Before the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a great need for United States’ restaurants to “go green” due to consumers’ habits of frequently eating out. Unfortunately, COVID-19 has caused this initiative to lose traction. While the amount of customers ordering takeout has increased, there is less emphasis on sustainability.<br/>Plastic is known for its harmful effects on the environment and the extreme length of time it takes to decompose. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), almost 8 million tons of plastic end up in the oceans at an annual rate, threatening not only the safety of marine species but also human health. Modern food packaging materials have included a blend of synthetic ingredients, trickling into our daily lives and polluting the air, water, and land. Single-use plastic items slowly degrade into microplastics and can take up to hundreds of years to biodegrade.<br/>Due to COVID-19, restaurants have switched to takeout and delivery options to adapt to the new business environment and guidelines enforced by the Center of Disease Control (CDC) mandated guidelines. Some of these guidelines include: notices encouraging social distancing and mask-wearing, mandated masks for employees, and easy access to sanitary supplies. This cultural shift is motivating restaurants to search for a quick, cheap, and easy fix to adapt to the increased demand of take-out and delivery methods. This increases their plastic consumption of items such as plastic bags/paper bags, styrofoam containers, and beverage cups. Plastic is the most popular takeout material because of its price and durability as well as allowing for limited contamination and easy disposability.<br/>Almost all food products come in packaging and this, more often than not, is single-use. Food is the largest market out of all the packaging industry, maintaining roughly two-thirds of material going to food. The US Environmental Protection Agency reports that almost half of all municipal solid waste is made up of food and food packaging materials. In 2014, over 162 million tons of packaging material waste was generated in the states. This typically contains toxic inks and dyes that leach into groundwater and soil. When degrading, pieces of plastic absorb toxins like PCBs and pesticides, and then each piece will, in turn, release toxic chemicals like Bisphenol-A. Even before being thrown away, it causes negative effects for the environment. The creation of packaging materials uses many resources such as petroleum and chemicals and then releases toxic byproducts. Such byproducts include sludge containing contaminants, greenhouse gases, and heavy metal and particulate matter emissions. Unlike many other industries, plastic manufacturing has actually increased production. Demand has increased and especially in the food industry to keep things sanitary. This increase in production is reflective of the increase in waste. <br/>Although restaurants have implemented their own sustainable initiatives to combat their carbon footprint, the pandemic has unfortunately forced restaurants to digress. For example, Just Salad, a fast-food restaurant chain, incentivized customers with discounted meals to use reusable bowls which saved over 75,000 pounds of plastic per year. However, when the pandemic hit, the company halted the program to pivot towards takeout and delivery. This effect is apparent on an international scale. Singapore was in lock-down for eight weeks and during that time, 1,470 tons of takeout and food delivery plastic waste was thrown out. In addition, the Hong Kong environmental group Greeners Action surveyed 2,000 people in April and the results showed that people are ordering out twice as much as last year, doubling the use of plastic.<br/>However, is this surge of plastic usage necessary in the food industry or are there methods that can be used to reduce the amount of waste production? The COVID-19 pandemic caused a fracture in the food system’s supply chain, involving food, factory, and farm. This thesis will strive to tackle such topics by analyzing the supply chains of the food industry and identify areas for sustainable opportunities. These recommendations will help to identify areas for green improvement.

The purpose of this thesis is to better understand the current work and research being done by Supply Chain Management professors from universities from around the world. This paper includes an explanation of the research being done by four presenters, a summary of their work, and a reflection. These summaries and lectures allowed me to learn about current supply chain research and provide a focus for the rest of my thesis. The seminars include research being done by: Mark Ferguson, Edward Anderson and Rachna Shah. The preceding professors will discuss previous or current research. The second portion of this thesis will include a literature review of papers on the topic of corporate social responsibility and unintended consequences.

My journey through Arizona State University did not start with Supply Chain Management. I began as a Finance Major, but something did not resonate with me. I eventually switched my major to Supply Chain Management in my Junior year, after taking Professor Eddie Davila’s SCM 300 course. The hands-on nature of supply chain management, as well as the broad range of industries it covered, got me hooked. For my alternative thesis, I had to attend four seminars for WPC supply faculty, then write summaries on them. I would then choose one of the four to further extrapolate on and do independent research. However, after attending only two, the COVID-19 outbreak occurred, leading to the cancellation of the remaining seminars. As a result, I was faced with two choices; abandon the thesis project entirely, or work with what I had. With the approval of my director, I decided on the following outline. The first part of this paper will summarize and reflect on the two faculty lectures I was able to attend. The second part of the paper will look at the way COVID-19 has impacted the supply chain of a local business, SilverTree Dentistry. I will use information gathered from the dental office, supplier sites, and online sources as well as from the two faculty lectures to develop a cohesive plan of potential action for SilverTree to better equip themselves and their supply chain to handle the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as how to respond as a small business in future times of crisis. This paper’s focus is on how small business supply chains are disrupted in their areas of supplier selection and supplier power, specifically how those areas affect the business’s spend.

