As business systems become more complex with retailers and manufacturers both competing in a dynamic environment, the reduction of operational variation has become crucial for both demand and inventory management. This is why many firms have undertaken lean or six-sigma programs as a means for understanding and addressing this variance. Much of this variation can be mitigated through the integration

This study investigates the financial leveraging effect of a final assembler’s sourcing strategies in a multi-tier supply chain—a three-tier supply chain consisting of a large final assembler (FA), a first-tier supplier (S1), and a second-tier supplier (S2). From the perspective of FA, we consider two sourcing and four financing strategies. The two sourcing strategies entail delegating component procurement

Consumers expect global apparel suppliers to adhere to strict social sustainability standards following several deadly noncompliance incidents. This study provides a unique contribution to social sustainability governance by utilizing a causal-effect analysis to classify noncompliance antecedents into causal and effect groups and analyze the interactions. Combining a structured Delphi technique, involving

Although cross-shareholding has increasingly been adopted in the industry to improve strategic synergy between companies, its role in the green supply chain is seldom investigated. By employing a Stackelberg game model, this paper investigates how the mechanism of cross-shareholding affects operational behaviour in a green supply chain. Specifically, we examine how cross-shareholding affects pricing

Electric vehicle batteries should normally be removed from electric vehicles when their power capacity fall to 70% ∼ 80% of new batteries. However, removed batteries can still be secondary used for other purposes, such as energy storage, before remanufacturing. To promote electric vehicle battery secondary use, this research studies a two-period battery secondary use closed-loop supply chain model

In this paper we compare the two basic risk preference measures suggested independently by John W. Pratt (1964) and Kenneth J. Arrow (1965) as to their impact on simple production decisions with uncertain economic outcomes. We develop a further related concept by introducing a risk aversion leverage measuring the dependence of absolute risk aversion on wealth. We also discover a remarkable approximate

We analyze the lead time syndrome (LTS), which describes a positive feedback loop between lead time updating and increasing order quantities. While previous studies have focused on theoretical analysis and anecdotal evidence, we examine the impact of human decision making with the help of controlled laboratory studies using a novel experimental design of a simple two tier supply chain. We show that

Based on two formats of books − paper book and electronic book, book publishers often sell their products to online consumers through e-tailers by adopting reselling mode and agency selling mode simultaneously. This paper develops a dynamic pricing game model on basis of a long-term gradient adjustment mechanism for a book supply chain that consists of a publisher and an e-tailer, and focuses on the

Reduced time-to-market (TTM) is mandatory in new product development, especially in uncertain environments. The capabilities for reducing TTM are well known in the literature. However, to the best of our knowledge, no study aims to present the mutual influence between these capabilities and drivers for reducing TTM. Moreover, this subject is insufficiently understood regarding start-ups, the focus

In this erratum, we correct a typo in the values set for the parameters θ and μ, which appear in our paper “Trade-in and save: A two-period closed-loop supply chain game with price and technology dependent returns” (Genc and De Giovanni, 2017).

There are approximately 1,000,000 ISO 9001 certified companies worldwide. Every year, one third of these companies must decide whether to renew, or not, their certificate. The number of companies that abandon or lose the certificate has been growing and reached an average of 60,000 per year. Considering that there is currently no theory or model to explain this propensity of firms to decertify (18%)

This article considers an incumbent's product innovation decision within an uncertain framework, where the firm decides whether to continue selling the established product. The model being dynamic allows to analyze the trade-off between an early innovation where the new product only slightly improves the existing one, or innovating late with a much better new product. We find that the effect of uncertainty

In platform competition, users get on board because of network effects, and they shape a distinct platform service supply chain (PSSC) structure contingent upon the participation decision of both sides, which can be: both sides single-homing (SH–SH), buyers single-homing and sellers partially multi-homing (SH–MH), buyers partially multi-homing and sellers single-homing (MH–SH), and both sides partially

Assessing the relationship between supply chain performance and organizational culture can help to predict scenarios and improve decision-making. However, this relationship is rarely explored due to the complexity of quantitatively addressing its natural subjectivity. Although soft computing techniques would have the potential to overcome this limitation, they have been rarely applied to this context

A considerable literature has grown up around the theme of the impact of knowledge spillover on the firm's innovation performance. Nevertheless, few literatures draw on any research into the impact of transnational knowledge spillover on innovation quality, especially from conscious and unconscious perspectives. What's more, it has been proven that absorptive capacity plays a crucial role on innovation

