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A deteriorating security situation and an increased need for defence equipment calls for new forms of collaboration between Armed Forces and the defence industry. This paper aims to investigate the ways in which the accelerating demand for increased security of supply of equipment and supplies to the Armed Forces requires adaptability in the procurement process that is governed by laws on public procurement (PP).

This paper is based on a review of current literature as well as empirical data obtained through interviews with representatives from the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration and the Swedish defence industry.

Collaboration with the globalized defence industry requires new approaches, where the PP rules make procurement of a safe supply of defence equipment difficult.

The study's empirical data and findings are based on the Swedish context. In order to draw more general conclusions in a defence context, the study should be expanded to cover more nations.

The findings will enable the defence industry and the procurement authorizations to better understand the requirements of Armed Forces, and how to cooperate under applicable legal and regulatory requirements.

The paper extends the extant body of academic knowledge of the security of supply into the defence sector. It serves as a first step towards articulating a call for new approaches to collaboration in defence supply chains.

This paper is motivated by the need to assess the risk profiles associated with the substantial number of items within military supply chains. The scale of supply chain management processes creates difficulties in both the complexity of the analysis and in performing risk assessments that are based on the manual (human analyst) assessment methods. Thus, analysts require methods that can be automated and that can incorporate on-going operational data on a regular basis.

The approach taken to address the identification of supply chain risk within an operational setting is based on aspects of multiobjective decision analysis (MODA). The approach constructs a risk and importance index for supply chain elements based on operational data. These indices are commensurate in value, leading to interpretable measures for decision-making.

Risk and importance indices were developed for the analysis of items within an example supply chain. Using the data on items, individual MODA models were formed and demonstrated using a prototype tool.

To better prepare risk mitigation strategies, analysts require the ability to identify potential sources of risk, especially in times of disruption such as natural disasters.

This study aims to compare linear programming and stable marriage approaches to the personnel assignment problem under conditions of uncertainty. Robust solutions should exhibit reduced variability of solutions in the presence of one or more additional constraints or problem perturbations added to some baseline problems.

Several variations of each approach are compared with respect to solution speed, solution quality as measured by officer-to-assignment preferences and solution robustness as measured by the number of assignment changes required after inducing a set of representative perturbations or constraints to an assignment instance. These side constraints represent the realistic assignment categorical priorities and limitations encountered by army assignment managers who solve this problem semiannually, and thus the synthetic instances considered herein emulate typical problem instances.

The results provide insight regarding the trade-offs between traditional optimization and heuristic-based solution approaches.

The results indicate the viability of using the stable marriage algorithm for talent management via the talent marketplace currently used by both the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force for personnel assignments.

This paper aims to examine how the regional variable in country conflict modeling affects forecast accuracy and identifies a methodology to further improve the predictions.

This paper uses statistical learning methods to both evaluate the quantity of data for clustering countries along with quantifying accuracy according to the number of clusters used.

This study demonstrates that increasing the number of clusters for modeling improves the ability to predict conflict as long as the models are robust.

This study investigates the quantity of clusters used in conflict modeling, while previous research assumes a specific quantity before modeling.

This paper aims to describe an effort to provide for a robust and secure software development paradigm intended to support DevSecOps in a naval aviation enterprise (NAE) software support activity (SSA), with said paradigm supporting strong traceability and provability concerning the SSA’s output product, known as an operational flight program (OFP). Through a secure development environment (SDE), each critical software development function performed on said OFP during its development has a corresponding record represented on a blockchain.

An SDE is implemented as a virtual machine or container incorporating software development tools that are modified to support blockchain transactions. Each critical software development function, e.g. editing, compiling, linking, generates a blockchain transaction message with associated information embedded in the output of a said function that, together, can be used to prove integrity and support traceability. An attestation process is used to provide proof that the toolchain containing SDE is not subject to unauthorized modification at the time said critical function is performed.

Blockchain methods are shown to be a viable approach for supporting exhaustive traceability and strong provability of development system integrity for mission-critical software produced by an NAE SSA for NAE embedded systems software.

A blockchain-based authentication approach that could be implemented at the OFP point-of-load would provide for fine-grain authentication of all OFP software components, with each component or module having its own proof-of-integrity (including the integrity of the used development tools) over its entire development history.

Many SSAs have established control procedures for development such as check-out/check-in. This does not prove the SSA output software is secure. For one thing, a build system does not necessarily enforce procedures in a way that is determinable from the output. Furthermore, the SSA toolchain itself could be attacked. The approach described in this paper enforces security policy and embeds information into the output of every development function that can be cross-referenced to blockchain transaction records for provability and traceability that only trusted tools, free from unauthorized modifications, are used in software development. A key original concept of this approach is that it treats assigned developer time as a transferable digital currency.

Increased economic activity in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has given rise to increased demand for port development. Given the often scarce availability of national public funding, port institutional reform programmes have been implemented to pave the way for the inclusion of external port investors. Notwithstanding this fact, some sub-Saharan African Governments remain institutionally locked into the notion that state-owned enterprises remain an appropriate vehicle for port terminal operations. This, despite the fact that terminal operational concessions globally and within the continent of Africa are increasingly being managed by global terminal operators. Given this context, this study aims to evaluate different port valuation and funding strategies. Two research questions form the core of this research: what is the financial value of a concession? What is the most cost advantageous funding strategy? The methodology is applied to the development of a two-berth container terminal in SSA.

