Rossedette Mesina

BSA 3-1

Supply Chain Management System

This Friday, November 11th, NC State University will host FoodCon 2016, at the Talley Student Union.
In advance of this day-long conference, I had a chance to sit down and speak with one of the organizers,
Graham Givens about this event and his studies as a graduate student in the Jenkins MBA program in the
Poole College of Management. FoodCon is a student-organized, student-founded conference focused on
the business of sustainable food. In its third year, plans and the agenda for FoodCon 2016 are impressive
already. The goal of the conference is to engage a diverse audience of students, community members, and
business professionals with the shared interest in the sustainable food industry, as well as increase the
awareness and understanding of the sustainable food industry in North Carolina. Their efforts through
FoodCon 2016 also aim to further support and grow the industry locally and throughout the country.
Givens had just returned from New Orleans, Louisiana, when we spoke after attending the Food
Distribution Research Society Annual Conference. The FDRS, founded in 1967, is an organization
dedicated to encouraging applied research in the field of food distribution, assist with food industry
education, and provide opportunities for professional development for the food industry. The theme of
this years FDRS conference was Exploring Linkages in Food Market Innovations, so Givens research
and organizing around FoodCon 2016 were extremely relevant.
We had the opportunity to learn more at FDRS about the economic impact of local food systems,
strengthening local food linkages, and implementing various research concepts, said Givens, who was
also presenting on his graduate research. As a SCRC Supply Chain Scholar, I have been collaborating
with the North Carolina Growing Together Project, an initiative of the Center for Environmental Farming
Systems (CEFS).
A second-year full-time MBA student, Givens research is focused on whether a distributor can facilitate
the creation of a value chain in the local and sustainable food restaurant supply chain. I asked Givens why
he felt that this research was important or unique. I completed this research by conducting interviews
with numerous chefs, employees of local distributors, and farmers throughout North Carolina, said
Givens. Our research is really the first to look at the creation of value over the course of a year, while our
scope includes many of the different players across the supply chain.

This is an exciting investigation for anyone paying attention to trends that will impact the complex
demands on supply chains, especially those around local, organic, or sustainable farmed products all
facing growing demand in the marketplace. Some of our preliminary findings are that many chefs want
to have direct relationships with farmers and not gather information about the product through a
distributor, while farmers find it difficult to hold numerous relationships with chefs and dont really see
the financial benefit of doing so, said Givens of his research. Together with Dr. Rebecca Dunning,
Project Manager for NCGT, I will continue to observe and research this topic in the coming months. It
will be interesting to see how these dynamics can be reconciled to benefit the consumer and marketplace
in a sustainable way.
I also spoke with one of Givens classmates, second-year, full-time MBA student Lindsay Schilleman,
who also attended the Food Distribution Research Society Annual Conference. Schillemans background
as an SCRC Supply Chain Scholar and her previous research on supply chain economic impact analysis
were especially relevant in a pre-conference session highlighting an economic impact analysis toolkit.
This toolkit provides necessary steps to complete your own assessment in a local city, county, or region
of choice, said Schilleman. The toolkit session not only provided great networking opportunities with
local food enthusiasts, guidance on completing an economic impact analysis using IMPLAN, and it also
provides advice for overcoming obstacles such as lack of reliable data in the local foods sector. It was a
good introduction for me into the realm of local foods.
I am always impressed by the ambition of our students, as well as their efforts to connect in a real way
with industry on industry terms. Conferences like this are a great example of where our students can gain
great insight into the reality of industries where they may want to work. Hearing great outcomes from
Givens and Schillemans attendance to the FDRS conference is inspiring and leaves us looking forward to
Foodcon2016 with even more excitement.
Overall, the conference provided some great information and contacts in the distribution and economic
food research field. It was interesting to hear about all the research that is currently being completed to
better understand and facilitate the growth of local food systems, summarized Graham Givens. For me,
this is particularly relevant to my future career in local and sustainable food supply chains, and it was
great to come to New Orleans and be able to bring so much of what I learned back to our upcoming
FoodCon conference.

FoodCon began at UNC-Chapel Hills Kenan-Flagler Business School in 2014, bringing together a
diverse range of speakers to discuss current trends and issues in the sustainable food industry. In 2015, the
conference moved to Dukes Fuqua School of Business and became a partnership event between UNC,
Duke and NC State. This is the first year that NC State University will host FoodCon. Together with
NetImpact, the NC State Business Sustainability Collaborative, CEFS, and others, the SCRC is proud to
sponsor this event and I recommend you get your tickets now as there are only a few remaining. Good
luck to all of our student organizers. We look forward to learning more Friday.