In this paper, we investigate a supply chain where two competing suppliers sell substitutable products through a common retailer who faces price-dependent stochastic demand. The retailer jointly decides the order quantity and the retail price for each product. Unlike most existing research assuming customer homogeneity, we divide the customers into two types: i) the price-sensitive type and ii) the

The procurement of products and services is a critical and challenging process for humanitarian organizations (HOs), accounting for approximately 65% of the costs of relief operations. Despite its importance, procurement in humanitarian operations remains under examined. This study reviews 51 scholarly articles related to procurement in the context of humanitarian operations and analyzes them from

We develop a two-period, five-stage game model with sharing utility to analyze how a manufacturer competes with a sharing economy platform that facilitates sharing of the manufacturer’s product from both a long-run and a short-run perspective. We use the subgame perfect Nash equilibrium to reveal how the manufacturer chooses its long-run (period-1) price to foster an owner base (a collection of the

We study a supplier selection and order quantity allocation problem in a two-stage supply chain, which is composed of a set of potential suppliers and a single buyer/retailer trading one product. The demand at the buyer's stage is price-sensitive and suppliers have finite production rates. Within this framework, the optimization of the supply chain is evaluated by considering the performance of both

Understanding what drives quality in the delivery of healthcare services is critical to improve the patient care experience. In a hospital, the integration of technology platforms and effective teamwork promote quality care, but this outcome requires that hospital leadership prioritizes technology integration and commits resources to sustain effective healthcare delivery teams. Some of these concepts

Most model based studies on project uncertainty investigate a single source of uncertainty, with a dominant focus on stochastic activity durations. However, another major uncertainty facing engineering projects is that of changes in design troughout the project delivery. This may come from uncertainty in the market, technology, or regulations, leading to changes in design and implementation paths,

A structured conceptualization method, concept mapping, is applied to visualize the conceptual domain of explicit and tacit quality linkages in a complex, causally ambiguous production system of a premium automotive OEM. Experts, intimately familiar with all facets of the conceptual domain, defined sources of quality problems and rated their impact on product quality. These inputs, formative measures

Existing network planning models for electric vehicle (EV) services usually treat the battery swap and the on-board supercharging as two independent processes. This study makes an early attempt to design an EV charging network where battery swap and supercharging are jointly coordinated. The swap and supercharge processes are characterized by Erlang B and Erlang C priority queues, respectively. A strategic

Due to the main peculiarities of spare parts, i.e. intermittent demands, long procurement lead times and high downtime costs when the parts are not available on time, it is often difficult to find the optimal inventory level. Recently, Additive Manufacturing (AM) has emerged as a promising technique to improve spare parts inventory management thanks to a ‘print on demand’ approach. So far, however

On-demand logistics platform has been developed rapidly to respond increasingly customized demands. Many platform-based enterprises are facing difficulties in operating that resulting in inefficient resource allocation, high costs and top-down centralized decision-making process so that unsustainable on-demand delivery is an existing challenge. Such a platform service supply chain is highly influenced

In supply chains, businesses compete to meet customer requirements by leveraging their competitive operational capabilities. In this paper, the manufacturer in its supply chain, faces uncertain market demand environment. Based on the products, operations and demand information, the manufacturer makes decisions to design its manufacturing system that saves time and effort in the production process.

This paper examines pricing and replenishment decisions for seasonal and nonseasonal products in a three-echelon shared supply chain. We adopt a time-varying demand function and propose two models (off-season and peak season) for seasonal products, three models for nonseasonal products based on the relative dominance of nonplatform members in the case of the complete information game, and a static

Product-service system (PSS) business models appraise the relationship between different stakeholders and focus on a partnership based on profit. Existing literature discusses servitization and the associated cost-benefit analysis (CBA) models mostly from the perspective of original equipment manufacturers. Additionally, CBA is typically conducted using top-down approaches and standard activity-based

Though supplier performance measurement systems (SPMS) provide a key tool for buyers to govern supplier relationships and performance, they can have a detrimental impact on trust and commitment, when perceived as just a means of control. SPMS are particularly valuable in sectors characterized by high complexity and variability of supplier performance, such construction. In projects with public sector

