ABSTRACT Forecasting transportation demands can aid online car-hailing platforms to dispatch their service vehicles in advance to areas with more potential orders. This results in a reduction in passengers’ waiting time and better utilisation of transportation resources. However, the complexity and dynamics of multi-dimensional influential factors make the forecasting and dispatching procedures challenging

Collaborative robots (cobots) are important components of the Industry 4.0 paradigm and smart manufacturing. Cobots are known for their ability to interact with the operators in a shared workspace. Due to their spread in the last decade, cobot research proliferated. However, most individual studies focused on specific aspects of cobot deployment, and only scant attention was given to their evaluation

Industry 4.0, smart manufacturing and its related technologies are now becoming the leading trend in the development of the manufacturing industry. One of the key drivers of Industry 4.0 is big data analytics, which can transform large amounts of data into useful information, enabling astute and rapid decision-making strategies when combined with expert domain knowledge. The semiconductor industry

Long wait times and low resource utilisation are the most critical issues in treatment-oriented outpatient departments. While Lean has been utilised to resolve similar issues in healthcare, the literature provides no structured means of implementing Lean in outpatient departments. This study establishes a Lean transformation framework to identify a balanced patient demand by determining proper patient

The disassembly is a fundamental basis in converting End-of-Life (EOL) products into useful components. Related research becomes popular recently due to the increasing awareness of environmental protection and energy conservation. Yet, there are many opening questions needed to be investigated, especially the efficient coordination of different-level decisions under uncertainty is a big challenge.

ABSTRACT We study a repairable production-inventory system with a constant demand rate subject to random disruptions, which supplies an assembly line according to a just-in-time configuration. Preventive maintenance (PM) actions are regularly performed on the production unit at fixed time instants. We assume that the time between breakdowns is constant and the PM and corrective actions have random

Disassembly sequence planning (DSP) has gained active research interest since the 90s due to increasing environmental awareness and stricter regulations regarding end-of-life (EOL) strategies of used products. DSP is a subset of disassembly research that focuses on the systematic separation of constituent parts in a product. Despite tremendous efforts from researchers worldwide, DSP remains a challenging

Blockchain is an emerging technology with a wide array of potential applications. This technology, which underpins cryptocurrency, provides an immutable, decentralised, and transparent distributed database of digital assets for use by firms in supply chains. However, not all firms are appropriately suited to adopt blockchain in the existing supply chain primarily due to their lack of knowledge on the

ABSTRACT Increasing the understanding of the management of closed-loop supply chains (CLSCs) is fundamental to accelerate the much-desired transition towards the circular economy. From this perspective, we investigate the value of proportional order-up-to policies (POUT) policies and the adjustment of their inventory controllers in these systems. These policies are often used to improve the performance

A warehouse covers a wide spectrum of operations for the distribution of goods in a supply chain network. The advancement of technology and the changing global business environment have compelled the transformation of a warehouse. The present study attempts to revisit the warehouse transformation from 1990 to 2019 through an evolutionary lens. A systematic literature review is conducted to answer a

ABSTRACT This research addresses a single machine batch loading and scheduling problem. Jobs in the same family are processed as a batch in the machine with a known family-specific processing time. Each job in a batch requires a known volume or space, and the total batch volume cannot exceed the available volume/capacity of the machine. Batch processing times increase proportionately with the time

Reverse supply chains (RSCs) have been increasingly implemented in recent years to manage the growing flow of solid waste generated by end-of-life (EOL) products and to minimise their environmental impact. Furthermore, recent research has shown that the implementation of RSCs benefits job creation, enables savings in raw materials, and creates income from the sales of re-manufactured products. However

Assembly line balancing usually presupposes binary task-station assignments. Some authors have previously described efficiency increases due to fractional task allocations or work-sharing. However, the internal storage requirements for such efficiency increases have not been analytically described. This paper defines the Fractional Allocation Assembly Line Balancing Problem and presents mixed-integer

ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to examine the impact of the working capital in the borrowing decision of a retailer. The proposed analysis is based on a model with a retailer, a supplier and a bank in a non-cooperative game with price-sensitive demand. The retailer, the supplier and the bank (if concerned) determine, respectively, the ordering quantity, the wholesale price and the interest

ABSTRACT In this work, we consider a joint sequencing and scheduling appointments problem with stochastic service times and no-shows in multi-stage service systems. The objective is to minimise the total expected weighted costs of customers' waiting times and service providers' idle times over multiple stages. For the problem, we first formulate it as a stochastic program and exploit the sample average

