Whenever a company implements a group-based incentive plan for the first time, free-riding may destroy trust among employees and harm performance. We propose a static model to describe how employees make the decision of whether to cooperate or not, which considers material rewards and social...

Many companies relay on contractors to execute different tasks of the value chain. This paper develops an agency model subject to moral hazard to study the general structure of the contract offered by a firm (the principal) to several contractors (agents) that perform the same task. A...

Queuing theory studies the behavior of systems subject to different working conditions, which sometimes force clients to wait for service. It has a vast applicability, since it quantifies the dilemma of many companies and institutions between efficacy (provide a good service) and efficiency...

This paper studies a single-product distribution channel where a supplier manufactures items of a given type, some of which are defective, that are sold by a retailer who only detects a subset of the defective items, passing the rest along to customers. We conjecture the structure of the demand...

Companies in the natural resources industry (e.g., mining, timber, farming and fishery) face the dilemma of whether to focus upstream or downstream in the value chain. The literature provides arguments and empirical evidence for either position. This paper presents an analytical framework based...

This work analyses the problem of defining when to diploid a new distribution center. The decision model considers the usual logistic cost drivers such as shipping, inventory, infrastructure and administration, focusing in the first one. The shipping cost driver is determined by the client...

We present an optimization model for steel manufacturing, whose objective function depends on activity-based costing (ABC). The constraints describe the capacity and the material balance, the product-dependent yield and the electrical balance, for all the activities of the plant. For the model...

The purpose of this article is to analyze the main operational causes of conflict between shippers and carriers, and to evaluate the opportunity of improvement. We classify these problems according to whether they are related to the operations at the distribution centers, the configuration of...