The fourth industrial revolution we currently witness changes the role of humans in operations systems. Although automation and assistance technologies are becoming more prevalent in production and logistics, there is consensus that humans will remain an essential part of operations systems. Nevertheless, human factors are still underrepresented in this research stream resulting in an important research

The integration of the outbound and the inbound logistics of a company leads to a large transportation network, allowing to detect backhauling opportunities to increase the efficiency of the transportation. In collaborative networks, backhauling is used to find profitable services in the return trip to the depot and to reduce empty running of vehicles. This work investigates the vertical collaboration

Blockchain is a distributed technology that supports financial operations and also helps establish a secure and trustworthy system for product provenance authentication. In the real world, blockchain based product provenance authentication (BPPA) platforms are developed to help certify products such as diamond. In this paper, we theoretically examine the initial coin offerings (ICO) project of such

The fourth-party platform provides an alternative consumption channel that greatly saves transaction costs. As a new e-commerce phenomenon that appears more in the service industry, it integrates the original third-party platforms and is about to gain considerable development. This paper investigates whether it is favorable for a third-party platform to join the fourth-party platform. The best choice

Implementations of a deposit-refund policy for waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) have engendered significant economic and environmental benefits. This deposit-refund policy typically charges disposal fees (deposits) for producing new products and offers subsidies (refunds) for recycling used products. However, as the collected disposal fees are insufficient to cover disbursed recycling

Food supply chains are nowadays perturbed by an increased supply and demand uncertainty, and more and more suffering from unexpected disruptions. In the specific context of food supply chains (FSC) for perishable products, these could be linked to natural hazards, industrial accidents or epidemics and their impact could lead to huge economic losses. The case of epidemic events has been little studied

Continuous supplier selection, evaluation and reselection are among buying firms’ key processes to improve their overall performance. This paper aims at increasing knowledge on effective and dynamic supplier evaluation and management by answering the following research question: Do performance decomposition technique and real option theory represent appropriate mechanisms to understand structural change

This study explains the constructs of a purchasing portfolio model (PPM) that defence authorities can use in practice in defence procurement and designs a segmentation model. We identify open PPM design and application questions in the literature and conduct a Delphi study with twenty experts from Swedish defence authorities to design a segmentation model that is fit-for-purpose. The paper addresses

Reputation plays an important role in assuring product quality in markets where consumers can only imperfectly judge the quality before consumption. For the retailer, reputation is a valuable asset, as consumers are more likely to trust a company that has a sound reputation. The existing literature on inventory management rarely considers demand as being affected by reputation. In this study, we develop

This paper addresses calls for understanding of the contextual conditions under which Quality Management (QM) may be effective in supporting radical and incremental innovation in a technologically dynamic sector. Particularly, formal and informal control mechanisms can play a role in such a knowledge intensive sector, where the degree of formalisation may be a constraint to explorative behaviours.

Green manufacturers are faced with decision problems whether to acquire the quality information from third-party assessment agencies and to disclose the quality information to other supply chain members. While the existing research of closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) has not considered the voluntary and mandatory information disclosure, this study considers the quality information disclosure strategies

The study introduces the concept of risk-averse optimal position of the delivery window (RA-OPDW) into a cost-based delivery performance model. The penalty costs for early and late deliveries have attracted much attention in the background of supply delivery performance. However, minimizing the expected penalty has a critical disadvantage that it ignores the risk-averse attitude of decision-makers

Cost-efficient battery cell manufacturing is a topic of intense discussion in both industry and academia, as battery costs are crucial for the market success of electrical vehicles (EVs). Based on forecasted EV growth rates, battery cell manufacturers are investing billions of dollars in new battery cell plants. Whether these billion-dollar investments are economically viable depends on the materialization

Although previous studies have advanced understanding of the effects of the Theory of Constraints (TOC) in different areas in Operations and Supply Chain Management (OSCM), a relevant knowledge gap still remains concerning how the TOC elements impact the main competitive dimensions of operations strategy, and how they can be applied to influence the strategic priorities of the firm. In order to fill

This article studies a performance-based warranty for products subject to competing hard and soft failures. The two failure modes are competing in the sense that either one, on a “whichever-comes-first” basis, can cause the product to fail. A performance-based warranty not only covers the repair or replacement of any defect, but also guarantees the minimum performance level throughout the warranty