Our study examines the relationship between information alignment (IA), collaboration (CO) and supply chain agility (SCAG) under the moderating effects of artificial intelligence-driven big data analytics capability (AI-BDAC) and intergroup leadership (IGL). We have grounded our theoretical model in the resource-based view (RBV) and contingency theory and further tested our research hypotheses using

Natural disasters, pandemics, and political nationalism force companies toward more responsive, flexible, and resilient assembly systems. For manufacturers, adaptability of the assembly process and local production ensure short product lead times even during supply chain disruptions. Yet one downside of regional production is that fixed takt time assembly lines become overburdened, especially when

In the current global market, managing supply is not a straightforward process and it becomes even more complex as uncertainty and disruptions occur. In order to mitigate their impact, the selection of suppliers of strategic items should have a more holistic view of the operations in the supply chain. We propose an integrated model for supplier selection, considering inventory management and inbound

Selective assembly is an approach in which high-precision assemblies can be produced from relatively low-precision components or subassemblies. This research investigates component ordering policies for fixed-bin selective-assembly processes that consider the stochastic nature of the binning process as well as stochastic demand. The distributional aspects of the assembly process are identified, and

Cellular structures (CSs) exhibit unique combinations of physical properties, including low weight, high structural strength, and substantial energy absorption, which could be useful in a variety of applications. Further, with the advent of additive manufacturing (AM), CSs are now easier to fabricate. While CSs and AM open up transformative opportunities, their potential for everyday use in industrial

This paper evaluates how technical assistive devices for manual materials handling were analysed in the literature in a warehousing context. Works that discuss the economic and/or human factors impact of assistive devices on the warehousing system or the people employed therein were identified in a systematic literature review. Building on a conceptual framework proposed in this paper, our evaluation

This paper focuses on the problem of dynamic supply chain (SC) recovery. We consider effectiveness and efficiency of various reactive measures to recover the SC with the minimum cost at the operational level. For this purpose, a new general model based on bounded optimal control theory is developed to determine the type, the extent, and the timing of reactive measures. We demonstrate its application

ABSTRACT Augmented reality (AR) has proven to be an invaluable interactive medium to reduce cognitive load by bridging the gap between the task-at-hand and relevant information by displaying information without disturbing the user's focus. AR is particularly useful in the manufacturing environment where a diverse set of tasks such as assembly and maintenance must be performed in the most cost-effective

ABSTRACT The empirical literature considers firm-specific aspects affecting corporate sustainability decisions but generally omits the influence of the competition. We advocate that sustainability actions of a company impact its marketplace and vice versa. Therefore, the sustainability return of the single firm is a function of the other firms’ sustainability decisions. We approach sustainability decisions

ABSTRACT This study analyses the role of trade credit insurance and the insuring strategy of the retailer and the manufacturer in a capital-constrained supply chain with one retailer, one manufacturer, and one insurer. We model the interaction among these three participants as a two-level Stackelberg game and explore their operational and financial decisions. We find that trade credit insurance is

An essential task in manufacturing planning and control is to determine when to release orders to the shop floor. One key parameter is the lead time which is the planned time that elapses between the release of an order and its completion. Lead times are normally determined based on the observed time orders previously took to traverse the production system (flow times). Traditional order release models

The daily home-office commute of millions of people in crowded cities strains air quality and increases travel time, which motivates the generation of ridesharing. Ridesharing offers many benefits, such as reducing travel costs, congestion, and pollution. Commuter ridesharing is an important theme of urban transportation. This paper studies a ridesharing problem aiming at enlarging the ridesharing

In this study, we consider the dynamic and stochastic resource-constrained multi-project scheduling problem where projects generate rewards at their completion, completions later than a due date cause tardiness costs, task duration is uncertain, and new projects arrive randomly during the ongoing project execution both of which disturb the existing project scheduling plan. We model this problem as

ABSTRACT Production cost affects heavily supply chain coordination, but it is uncertain in many cases. We consider a supply chain consisting of a manufacturer and a retailer, where the unit production cost is uncertain when the firms sign a procurement contract. We derive the optimal decisions and profits for the centralised and decentralised cases. We show that production cost uncertainty exaggerates

This paper deals with the Generalised Workforce Scheduling and Routing Problem (GWSRP) where 9 temporal constraints ensuring visit dependencies are all together taken into account and where customer and worker’s quality of service are taken into consideration. A Constraint-Programming based Decomposition Method (CPDM) is proposed, firstly based on a relaxation of coordination constraints and a column

