigen deutlich, dass in vielen Unternehmen noch Potentiale für Flexibilitätssteigerungen und Kosteneinsparungen ungenutzt bleiben. Über alle Branchen hinweg liegt der Ist-Anteil der Zeitarbeit aktuell noch deutlich unter dem Anteil, den die Teilnehmer der Umfrage selbst als optimal betrachten. Entsprechend erhoffen sich die Unternehmen weitere Lohnkostensenkungspotentiale in Höhe von durchschnittlich acht Prozent. Darüber hinaus konnte in der Studie ein signifikanter Zusammenhang zwischen der Flexibilität der Unternehmen und deren jeweiligem Anteil von Zeitarbeitern nachgewiesen werden.
Activity report
(2012)
Activity report
(2013)
Activity report
(2014)
Activity report
(2016)
Activity report
(2015)