Lead-time management components

In Chapter 2, we have listed a number of different elements of the penalty costs. Part of these costs can be considered to be real costs, but another, often much larger part, consists of speculative elements or simply represent management policies. Therefore it will be no problem to choose the penalty costs for orders with different priorities as an integer number multiplied by p. For example, in a certain situation for some of the orders the penalty costs will be p, for some other orders 2p and for another category of orders 3p or 4/>. In the production mles which we have considered until now, we base the decisions upon the state vector r= ri,..,rn. If we distinguish orders with for instance three different priorities, a possible state description is given by denoting the number of orders of priority j with a residual lead time of i periods by rij. This would imply that the state vector contains iN components and diis will soon lead to an immense state space. 

We have developed a rapid and systematic process for isolation and identification of biologically active components from natural products. The process reduces time and cost through application of advanced chromatographic instrumentation. It generates important activity and chemical information and also provides advanced active fraction(s) to accelerate isolation studies. As a result, lead prioritization, project management, and the cycle time of natural product lead discovery have been significantly improved. 

Uncertainty breeds inventory. Managers involved in transportation often have to make planning decisions, like routing, that directly affect the movement of raw materials or finished goods. These decisions often affect other components in the supply chain network, in which case the transportation management team cannot afford to make an incorrect decision. Consequently, any mistakes not only jeopardize other elements within the system but also lead to customer dissatisfaction created by the delay in the delivery times (Quirm 1998). 

The expected supervision scale has 6 items, and both versions are shown in Table 9.6. Scale items were developed based on the discussion of supervisor behavior required to ensure new employee safety in Chap. 4, Sect. 4.2.8. At the time of writing, no data on the psychometric properties of this scale had been collected. As noted in Chap. 3, supervision of new employees should be a specific task assigned to supervisors. Furthermore, new employees are likely to expect that supervisors will be there to ensure their safety. As noted in many places in this book, the perception that a system has a component which is there to protect a person from risk can lead to more risk being taken. Thus, it is very important that new employees have a realistic perception of the degree of supervision that they will receive. It is also important to note that employees (job incumbents) are asked to complete this scale—not supervisors. Employees should be able to respond to the items in terms of the experiences they have had with supervision, whereas supervisors may respond in terms of what higher management expect of them, rather than their actual supervision of new employees. 

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