ABSTRACT For manual picking processes in warehouses and assembly line feeding, collaborative robots – cobots – hold a potential to support operators and, thereby, enhance performance. However, studies focused on the economic aspects of cobot applications have been scarce. The present paper aims at modelling a new picking system, in which human operators collaborate with cobots during picking (or kitting)

ABSTRACT The ripple effect refers to disruption propagation across the supply network affecting its global performance. To cope with it, supply networks should be resilient. This study investigates the drivers of supply network resilience, viewed as adaptive capacity to disruptions, focusing on trust and investigating the moderating role of network topology on the relationship between trust and resilience

Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV)-based order picking (OP) systems, also known as Robotic Mobile Fulfilment Systems, continues to receive attention in industry and academia since their introduction as Kiva systems. A key component of AGV-based OP systems is the ‘robots’ (or AGVs) that pick up the ‘pods’ and transport them to the appropriate pick station (PS), where a picker picks the items ordered by

ABSTRACT Kriging interpolation is a spatial interpolation method widely employed in the field of data analytics and prediction of environmental variables, which provides the best linear unbiased prediction of intermediate values. The core principle of Kriging interpolation is searching for data distribution regularity and predicting regionalised variable value, and it can be transferred into two descriptions

The last mile relief network is the final stage of the relief chain but the most critical stage for ensuring the timely delivery of relief supplies after a disaster. Due to the suddenness of the disaster, balancing the shortages of relief supplies and the high demands of victims is a serious problem. We introduce a mixed transport way of relief supply transportation between points of distributions

Storage and retrieval automation has progressed rapidly. One such popular storage and retrieval system deploys two passing aisle-bound cranes. Each crane can access every location in the rack. To pass the other crane and prevent collision, each crane has to timely move the platform to an appropriate level and simultaneously rotate it. We develop a queuing model with preemptive-resume interrupted service

ABSTRACT The rapid increase in daily transactions poses severe challenges for Chinese flower auction centres, including more frequent travels for distribution workers and longer waiting times for buyers. Two distinctive features of Chinese flower auctions further complicate the studied process: buyer identities and purchased volumes of present buyers are not known in advance. Buyer identities become

(2020). Special issue on sustainability with innovation for manufacturing and supply chain management. International Journal of Production Research: Vol. 58, Special Issue on Sustainability with Innovation for Manufacturing and Supply Chain Management, pp. 7311-7313.

To overcome disability and default in process quality control and failure of traditional quality management in job shop manufacturing and customised orders, which are important issues in lean production, we investigate a sustainable quality control of plant-wide production process. In this paper, we construct the mechanisms consisting of pre-production quality prevention, quality control of production

ABSTRACT The use of assistive technologies, such as digital instructions (DIs) and collaborative robots (cobots), can improve the productivity of assembly system. However, their implementation remains arbitrary. In this study, a decision support system based on tactical-level variables (i.e. throughput, operator and equipment cost, operation time and type) was proposed with the aim of suggesting when

Current courier networks in metropolitan areas are characterised by utilising fleets of vans that perform collection and distribution routes independently. This results in long stem distances, low load factors and high environmental costs. Joint delivery systems have the potential to reduce the distances of pick-up and drop-off routes. In this context, parcel lockers can be utilised to transfer goods

Workload Control withholds orders from the shop floor in a backlog from which they are released to meet certain performance metrics. This release decision precedes the execution of orders at shop floor stations. For each station there are consequently three types of workload: indirect, released work that is still upstream of the station; direct, work that is currently at the station; and, completed

This study evaluates the antecedents and consequences of supply chain risk management capabilities. Informed by the information processing theory, we conceptualize supply chain disruption orientation as an organic control and supply chain visibility as a mechanistic control. Both control mechanisms build the information processing capacities, which need to fit with the information processing requirements

ABSTRACT Integrated parameter design and tolerance design (IPTD) is an effective way to improve product quality and reduce manufacturing cost in micro-manufacturing processes. However, the current modeling techniques rarely analyze the influence of model uncertainty on the optimal machining parameters. It may not obtain the robust optimal machining parameters due to model uncertainty. This paper proposes

To overcome disability and default in process quality control and failure of traditional quality management in job shop manufacturing and customised orders, which are important issues in lean production, we investigate a sustainable quality control of plant-wide production process. In this paper, we construct the mechanisms consisting of pre-production quality prevention, quality control of production