Service Product Design

Cross-functional (Marketing/Operations) Product/Service Design Approaches During recent years,
market-utility-based approaches (conjoint and discrete choice analyses) have started appearing in
operations management-focused product/service design articles. For example, Pullman and Moore (1999)
presented an optimal service design model by combining a DCA-based customer preference model with
capacity and demand management strategies. Moore et al. (1999) demonstrated how results from a series
of conjoint experiments could be combined together to make effective product platform decisions, which
are consistent with market needs, and at the same time also take into account operating constraints such as
production/development costs and components sharing among products. Pullman, Goodale, and Verma
(2000) developed an integrated design of mass services by combining preferences of customers of
multiple market segments with waiting times and labor-scheduling decisions. Assuming conjoint data,
Raman and Chhajed (1995) developed an approach for simultaneously determining product attributes,
prices, and production processes; Morgan et al. (1996) presented a mathematical programming
formulation for managing marketing/manufacturing trade-offs in product-line management; and Ramdas
and Sawhney (1999) developed an approach for multiple product-line extensions

Quality Management
Patient Satisfaction With Healthcare Services: A Critical Review
As healthcare systems shift from fee-for-service to alternate payment models, and consumers gain access
to more healthcare options, patient satisfaction is becoming increasingly important for the financial
performance of healthcare providers and for patient well-being. However, patient satisfaction is a
complex construct. To assist researchers and practitioners, the authors provide a critical review of articles
published in the Quality Management Journal (QMJ) on the topic of patient satisfaction. The authors
employ Golder, Mitra, and Moormans (2012) seminal integrative framework of quality as a lens through

which to evaluate the studies contributions and shortcomings. They find that prior QMJ research has
focused on patient satisfaction from the perspective of the healthcare delivery system. However, less
attention has been given to: 1) understanding patients perceptions of their experiences and how these
perceptions affect satisfaction and perceived quality, and 2) identifying patients expectations of what
attributes should be provided during healthcare services. Consequently, widely used measures of
satisfaction, including the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems surveys, may be
inadequate. The authors review provides direction for researchers in developing a more comprehensive
research agenda for understanding patient satisfaction.

Location
Hospital urban and rural location Location and proximity to markets are important factors for service
organizations generally and hospitals in particular. Specifically, having an urban or rural location is an
important environmental factor for hospitals. Hospitals in rural locations have struggled in recent years
and their survival may depend on developing strategies that are appropriate for their location (Hudson,
1995; Henry, 1994). Hospital location is important because the largest segment of a hospitals market
share comes from an area of proximity to the hospital (Robinson and Luft, 1985). Rural hospitals
sometimes have no competition in their immediate region, so it is not clear that rural location by itself is
an inherent disadvantage. Although a majority of hospital closures in the past occurred in rural hospitals
(Cleverly, 1991), rural hospitals have increasingly become targets for purchase by hospital chains because
they are often inexpensive and have little competition in their immediate region, reducing certain types of
risk to investors (Campbell, 1997). The literature generally regards rural location as a disadvantage for
hospitals but provides limited empirical evidence that this is true. The size of potential markets in rural
areas may be an impediment because some hospitals are located near limited populations.
It is also plausible that while market size may be adequate, lack of investment in medical technologies
severely limits the services that are offered. This research investigates the dichotomy of urban and rural
location in the context of strategy development and technology investments.

Maintenance
Norbord (an IDCON Client) Achieves Safety Milestones
GUNTOWN, MISSISSIPPI (June 11, 2010) Norbord Inc. today celebrated the achievement of three
significant safety milestones at its oriented strand board (OSB) mill in Guntown Mississippi.

1. Approved as an OSHA Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) Star Site, effective March 25, 2010. VPP
represents OSHAs premiere recognition programs for employers and employees who have implemented
exemplary workplace safety and health systems.
2. Certification to Norbords Safety Star Status. The Safety Star program is a company-specific program
that combines OSHAs VPP Star requirements with Norbords own safety expectations.
3. Completion of one million hours without a lost time safety incident.
Every member of the Guntown team is to be recognized and thanked for their outstanding commitment
to working safely, said Barrie Shineton, President and CEO of Norbord. I believe a strong safety culture
is a good indicator that all operating systems are well-managed in a mill. This is certainly true in
Guntown and I congratulate the team on its success. We will look to them for guidance and leadership as
we work to achieve Norbord Safety Star status at all Norbord mills worldwide.
Built by Norbord in 1995, the Guntown mill has 120 employees and annual production capacity of 450
MMsf 3/8.
Norbord Profile
Norbord Inc. is an international producer of wood-based panels with assets of $1.0 billion, employing
approximately 1,950 people at 14 plant locations in the United States, Europe and Canada. Norbord is one
of the worlds largest producers of OSB. In addition to OSB, Norbord manufactures particleboard,
medium density fibreboard (MDF), hardwood plywood and related value-added products. Norbord is a
publicly traded company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol NBD.