Search Results (5)

Increasing supply chain uncertainty due to market volatility has heightened the need for more flexible procurement strategies. While procurement through long-term forward contracts provides supply stability and cost predictability, it limits adaptability. Option contracts offer procurement flexibility, but require additional upfront premiums. Meanwhile, the spot market enables real-time purchasing without prior commitments, enhancing flexibility but exposing buyers to price volatility. Despite the growing adoption of portfolio procurement—combining forward contracts, option contracts, and spot market purchases—the existing research primarily examines these channels in isolation or in limited combinations, lacking an integrated perspective. This study addresses this gap by developing a comprehensive procurement model that simultaneously optimizes procurement decisions across all three channels under uncertain demand and fluctuating spot prices. Unlike prior studies, which often analyze one or two procurement channels separately, our model presents a novel, holistic framework that balances cost efficiency, risk mitigation, and adaptability. Our findings demonstrate that incorporating the spot market significantly enhances procurement flexibility and profitability, particularly in environments with high demand uncertainty and price volatility. Additionally, sensitivity analysis reveals how fluctuations in spot prices and demand uncertainty influence optimal procurement decisions. By introducing a new, practical approach to portfolio procurement, this study provides managerial insights that help businesses navigate complex and uncertain supply chain environments more effectively. However, this study assumes unlimited spot market capacity and reliable suppliers, highlighting a limitation that future research should address. Full article

Maritime shipping is an important driver of global economic growth. Efficient green maritime technologies are critical for both the profitability and sustainability of shipping carriers due to the fact that fuel consumption has already made up 45–55% of the total operational cost of a ship. Moreover, the application of green maritime technologies also challenges the input/output of the maritime industry. Currently, there is a lack of coordination between the two strategies of maritime bunker management: one is the bunker procurement, which is faced with the fierce volatility of bunker fuel prices, and the other is the bunker consumption of vessel operation scheduling with applicable maritime technologies. To address the challenge posed by the new sulfur emission regulations, the two isolated strategies are inefficient. This study presents an integrated model that takes both the financial technology (bunker hedging) and the operational bunker cost efficiency (sailing speed and routing optimization under emission regulations) into account. The objective is to maximize the total rate of portfolio return considering the revenue and the cost simultaneously. By analyzing the Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) risk measure, we examined the effects of the bunker spot, contract, and hedging in futures markets on the optimal joint solution. Numerical results from a real-world case study show that the optimized integrating financial and operational strategies yield the lowest expected total costs as well as the highest revenue with CVaR constraints. The findings provide a prospect for maritime shipping as an effective decision tool for bunker management under environmental regulations. The management insights of our study will benefit the corporate participants, policy makers, and researchers in liner shipping revenue and risk management. Full article

The COVID-19 pandemic crisis marks a rare example of a supply disruption that had a devastating effect on the global economy. The vaccine has then been considered to be an effective long-term solution. The particularity of the supply chain of the COVID-19 vaccine is that the procurement is made by government agencies directly from the manufacturers, thus bypassing the typical vaccine supply chain of distributors and wholesalers. The first purpose of this paper is to further understand the public procurement strategies (PPSs) for the COVID-19 vaccine in a pandemic situation, using a methodology that brings together Kraljic’s purchasing portfolio model, Porter’s five forces analysis and a multi-attribute decision making method. The second aim is to evaluate the sustainability of a PPS, using the sustainable development analytical grid (SDAG), an analytical tool that addresses six dimensions: ecological, social, economic, ethical, cultural and governance. To assess the effectiveness of the methodology, we consider Morocco, an emergent country, as a case study. It results that Morocco’s approach is in line with the theoretical strategy: diversification and bringing the production in house. The sustainability assessment shows that the PPS covers the six dimensions, but considering the urge for an economic and social recovery, some sustainable development objectives are to be prioritized. Full article

This study presents a multi-platform analysis for accelerating the deployment of distributed renewable energy (DRE) systems for the electrification of healthcare facilities (HCFs) in low-income regions. While existing tools capture national and regional scale planning for DRE deployment in HCFs, there are limited tools for facility level energy needs and no existing data-driven approach for systematic decision-making and resource allocation across a portfolio of HCFs. We address this gap by utilizing decentralized data collection, and multi-criteria decision-making to evaluate each HCF against a set of weighted decision criteria. We applied the approach presented in this research in a case study across 56 HCF in Uganda. Results present current and future energy needs for each individual clinic and the prioritization of HCFs for allocation of resources for DRE deployment. Additionally, results provide insight for best practices for reliability of services that are specific to each HCF. For example, failures in the existing solar photovoltaic (PV) systems are approximately up to 60% due to a lack of proper operation and management (O&M) strategy, and 40% is attributable to improper system design and installation. Thus, this study enables decision-makers to better understand the electrification needs of different HCFs, prioritize DRE deployment, financial investments, cost-effective procurement, and long-term O&M. Full article

For the purpose of utilizing electric bus fleets in metropolitan areas and with regard to providing active energy management at depots, a profound understanding of the transactions between the market entities involved in the charging process is given. The paper examines sophisticated charging strategies with energy procurements in joint market operation. Here, operation procedures and characteristics of a depot including the physical layout and utilization of appropriate charging infrastructure are investigated. A comprehensive model framework for a virtual power plant (VPP) is formulated and developed to integrate electric bus fleets in the power plant portfolio, enabling the provision of power system services. The proposed methodology is verified in numerical analysis by providing optimized dispatch schedules in day-ahead and intraday market operations. Full article