ABSTRACT In this paper, we investigate a two-echelon, two-product Supply Chain (SC) inspired by a real-world production/distribution firm, in which the product change-over time, necessary to switch from a product to another, induces a variable capacity in the factory. Such a varying production capacity is further exacerbated by the machine breakdowns that may occur in the manufacturing system. Since

ABSTRACT This paper presents a mixed integer linear programming formulation for optimisation of cybersecurity investment in Industry 4.0 supply chains. Using a recursive linearisation procedure, a complex nonlinear stochastic combinatorial optimisation model with a classical exponential function of breach probability is transformed into its linear equivalent. The obtained linear optimisation model

Hospitals purchase medical supplies from the dealer on consignment contracts. Dealer provides a return policy for unused inventory but charging a return fee. Two hospitals could share inventory which reduces the amount of return to the dealer. Motivated by this consignment contract policy for the medical supply chain, we develop a common dealer and two independent retailers framework that considers

(2020). A Lagrangian heuristic for minimising risk using multiple heterogeneous metrology tools. International Journal of Production Research. Ahead of Print.

The Line Feeding Problem (LFP) involves the delivery of components to the production area. Previous models minimise the delivery costs and optimally assign each component to a line feeding mode between line stocking, kitting, and sequencing but cannot provide easily comprehensible guidelines. We use the Classification And Regression Tree (CART) algorithm to develop, in a supervised way, a decision

Cross-docking is a logistics process in which products are unloaded through receiving docks and then transferred to shipping docks with almost no storage in between. In this paper, a mixed integer linear programming model (MILP) is proposed to optimise the scheduling, storage, assignment and sequencing of trucks at receiving and shipping docks for a problem inspired from a multiple-door cross-dock

ABSTRACT During the process of cloud manufacturing, various uncertainties in the real world could have a significant impact on the smooth execution of task, and could render the planned composite manufacturing service (CMS) inefficient or even ineffective. Therefore, this paper proposes an optimal selection method to enhance the robustness of CMS during the planning stage. Firstly, the structure of

ABSTRACT Closed-loop supply chains (CLSC) for food products mostly focus on the recovery of the residual value of food itself. Food packaging that plays an important role in food supply chain has rarely been studied. This paper aims to investigate an integrated multi-period closed-loop food supply chain planning problem with returnable transport items (RTIs) in which the total profit and the environmental

ABSTRACT Reconfigurable machine tool (RMT) is the core facility of the reconfigurable manufacturing system (RMS), which can provide customised flexibility for RMS through reconfiguration. The reconfiguration of RMT is complicated due to unpredictable changes in demand and the flexibility of RMT, where new RMT should be designed to satisfy the new demand. The concept of digital twin of RMT is introduced

Several approaches for strategic and tactical integration of supply chains considering the demand management process have been proposed in the literature. However, in the context of Industry 4.0, there is a lack of studies related to the scheduling and rescheduling process integrating industries on the operational level. This paper proposes a novel hybrid flow shop rescheduling procedure to address

Industry 4.0, which describes the transformation of existing production environments toward smart factories, is implemented in ever more manufacturing companies. Smart factories offer diverse advantages such as high flexibility, dynamic scheduling, as well as accurate fault diagnosis and prediction. Hence, manufacturing companies need support for assessing which projects they should implement to transform

ABSTRACT As the number of apps in mobile application markets soars, platforms make significant promotion efforts to help new apps stand out. Some app developers adopt a sequential launch strategy with which they postpone launching the app in other platforms to be eligible for free promotion on the first-launch platform. We model an app developer that considers two platforms. Our results show that for

ABSTRACT Climate change is among the top global risks due to its growing adverse impact on businesses. However, few empirical studies address this imminent risk from a supply chain perspective. Due to a lack of established approaches for capturing complex interaction between climate change risk and supply chain performance, a three-phase mixed methodology approach was attempted. A cognitive map first

ABSTRACT In recent years, the literature has paid considerable attention to digital twin technology for the implementation of Industry 4.0 and intelligent manufacturing. Most of the literature argues that simulation models are a key platform for digital twins and considers discrete-event simulation to be a suitable method to model real dynamic manufacturing systems. However, the discrete-event simulation

Multi-stage assembly systems where the demand for components depends on the market-driven demand for end products, are commonly encountered in practice. Production Planning and Control (PPC) systems for this production context include Kanban, Materials Requirement Planning (MRP), Optimised Production Technology (OPT), and Demand Driven MRP (DDMRP). All four of these PPC systems are widely applied in