The smart manufacturing systems (SMS) offer several advantages compared to the traditional manufacturing systems and are increasingly being adopted by manufacturing organizations as a strategy to improve their performance. Developing an SMS is expensive and complicated, integrating together various technologies such as automation, data exchanges, cyber-physical systems (CPS), artificial intelligence

This paper aims to investigate the emerging trend of a new warranty policy in industries, namely, complimentary extended warranty. For the warranty with complimentary extended service, customers can enjoy a free extended warranty if they register online before expiration of the base warranty. At present, with frequent technological innovations, customers are more willing to replace the product instead

Via the empirical evidences from Airbnb from eight major cities in U.S., we examine the role of information disclosure in influencing consumers' purchase behavior on this sharing economy platform. We analyze information disclosure from four aspects – namely, what information (i.e., information content), from where (i.e., information source), in what format (information presentation format), and how

As a widely used inventory management technique, multiple criteria ABC analysis is an effective way to classify inventory items into prioritized classes. Various methods have been proposed to solve the problem of multiple criteria ABC analysis. However, the information provided by experts or experienced managers is typically taken without any doubt in existing research. Little attention has been paid

Cleaning of waste in a production system under a sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) is the main issue for many industries. For this reason, the combined effects of improved quality of products and controlling carbon emission are very essential for any sustainable supply chain management. Business managers control the production process in order to reduce total sustainable supply chain cost

Industry 4.0 foresees benefits to companies and is supported by technologies such as Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), Internet of Things (IoT), Internet of Services (IoS), among others. CPS, one of Industry 4.0's key technologies, can be applied in many areas including health, mobility, production and logistics. The partial or total incorporation of CPS technologies into internal logistics equipment can

This paper proposes a supply chain game that is composed of two firms, one supplier and one retailer. The supplier sells goods to the retailer and sets the service strategy efforts. The retailer determines the optimal quantity to purchase and the selling price. The supply chain can be managed through either a traditional online platform or a blockchain. In the former, firms face business risks due

In recent times, Supply chains are required to undergo the structural changes in order to adapt to the positive events such as Industry 4.0 and negative events such as natural and man-made disasters. Both positive and negative events tend to cause disruptions and affect business operations continuity. Supplier selection, being the critical and foremost activity must ensure that selected suppliers are

Industry 4.0 technologies provide digital solutions for the automation of manufacturing. In circular economy-based models, the resources stay in the system as it experiences one of the 10 R (Refuse, Rethink, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Refurbish, Remanufacture, Repurpose, Recycle, and Recover) processes. These 10 R processes require the development of advanced manufacturing capabilities; however, 10 R processes

Physicians' active engagement is a critical part of sustaining online health communities (OHCs) development. Gamification design can be leveraged to invoke physicians' gameful experience, better motivating their engagement in OHCs. However, it can also create inequality of economic returns among physicians, causing harm to these communities. Drawing on this operational paradox, this paper empirically

Supply chain gap analysis is a practical method for quantitatively measuring the gap between the current state and a desired/ideal state in a supply chain, and generating a list of corrective actions to eliminate this gap and reach a desired/ideal level in supply chain goals. We propose a novel multi-objective co-evolutionary approach for supply chain gap analysis by hybridizing two well-known algorithms

Lean Six Sigma (LSS) is a hybrid initiative that identifies customer desires, eliminates wastes and reduces variability. It combines Six Sigma's structured problem solving using statistical tools with lean operation's emphasis on flow improvement. Prior studies have developed scales to measure Lean or Six Sigma, but have not developed a measurement instrument for the hybrid approach. The present study

Due to rapid advances in technology and design, firms periodically release new generations of electronic products such as mobile phones and computers. In order to increase product variability, firms may wish to develop a multiple-generation product line rather than replace the older versions with new ones. However, when multiple generations are available in the market, different generations compete

The purpose of this study is to explore the drivers and value-relevance of corporate social responsibility performance in the logistics sector by particularly focusing on board characteristics and ownership structure. Corporate social responsibility performance is measured with a composite ESG (environmental, social, and governance) score and with its three sub-dimensions between 2011 and 2018. Fixed

Ensuring food quality and safety in a fiercely competitive market is one of the most important tasks of a food company. An emerging conflict in operations management and production economics has arisen from the varied interpretations of the roles and effects of safety management systems. Although most studies have confirmed that Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) is an effective management

