As the auto industry moves into its second century, it suffers from low margins and a sclerotic value chain that cannot evolve with customer desires. Inventories of many weeks pile up on dealer lots and at distribution centers around the world while executives applaud marginal improvements in...

This paper examines patterns and trends in motor vehicle safety recalls using a dataset based on 23.1 million vehicles registered in the UK between 1992 and 2002. A safety recall occurs when vehicle manufacturers call vehicles that have been sold and are in use back to their dealerships for...

Collaboration in the supply chain has been widely discussed, and a wealth of concepts is at hand. Large-scale projects like the Efficient Consumer Response (ECR) in the fast moving consumer goods sector, for example, or Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) and Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and...

The economic growth and industrial development in China over the last decade has been of considerable interest to industry and policy-makers alike, and also been subject of many academic studies. Considerable research on the macro-economic growth and process of industrialisation, as well as the...