Partner selection in green supply chains using PSO – a practical approach

Partner selection is crucial to green supply chain management as the focal firm is responsible for the environmental performance of the whole supply chain. The construction of appropriate selection criteria is an essential, but often neglected pre-requisite in the partner selection process. This paper proposes a three-stage model that combines Dempster-Shafer belief acceptability theory and particle swarm optimization technique for the first time in this application. This enables optimization of both effectiveness, in its consideration of the inter-dependence of a broad range of quantitative and qualitative selection criteria, and efficiency in its use of scarce resources during the criteria construction process to be achieved simultaneously. This also enables both operational and strategic attributes can be selected at different levels of hierarchy criteria in different decision-making environments. The practical efficacy of the model is demonstrated by an application in Company ABC, a large Chinese electronic equipment and instrument manufacturer

Service innovation framework

The purpose of this study is to identify critical success factors and important approaches that service companies can utilize in the design of products, services, and programs. It is common for service companies to have design teams that are responsible for facilitating the innovation process. However, these design teams might not benefit from a systematic training and knowledge transfer process. Therefore, it is important to translate critical success factors and important approaches into a model that will serve as a common framework for both training and facilitating the innovation process. Both qualitative and quantitative research approaches were utilized in this study that included interviews, literature searches, and an e-mail survey. The research process commenced by interviewing a diverse group of organizations to identify challenges and key factors for implementing innovation. The second step of the study was comprised of a literature search to further explore the themes and approaches identified through the interview process. The final phase of the research process involved an e-mail survey that was administered to active senior and fellow members of the American Society for Quality (ASQ) to quantify the findings from the qualitative research to include the key themes and approaches. The findings from the both the qualitative and quantitative findings suggest that innovation principles, methods, and tools have a broad application for service organizations in the design of products, services, and programs. Although there was directional alignment between service organizations and all other industries, certain approaches might be more important for service organizations. The service dominant key findings were used to construct a framework comprised of design phases, design processes, analytical and ideation methods, critical success factors, and environmental factors

A Hybrid MCDM Approach to Transshipment Port Selection

Port selection is an intrinsic supply-chain problem that has substantial impact on development of local economies. Shipping business environment developed into complex system where decision making is derived from uncertain and incomplete data. In this study we present a conceptual integrated Multi-Criteria Decision solution to transshipment port selection problem based on Best-Worst MCDM and Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm. Through literature review and expert analysis, 50 relevant criteria have been identified as relevant to the transshipment port selection problem. Decision makers within liner shipping companies evaluate transshipment port selection criteria and establish ranking that is used to determine crisp solution with lowest consistency ratio. ABC based algorithm is used to reduce computational complexity and deliver a single optimal solution by solving both objective and constraint violation functions

TRIZ Future Conference 2004

TRIZ the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving is a living science and a practical methodology: millions of patents have been examined to look for principles of innovation and patterns of excellence. Large and small companies are using TRIZ to solve problems and to develop strategies for future technologies. The TRIZ Future Conference is the annual meeting of the European TRIZ Association, with contributions from everywhere in the world. The aims of the 2004 edition are the integration of TRIZ with other methodologies and the dissemination of systematic innovation practices even through SMEs: a broad spectrum of subjects in several fields debated with experts, practitioners and TRIZ newcomers

The value of a common approach to lean

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management; and, (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering; in conjunction with the Leaders for Manufacturing Program at MIT, 2004.Includes bibliographical references (p. 83-84).ABB is a world leader in power and automation technologies working to enable utility and industry customers to improve operations. Competition in these markets is increasing and in order to retain their competitive position, ABB must strive to improve their operations by reducing costs and delivery times. Most ABB factories still operate on push principles with long throughput time, high inventories, and high overhead In order to remain competitive these factories have decided to transform their businesses reduce costs and increase speed. The strategy to achieve this in the power technologies distribution transformer (PTDT) factories is to develop a standard approach to lean manufacturing for implementation in factories around the world. The thesis will describe standard approaches to lean proposed by academics and used by other leading companies; analyzing at the frameworks used including implementation practices, tools, and results. With an understanding of how other companies implement lean manufacturing techniques, this thesis will then describe the creation of a standard approach to lean for ABB PTDT factories, examining the methodology of the approach including the implementation process, common production practices, tools used, and evaluation techniques. Two case studies will be used to describe the implementation of these lean manufacturing techniques at the Monselice, Italy and Zaragoza, Spain factories. Using the Monselice and Zaragoza case studies, along with results seen by other companies, this thesis will analyze the benefits of a standard approach to lean as it relates to the creation of a corporate culture; improvements in implementation results, and increasing ease of implementation.by Michelle Elisabeth Bernson.S.M

An overview of fuzzy techniques in supply chain management: bibliometrics, methodologies, applications and future directions

Every practice in supply chain management (SCM) requires decision making. However, due to the complexity of evaluated objects and the cognitive limitations of individuals, the decision information given by experts is often fuzzy, which may make it difficult to make decisions. In this regard, many scholars applied fuzzy techniques to solve decision making problems in SCM. Although there were review papers about either fuzzy methods or SCM, most of them did not use bibliometrics methods or did not consider fuzzy sets theory-based techniques comprehensively in SCM. In this paper, for the purpose of analyzing the advances of fuzzy techniques in SCM, we review 301 relevant papers from 1998 to 2020. By the analyses in terms of bibliometrics, methodologies and applications, publication trends, popular methods such as fuzzy MCDM methods, and hot applications such as supplier selection, are found. Finally, we propose future directions regarding fuzzy techniques in SCM. It is hoped that this paper would be helpful for scholars and practitioners in the field of fuzzy decision making and SCM

Analysis of manufacturing operations using knowledge- Enriched aggregate process planning

Knowledge-Enriched Aggregate Process Planning is concerned with the problem of supporting agile design and manufacture by making process planning feedback integral to the design function. A novel Digital Enterprise Technology framework (Maropoulos 2003) provides the technical context and is the basis for the integration of the methods with existing technologies for enterprise-wide product development. The work is based upon the assertion that, to assure success when developing new products, the technical and qualitative evaluation of process plans must be carried out as early as possible. An intelligent exploration methodology is presented for the technical evaluation of the many alternative manufacturing options which are feasible during the conceptual and embodiment design phases. 'Data resistant' aggregate product, process and resource models are the foundation of these planning methods. From the low-level attributes of these models, aggregate methods to generate suitable alternative process plans and estimate Quality, Cost and Delivery (QCD) have been created. The reliance on QCD metrics in process planning neglects the importance of tacit knowledge that people use to make everyday decisions and express their professional judgement in design. Hence, the research also advances the core aggregate planning theories by developing knowledge-enrichment methods for measuring and analysing qualitative factors as an additional indicator of manufacturing performance, which can be used to compute the potential of a process plan. The application of these methods allows the designer to make a comparative estimation of manufacturability for design alternatives. Ultimately, this research should translate into significant reductions in both design costs and product development time and create synergy between the product design and the manufacturing system that will be used to make it. The efficacy of the methodology was proved through the development of an experimental computer system (called CAPABLE Space) which used real industrial data, from a leading UK satellite manufacturer to validate the industrial benefits and promote the commercial exploitation of the research