Replacing 214 print devices at 24 different sites across North America seemed
like an impossible project for me to manage just one year ago. Having just learned
about procurement a semester ago, and having little experience in the corporate world, I
set out as an intern at a company I will refer to as Company A, to undertake this project
with much to learn. I soon learned that replacing printers was not so simple, having to
first complete a contract that been worked on for almost two years. Following that, I had
to build relationships both internally and externally, establishing myself as the project
manager with both the vendor and Company A’s internal team. I sought to achieve
accuracy and efficiency, frequently communicating and verifying inventory before finally
beginning to replace printers across North America. After 7 months of hard-work,
collaboration, and communication, Company A was able to successfully receive all their
new print devices.
Along the way, I learned several lessons regarding goal setting, bottlenecks, and
communication. As the project kept receiving continual delays, I realized the
nonobtainable timeline and goals that were established. I also soon found bottlenecks
were constantly being avoided and pushed into the background, before growing into
large issues as the project progressed. One of the largest bottlenecks being an internal
disagreement on the secure print feature of the print devices. Finally, I found
communication between internal teams was not enough in reducing conflict and
increasing efficiency. From my experience with this project and as an intern, I have
learned many lessons that I will utilize in my professional career in the supply chain
field.

The bulk of this thesis is the translation itself—of Episodes 8-10—with timed subtitles. However, I also wanted to provide commentary on a few issues of interest that I came across during the translation. Conveying meaning from one language to the other does not simply involve translating the denotations of each word, but also the social context, humor, tone, and other aspects surrounding the situation. Whether words are used individually to interject, or come together to form unique idioms or phrases, the challenge presented to the translator is the choices: what words do I select to best convey not only the dictionary sense, but also the contextual meaning? This is especially difficult in wordplay-type situations. If there’s no perfect option, can I find a cultural analog that differs from the original denotation, but preserves the intention of the words? Otherwise, do I find the original important enough that it is worth educating the reader in order to preserve it—or, do I see no other translation option but to educate as a last resort? These are all choices that I had to make, and in this thesis I will be discussing the most interesting situations that came up, and my choices in dealing with them.

The purpose of this thesis is to gain a better understanding of current academic research from multiple professional sources and to understand how research in supply chain management and logistics is connected and can be used to generate new conceptual and business performance breakthroughs. The information used in the completion of this summation includes summaries and brief analysis from four different supply chain seminars hosted by Arizona State University supply chain faculty members and invited outside researchers. Beyond this, a comprehensive literature review of the first seminar examines the unintended consequences of health policy and impact of opioid prescribing behavior in the United States. This review encompasses multiple current academic articles that relate to and expand upon the topics discussed in the lecture.

The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate Company F’s inventory management practices and make recommendations on how to improve ordering and reduce inventory carrying costs. With today’s software programs we are able to run analyses’ almost instantly that show us the relationship between demand and inventory. Ideally, every company wants to have enough inventory to meet customer demand, but not so much that carrying costs skyrocket. Not only does it cost more to store inventory, but it also ties up capital which is difficult to liquidate. Finding a happy medium between customer service level and carrying costs will keep company F’s franchisees satisfied and the company profitable. Using different forecast analyses’, I will be evaluating Company F’s fastest selling category of 5 products with the goal of finding the most accurate forecast model. I will also determine reorder points and reorder quantities for the rest of Company F’s SKU’s based on average usage, lead time, and safety stock. The result of my findings will provide cost savings for the company which affects the bottom line.

My recommendations to the company will be based on the findings of the analyses’ used. There may be multiple conclusions in the recommendations for demand forecasting based on each individual forecast used. However, I will give my insight on which forecast I think is more accurate and why this one would be the best to implement in terms of accuracy. Going forward, the company will be capable of implement these models and fine tune them as necessary to help streamline their inventory needs.

Coffee is one of the most widely consumed beverages in the world, with a staggering 1.4 billion cups of coffee poured a day (Coffee Consumption around the World). One-point six percent of total US GDP is made up by coffee operations and fuels 1.6 million jobs in the United States (The Global Coffee Industry). However, with an increasingly complex political and economic world, along with the threat of climate change, the world’s coffee supply is at risk of total collapse. There are two primary varieties of coffee consumed in the world, Arabica and Robusta coffee. Most coffee producing countries run along the equator and are generally classified as developing economies. The global south is relied upon for coffee production. “Across Mexico and Central America, over 4 million people depend directly on coffee production for their livelihoods” (An Integrated Framework). Coffee production helps boost these economies and support families financially, with many workers having to support dependent individuals.

The purpose of this thesis paper is to discuss the life cycle curves of today’s innovation-driven digital services and how these life cycles can be extended. To decide on this subject, four supply chain management seminars were attended and summarized, and personal notes were added. After analysis of the seminars, the paper will dive deeper into the topic discussed by Professor Adegoke Oke of Arizona State University in his lecture on innovation-driven life cycle curves and their exemplification of the shark fin curve. This paper will analyze the nature of product life cycle curves, discuss three PC games and their life cycle curves, and evaluate the best methods for creating life cycle extension.

I have been studying both Supply Chain Management and Business Sustainability during my undergraduate at Arizona State University. This paper has allowed me to further explore some of the topics that I was introduced to during my time studying at ASU. For my supply chain alternative thesis, I attended multiple interesting faculty research presentations in the Supply Chain department and wrote reflections on each. The presentations were used to help choose a topic to focus on in the rest of my thesis. It is the third research seminar that I attended by Barbara Flynn, titled Understanding Adaptation to a Sustainability Technology Innovation: Longitudinal Outcome Trajectories, that sparked my interest in further researching sustainability in supply chains. The second portion of this paper contains a literature review of papers and journals on the topic of sustainability within supply chains over the last decade. Studies on this topic are becoming more popular as concerns with global warming increase. My research mainly consisted of reading journals and articles on ways that sustainable practices can be applied to reduce the environmental impact of businesses. This paper focuses on recent sustainability trends found across different areas of the supply chain, including: supplier selection and engagement, manufacturing, building efficiency, and logistics.