While the predominant pricing scheme for services is a set of long-term contracts stipulating a fixed fee for a level of usage, many service providers now offer flexible contracts. These contracts include flexibility in usage level and the option to opt out of the service in certain time periods. We study the effectiveness of flexible contracts in aligning the interests between the service provider

Aiming at the unique characteristics of agro-food supply chain, this study builds a comprehensive model to investigate the impact of agro-food supply chain integration, composed of internal, supplier and customer integration, on agro-food product quality and financial performance. It explores the relationships among these factors using the data from 162 Chinese agro-food processing businesses. The

This study examines a dual-channel supply chain structure, in which the retailer and e-commerce platform can free ride the other’s sales efforts and the e-commerce platform can provide online finance services to the capital-constrained supplier. This study proves that bidirectional free riding under online finance can provide extra benefits to supply chain participants such as boosting total market

Blockchain technology has gained global attention with potential to revolutionize supply chain management and sustainability achievements. The few applied ongoing use cases include blockchain for food, healthcare, and logistics supply chains have emphasized blockchain's untapped potential. Potential support for supply chain and sustainability issues include improving efficiency, transparency, and traceability

Demand forecasting is of major importance for manufacturing companies since it provides a basis for production planning. However, demand forecasting can be a difficult task because customer demands often fluctuate due to several influences. Methods of nonlinear dynamics have shown promising results in numerous applications but they have mostly been neglected in the context of demand forecasting. This

Retailers that offer perishable items are required to make hundreds of ordering decisions on a daily basis. For certain products, it is even necessary to make intraday decisions in order to increase the freshness of the goods while still serving the demand. We present a use case from the bakery domain where a part of the assortment has to be baked during the day as the delivered goods are not ready

In this paper, through the lens of contingency theory, we examine how manufacturing strategic alignment and process integration affect manufacturing plant performance under two distinct environmental contexts presented by long-term macroeconomic instability. A large-scale dataset was specifically assembled for the purpose of this research investigation by combining plant-level survey data on practices

Emergency departments (EDs) across the world are experiencing severe crowding and prolonged patient wait times for hospital admissions (a.k.a. patient “boarding”). Using data from a major healthcare system, we show that EDs suffer from severe boarding not only due to a high level of hospital inpatient bed occupancy but also due to reactive coordination of inpatient bed management activities. To reduce

With increasing supply chain complexity, companies strive to enhance the visibility in their supply chains, but with a spanning network across national borders, it is essential to consider dissimilar cultural behavior. Thus, this paper aims to analyze the role of dissimilar national-cultural behaviors on supply chain visibility (SCV), and to evaluate how companies can adapt to these behavioral characteristics

Manufacturing-enabling technologies (MET) play a key role in increasing the reliability of manufacturing processes, and help accelerate new product development and testing. Manufacturing firms are, however, often reluctant to develop MET themselves, as these may not be part of their core competencies nor easily appropriable. Government support can play a vital role in overcoming these barriers for

Despite a growing research interest in innovation strategies i.e. new product development, very few studies explore how the regional environmental mechanism is inherent in the link between new product development and sustainable business performance of small and medium manufacturing enterprises (SMMEs) in Asian countries, due to high-velocity business environments. To address this research gap, the

Truck Appointment System (TAS) is a very common IT system used by marine container ports. At multi-terminal ports, each terminal normally operates its TAS independently, and there is a lack of coordination on how time slots are allocated to trucks across TASs. This is one of the major reasons for truck congestions in port hinterland areas. In this study, a concept of Tradable Truck Permit(TTP), which

In China, small and medium enterprises (SME) contribute to more than 75% of urban employment opportunities and more than 50% national fiscal revenue. This study uses survey data from 138 small and medium firms in China to explore the impact of supply chain practices and quality management on firm business performances. Business performances include market share performance and innovation performance

We study a problem where – given a railway network and different fleets – we have to locate maintenance locations and allocate the fleets to these locations. The allocation of fleets to the maintenance locations complicates the maintenance location routing problem. For each candidate location different facility sizes can be chosen and for each size there is an associated annual facility cost that captures

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become increasingly important for manufacturers to satisfy the escalating societal expectations for environmentally and socially responsible operations. However, the extant research on CSR has mainly focused on large manufacturers with less attention for small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises (SMMEs). Drawing upon signaling theory, this study investigates