After reviewing a range of financial valuation and funding techniques, the study presents valuation and funding model applicability-fit tests. Thereafter, a suitable valuation technique is selected and applied to the case study providing a concession valuation. Different funding strategies are applied to the valuation model to determine the cost implications of each funding instrument given the local context and institutional constraints applicable to SSA. Finally, the study discusses the significance of the results to potential SSA port investors by highlighting the impact of each funding approach on key financial metrics.

The study presents a range of financial investment appraisal results for the case study concession in consideration of four specific funding strategies. The highest concession valuation could be attributed to a higher debt ratio as a principal funding strategy. In addition, this funding approach (100% debt) realised the shortest payback period and the highest internal rate of return values. The authors, however, maintain that the optimal funding strategy for a concession depends ultimately on the financial goals of the investor.

This research makes a contribution to the existing literature on port finance and development by presenting a structured approach to the evaluation of the valuation and funding techniques, which can be used in terminal development subject to the specific local context and institutional constraints (in this case applicable to SSA). The study provides practical insight into the potential cost of the considered terminal concession for private or public sector participants and a view of the most cost advantageous funding strategy available for interested investors.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the gap between cost-based and time-based revenue recognition schemes in the accounting of ship-owning corporations, and to propose cost-based revenue recognition (as in general accounting practice) in connection with the performance obligations.

For a comparative analysis of time-based (traditional approach) and cost-based schemes, a sample of dry bulk ships is selected and voyage estimations are performed by certified professional shipbrokers (Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers) (data collection and voyage estimation by practitioner). Performance obligations are also defined by certified shipbrokers (i.e. survey and expert opinion) and certified public accountant based on common shipping business practice and accounting practice in general.

Empirical results indicate the significant gap between two alternative schemes. Cost-based revenue recognition accelerates the revenue recognition (benefit of shipowner), and it enables comparability among other industries since cost-based allocation is the common practice in accounting (matching principle, Generally Accepted Accounting Principles).

It is obviously impossible to observe all kinds of freight market transactions for all different kinds of vessel particulars. The sample size does not undervalue the current study since the central idea of this paper is not the verification of the cost-based recognition in all possible transactions.

The proposed approach debiases the existing recognition practice as well as improving the speed of revenue recognition. In the existing practice, time-based recognition is still based on voyage estimations (time estimation). Voyage estimations conventionally answer two questions: “What is the cost of the voyage?” and “What is the duration of the voyage?” Therefore, the proposed approach does not require any additional work done. Common practice also clarifies the cost-based schedule for revenue recognition.

This paper addresses the unconventional accounting practice and its incomparability problem for the first time. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is also the first study on accounting economics of the shipping business. This paper proposes a practical solution to the debate raised by Financial Accounting Standards Board 2014-09 regulation on accounting standards by utilizing a staging approach and cost-based revenue allocation.

This paper aims to explore the comparative analysis of marketing strategies between seaports and dry ports. Second, this paper proposes a recommendation to improve marketing approaches in both nodes.

This research analyzes current marketing approaches to improve the freight volume and enhance interrelation between them for a comprehensive collaboration in the freight supply chain. This research employed semi-structured interviews via an e-interview questionnaire.

The result shows that dry port and seaport practice a mixed marketing strategy. Some marketing elements that a seaport applies are also applied by a dry port, like focusing on the target customer, joining exhibitions and face-to-face meetings. Customized service to clients, frequent discussion on the effective marketing plans and increasing the facilities at the seaport and dry ports can improve the marketing strategies in dry port and seaports.

Seaports are the critical components in esteem-driven context, which add to supply chains by creating value-added services in the transport chain. Nonetheless, research between dry ports and seaports has increasingly drawn the attention of scholars during the last decade. Having said like that, there have not been any pragmatic studies undertaken in the Malaysian context that mainly discusses the marketing prospect of the dry ports and seaports especially during COVID-19 outbreak.

In describing his success, Sinegal attributes it to “just good business practices.” And while he was born into a Catholic family and supports Catholic causes, he does not necessarily tie his faith to the way he approaches business. That approach, he says, is based in learning how to do business with integrity and high values from an early mentor. The following interview outlines how Sinegal approaches business and how he works to establish integrity and high values throughout Costco Wholesale Corporation.

This paper aims to propose two solution approaches to determine the number of ground transport vehicles that are required to ensure the on-time delivery of military equipment between origin and destination node pairs in some geographic region, which is an important logistics problem at the US Transportation Command.

The author uses a mathematical program and a traditional heuristic to provide optimal and near-optimal solutions, respectively. The author also compares the approaches for random, small-scale problems to assess the quality and computational efficiency of the heuristic solution, and also uses the heuristic to solve a notional, large-scale problem typical of real problems.

This work helps analysts identify how many ground transport vehicles are needed to meet cargo delivery requirements in any military theater of operation.

This research assumes all problem data is deterministic, so it does not capture variations in requirements or transit times between nodes.

This work provides prescriptive details to military analysts and decision-makers in a timely manner. Prior to this work, insights for this type of problem were generated using time-consuming simulation taking about a week and often involving trial-and-error.

This research provides new methods to solve an important logistics problem. The heuristic presented in this paper was recently used to provide operational insights about ground vehicle requirements to support a geographic combatant command and to inform decisions for railcar recapitalization within the US Army.