This paper considers a scheduling problem in a two-machine flowshop with outsourcing strategy incorporated. The jobs can be either processed in the first machine or outsourced to outside subcontractors. This paper wants to determine which jobs to be processed in-house and which jobs to be outsourced. If any job is decided to be outsourced, then an additional outsourcing cost is charged The objective of this paper is to minimize the sum of scheduling cost and outsourcing cost under a budget constraint. At first this paper characterizes some solution properties, and then it derives solution procedure including DP (Dynamic Programming) and B&B (Branch-and-Bound) algorithms and a greedy-type heuristic. Finally the performance of the algorithms are evaluated with some numerical tests.

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to analyze the comparative financial performance of outsourcing and vertically integrated corporations from Footwear and Apparel industry. Research design, data, and methodology - Secondary data is collected from the published audited annual reports of the footwear and apparel corporations listed on stock exchanges globally. In the current study, 40 footwear firms have been opted that include 20 vertically integrated and 20 outsourcing firms. The sample is distributed into two groups based on threshold up-to 50 percent respectively outsourcing and vertically integrated companies. Sample independent t-test is applied to compare the financial performance of outsourcing and vertically integrated firms. Results - Based on the investigation of 10 years’ data of financial ratio, the results of the study show that there is significant difference between outsourcing and vertical integration strategy on return on assets, return on equity while insignificant difference has found with profit margin. Conclusions - The findings of the current study indicates that there is significant difference between the financial performance of outsourcing and vertically integrated firms in terms of return on asset, return on equity and insignificant difference in terms of profit margin.