We consider financing and coordinating issues in a supply chain with one supplier (she) and one manufacturer (he), where the supplier is capital-constrained and her production yield is random. Facing shortage of capital, the supplier may use two financing sources to facilitate her production: bank loan from a commercial bank, or advance payment from the manufacturer. Taking the supply chain with centralized

Advertisement is one of the most effective ways to spread out the popularity of the product for all categories of customers. Consequently, this has a direct impact to aggrandize product's demand to a great extent. On the other hand, if the maximum lifetime of a product is expired once then it can neither be useable nor be re-useable. Thus the date of maximum life time of the product is an essential

For the sake of better coping with the problem of material procurement, a multi-objective optimisation model was established in a systematic analysis framework for material procurement considering supply risk. First, this paper combs and identifies supply risk factors and constructs a supply risk evaluation system from the dimensions of quality, price, delivery, service and technology. Second, based

The resource-based view (RBV) has long been adopted in strategic management research, but its use in operations management (OM) research is relatively new. Many empirical studies based upon RBV have investigated OM functions/capabilities and their impacts on business performance. Despite the considerable amount of research that has been conducted, there is no meta-analysis of application of RBV in

Remanufacturing is one of the most examined topics in the closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) literature. However, we still have limited knowledge on the characteristics of the market for remanufactured products. This study addresses this gap by using a big data analytics framework. We employ off-the-shelf, pre-trained vectors created with the Global Vectors for Word Representation (GloVe) word embedding

Despite its recognized importance at the regulatory level, little attention has been paid to racial issues in the context of buyer-supplier relationships. To help address these limitations the current manuscript explores the impact of race in the supplier selection process. We used a scenario-based experiment approach across two studies conducted in the United States with 596 American buyer managers

The ongoing shift from product-centric to consumer-centric operations highlights the market pressures that force organizations to stand out by satisfying customers. One way to achieve a smooth transition to the consumer-centric operation is to minimize the internal conflicts and improve the processes of demand-generating (marketing) and product-generating (manufacturing) functions. The collaboration

The Bullwhip Effect manifests itself in the form of an increased order and inventory variability in the uppermost nodes of the supply chain. This dynamic phenomenon is not yet well understood in closed-loop supply chain settings, despite their growing importance in modern societies pursuing circular economy opportunities. Indeed, the problem-specific literature has provided somewhat conflicting findings

When organizations introduce programs to trade in old products for remanufactured ones to promote remanufacturing, they offer two options to consumers: buying new products or trading in for remanufactured products, where the latter is a new practice. While most of the extant literature considers only the single reference price effect, there are quality differences in the problem of trading in for remanufactured

In this paper, we consider a supply chain with one supplier and two competing retailers. We make a major contribution by studying simultaneous inventory competition and transshipment between the retailers. Specifically, we focus on the following research questions: how should the retailers order before demand uncertainty is realized? How should they transship between themselves after demand uncertainty

Supply chain quality management (SCQM) has been viewed as a critical method for a manufacturer's management of product recalls. This study aims to empirically investigate the impact of SCQM practices on product recall capability using a sensemaking perspective. We adopt a multi-method approach by combining case study and quantitative survey methods. This study selects three manufacturers from the food

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a popular and important strategy for businesses to improve ethical behaviours in order to achieve economic sustainable development. Indeed, many social or environmental incidents that occur in one supply chain member could bring huge risks or disruptions for the entire supply chain. Yet the existent CSR studies rarely take buyers and suppliers into consideration

A major responsibility of purchasing professionals is to monitor the performance of suppliers in their supply chain system. Governance relates to processes and decisions that seek to define actions, and verify supplier performance. Governance mechanisms are the tools in which power and risk are stabilized in interorganizational relationships. As a governance mechanism, supplier development programs

Managing customer returns is a crucial issue for the retailing industry. In this paper, we develop a model to investigate a monopolistic retailer's customer returns management strategy. The retailer should determine its returns policy: a money-back guarantee (MBG) or no-refund. If an MBG returns policy is offered, the retailer must also decide whether or not to sell the returned products as open-box