This study investigates the role of supply chain risk management (SCRM) in mitigating the effects of disruptions impacts on supply chain resilience and robustness in the context of COVID-19 outbreak. Using structural equation modeling on a survey data from 470 French firms, the results confirm the basic tenets of resource-based view and organizational information processing theories regarding the combination

Public services such as healthcare may be offered by both free and toll service providers. Such a system, called a two-tier service system, is usually subject to congestion and often modeled as two parallel queues. Customers can choose one of three options: joining the free system, joining the toll system, or balking based on the congestion level in each service system and the toll price. This study

As energy overuse and generated pollution have a potential threat to our environmental and ecological conditions, many researchers have taken the initiative way to join the green campaign to prevent more damage to the environment. This paper investigates the main contributions related to the green vehicle routing problem (Green-VRP) and presents a classification scheme based on its variants considered

The new generation of bicycle-sharing is an O2O (online-to-offline) platform service that enables the users to access the bicycle with a smartphone App. This paper proposes a dynamic repositioning model with predicted demand, where the repositioning time interval is fixed. A data-driven Neural Network (NN) approach is introduced to forecast the bicycle-sharing demand. The repositioning objective function

We study base-stock control of a continuous review single-item inventory system with Poisson demand and lost sales. The item is supplied by an exogenous and sequential system with stochastic lead times (LTs) specified by their mean and standard deviation (SD). Define R as the square of mean/SD and define r as the smallest integer which is at least R. When R

This paper examines pathways to implement a high-performing Lean Automation (LA). We asked 61 manufacturers from Brazil and India that are undergoing a lean implementation together with the adoption of disruptive digital technologies from Industry 4.0 (I4.0) to indicate their implementation sequence. We then used multivariate data techniques to analyze the collected data. Our findings suggested three

In recent years, the big data discriminatory pricing (BDDP) behavior of the service platform has recurrently appeared in the platform service supply chain, which is considered as a scandal that is irresponsible to the consumers. Therefore, how to effectively govern the service platform has become an important research topic. Based on this background, this study considers the strategies of the service

Product development is a critical part of all business operations. In fashion apparel, product development is a complicated process. In recent years, with the advance of technologies and the growing public awareness of environmental protection, product development processes (PDPs) in supply chains, including fashion supply chains, need to be environmentally sustainable. In this paper, we first identify

We explore the optimal technology commercialization strategy of an inside innovator in the downstream of a two-tier supply chain when network effects exist via a game-theoretical framework. This setting incorporates in a unified model the two strategic incentives for the innovator to license to potential competitors for free, i.e., expanding the network size and driving down the wholesale price, thus

Short-term prediction of passenger volume is a complex but critical task to urban rail companies, which desire prediction methods with high accuracy, time efficiency and good practicality. Good prediction results of the outbound passenger volume at urban rail stations are important to the organization of passenger flow, and helpful to the arrangement of shuttles, especially in large transit junctions

Customer co-creation, the practice of involving the customer in a firm’s new product development, has received increasing attention. We develop a unique analytical model to study co-creation and examine the conditions under which co-creation is economically beneficial for both the customer and the firm. In our model, the customer and the firm determine (simultaneously or sequentially) their innovation

The importance of supplier development programs to enhance supply chain environmental capabilities has often been posited. However, the literature is limited in identifying and explaining the factors that may influence or mediate the effectiveness of such programs. This paper examines the role of environmental supplier development programs led by the buying organization on supplier environmental practices

In this piece, we consider the role of small and medium manufacturing enterprises in Asia's sustainable development. Asia has undeniably made huge leaps in its economic growth in the past three decades, however, this growth is not without a cost, especially to societal and environmental wellbeing. More recently, there are signs of increasing realization of this problem and some initiatives to ameliorate

The opportunistic behavior of parties in the supply chain leads to resource wastages. Information asymmetry and the opportunistic behavior of transacting parties in supply chains squanders the intended benefits of supply chain integration (SCI). Literature suggests that reducing information asymmetry between transacting organizations will curb their opportunistic behavior. This study investigates the

Travel scheme planning is a crucial operational-level decision to be made in travel supply chain management. We investigate an integrated self-driving travel scheme planning (ISTSP) problem to optimize routing, hotel selection, and time scheduling under several streams of personalized considerations: best site-viewing time windows, rest requirements, and preference for site visiting sequences. The