The evolution of consumer behaviour (a dual demand of a large variety and personalised products) has encouraged firms to enlarge their product range. As a result, certain products have a very short life cycle (a few weeks to a few months). The supply chain for these products cannot be exactly...

This paper examines the centralised monitoring of an upstream supply chain (USC) in the context of a mass customisation production system. We propose an adaptation of the material requirement planning framework to manage demand uncertainty at each stage of the USC. New analytical relations that...

We investigate the impact of new work practices and information and communication technologies (ICT) on working conditions in France. We use a unique French dataset providing information on individual workers for the year 1998. New work practices include the use of quality norms, job rotation,...

The everchanging European context may well lead to the evolution of MNCs' strategies in Europe and to the evolution of the control mechanisms within their subsidiaries. The author analyses the issue from the angle of human resources management, considered as an informal control tool that is...

This article focuses on the monitoring of a supply chain dedicated to the mass production of strongly diversified products. Specifically, we are interested in the part of this chain that contributes to the production of a set of alternative modules assembled on a work station of one or several...

We consider the multi-level lot-sizing problem in a rolling-schedule environment as it occurs in Material Requirements Planning systems, with no capacity constraints and a time-invariant cost structure. We show that the performance of fixed-horizon methods can be improved drastically in a...

This paper investigates to which extent exporters, importers and multinational firms have a greater propensity to start innovation activities. To do so, we merge two different French Community Innovation Surveys (CIS) and use the model of Crépon et al. (1988), which allows us to estimate the...