This paper studies the spatial-temporal hedging coordination problem. In the prefabricated housing production, the heavy double handling cost is the major reason that causes profit loss of project manager. The spatial-temporal method is capable of mitigating this double handling cost by reducing assembly time uncertainty and on-site congestion probability substantially. However, adopting hedging methods

The logistics and supply chain management (SCM) field is experimenting with the integration of blockchain, a cutting-edge, and highly disruptive technology. Yet, blockchain is still nascent, and the extant literature on this technology is scarce, especially as regards the relationship between blockchain and SCM. Additionally, existing studies have not yet addressed sufficiently the enablers of blockchain

In this study, we consider two firms in a supply chain, namely an upstream firm and a downstream firm. The downstream firm sources products from the upstream firm for the further production and makes sales to the final consumers, and each firm strives to reduce carbon emissions. We find that one firm’s support on another firm to reduce carbon emissions always benefits all players in the supply chain

We consider a supplier–buyer chain where the supplier sells a single product to the buyer over a single-period selling season, but the initial inventory level at the buyer’s location is not observable to the supplier and should be reported to the supplier. The interaction between the supplier and the buyer is modeled as a Stackelberg game with asymmetric inventory information. The key feature of our

We analyze in a game-theoretic framework the sequential product positioning problem of two asymmetric firms with different quality levels on a platform when network effects present, where the negative influences of product differentiation on product compatibility are explicitly considered. We obtain closed-form solutions to the positioning problem, and reveal that whether the traditional wisdom of

Recently, there has been increasing attention on the speed versus quality paradox in operations and innovation management literature. This study examines the innovation speed-quality paradox on operational performance in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from high-tech industries. Specifically, we seek to understand how R&D investment with organizational risk influences the innovation speed-quality

The fourth industrial revolution, also labelled Industry 4.0, was beget with emergent and disruptive intelligence and information technologies. These new technologies are enabling ever-higher levels of production efficiencies. They also have the potential to dramatically influence social and environmental sustainable development. Organizations need to consider Industry 4.0 technologies contribution

This paper considers a two-echelon pharmaceutical supply chain comprising two pharmaceutical manufacturers and a pharmacy. We derive optimal decisions for three different supply chain power structures considering two scenarios: one scenario featuring quality regulation, and one without. By comparing the equilibriums of the two regulatory scenarios under different power structures, we then evaluate

Unlike most of the available configuration solutions, the integrated sales, product and production configuration is proposed to help companies realize product customization from a holistic view. It achieves this by determining the functional features (i.e., sales configuration), possible product alternatives (i.e., product configuration), and production process alternatives (i.e., production configuration)

Digital technologies for Industry 4.0, such as the Internet of Things, cloud computing, big data and analytics, have attracted much attention from both researchers and practitioners. Based on information processing theory, this study intends to explore how digital technologies influence economic and environmental performance in the new era of Industry 4.0. The mediating effect of digital supply chain

This paper provides a risk assessment framework to select shipping lanes for pharmaceutical products. The main categories of risks are determined through an algorithm based on yes/no decisions. Then, according to the risk categories, a Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) table is proposed for risk assessment of pharmaceutical product shipments and logistics. The evaluations are based on Intuitionistic

Recent research on real options does not only consider optimal investment decisions under risk, but also under ambiguity. However, most models that allow for ambiguity are generally not dynamically consistent. Examples are, among others, the α-MEU model, the imprecision aversion model, or the NMEU model. Dynamic consistency is however required to solve optimal stopping real options problems analytically

In project appraisal under uncertainty, the economic reliability of a measure of financial efficiency such as a rate of return depends on its strong NPV-consistency, meaning that the performance metric (i) supplies the same recommendation in accept–reject decisions as the NPV, (ii) ranks competing projects in the same way as the NPV, (iii) has the same sensitivity to perturbations in the input data

We study the optimal pricing and return policy, and the value of freight insurance for a retailer selling a product to heterogeneous consumers with uncertain values of the product. For the case with no return freight cost, we find that the optimal sale price and refund depend on the heterogeneity of consumers and the proportion of high-value consumers. When consumer heterogeneity is relatively high

Omni-channel retailing is a popular strategy in a new retailing era when digitalization, social media, big data and other emerging technologies (e.g., Artificial Intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), blockchain, etc.) are transforming the retail business models. Meanwhile, omni-channel related operations impose a challenge on either well-established firms or new setups that