169 research outputs found

    Reducing edible food waste in the UK food manufacturing supply chain through collaboration

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    A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy.The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between food manufacturing supply chain (FMSC) collaboration, collaborative effectiveness and edible food waste (EF) waste reduction; and also identify the key dimensions of collaboration and collaborative effectiveness in the context of the FMSC. A conceptual framework was built based on thorough relevant literature review and theory. Then all items of the conceptual framework were revised by academics and practitioners. The model was empirically tested with survey data using 122 responses from food manufacturing firms, using PLS-SEM. The findings indicated that the structural paths support hypotheses that FMSC collaboration has a positive effect related to collaborative effectiveness, and collaborative effectiveness has a strong contribution in EF waste (over-production of EF waste, processing of EF waste and storage of EF waste) reduction. However, the direct impact of FMSC collaboration on EF waste (over-production of EF waste, processing of EF waste and storage of EF waste) reduction is insignificant. A mediation analysis showed that the relationship between FMSC collaboration and EF waste is fully mediated by collaborative effectiveness. This research brought relational view theory for the concept of FMSC collaboration and collaborative effectiveness into the FMSC context, which has not previously been done, and developed and validated those constructs and relationships. The UK FMSC members would benefit from applying all dimensions of FMSC collaboration in this study to their supply chain operation to achieve greater collaborative effectiveness, and that will lead to reducing EF waste

    Optimal Supply Network with Vendor Managed Inventory in a Healthcare System with RFID Investment Consideration

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    Supply Chain Management in the healthcare sector faces several significant challenges, including complexity in healthcare systems, high supply chain costs, balancing quality and costs, delay in delivery, product availability from vendors, inventory waste, and unpredictability and uncertainty. Among those challenges, having an effective inventory management system with an optimal supply network is important to improve the match between supply and demand, which would improve the performance of for healthcare firms. Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) system is a replenishment solution in which the vendor monitors and decides the time and the quantity of the inventory replenishment of their customers subject to their demand information exchange. A VMI contract in the location-inventory assignment problem is a decision tool for management in the healthcare industry, in which it enables the management to have a cost and service effective decision tool to critically re-evaluate and examine all areas of operations in a SC network looking for avenues of optimization. This dissertation is based on a real-world problem arising from one of the world\u27s leading medical implant supply company applied to a chain of hospitals in the province of Ontario. The chain of hospitals under study consists of 147 hospitals located in Ontario, Canada. The vendor is a supplier of three types of medical implants (a heart valve, an artificial knee, and a hip). In Chapter 2 of this dissertation, we present an optimal supply healthcare network with VMI and with RFID consideration, in which we shed light on the role of the VMI contract in the location-inventory assignment problem and integrate it with both the replenishment policy assignment and the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) investment allocation assignment in healthcare SC networks using both VMI and direct delivery policies. A numerical solution approach is developed in the case of the deterministic demand environment, and we end up with computational results and sensitivity analysis for a real-world problem to highlight the usefulness and validate the proposed model. We extend our research of integrating the VMI contract in the location-inventory assignment problem with the replenishment policy assignment under a deterministic demand environment to include the stochastic demand environment. The impact of the uncertainty of the demand as a random variable following two types of distributions, normal and uniform distributions, is studied in Chapter 3. Motivated by the lack of investigations and comparative studies dealing with the preference of dealing with VMI contracts to other traditional Retailer Managed Inventory (RMI) systems, we provide in Chapter 4 of this dissertation a comparative study in which we compare the total cost of the VMI system with another two situations of traditional RMI systems: first, a traditional RMI system with a continuous replenishment policy for all hospitals and with assigned storage facilities and second, a traditional RMI system with a direct delivery policy for all hospitals without assigning a storage facility. Computational results, managerial insights, sensitivity analysis, and solution methodologies are provided in this dissertation. Keywords: Vendor Managed Inventory, healthcare system, location-inventory, RFID technology, supply-chain network, stochastic demand, location-inventory assignment problem, and retailer managed Inventory

    Impact of RFID information-sharing coordination over a supply chain with reverse logistics

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    Companies have adopted environmental practices such as reverse logistics over the past few decades. However, studies show that aligning partners inside the green supply chain can be a substantial problem. This lack of coordination can increase overall supply chain cost. Information technology such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has the potential to enable decentralized supply chain coordinate their information. Even though there are research that address RFID on traditional supply chain, few researches address how to coordinate RFID information sharing in a green supply chain. We study, through simulation experiments, two types of RFID information-sharing coordination under different configurations related with their inventory policies: basic and advanced. Statistical analyses show that better results can be presented in advanced RFID configuration given new coordination and inventory policy decisions presented. In addition, these findings shows what are the RFID information-sharing coordination that can provide better system improvement depending on the supply chain scenarios and factors

    Electronic supply chain management systems in managing the bullwhip effect on selected fast moving consumer goods.

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    Ph. D. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2014.The amplitude in order variability as orders surge upstream a supply chain epitomises a phenomenon commonly called the bullwhip effect. The real consumer demand orders are comparatively and tentatively evinced less variability while trading supply chain members on the midstream and upstream stages experience the amplified order vacillations. The oscillator effect reveals a number of pernicious problems throughout the supply chain networks, as downstream sites include harmful bloated inventory and shortages with poor customer service, and the midstream and upstream sites depict the disharmonic capacity on improper planning and inconsistent scheduling in production. This study investigates the selected fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry on the amplified consumer demand order variability as orders cascade from downstream (retailers) to the midstream as well as upstream sites of the supply chain network.The effect of electronically-enabled supply chain management (e-SCM) systems remains the central hypothesis for instant information sharing on inventory positioning, integrated supply chain management processes and improved profitability through positive performance targets and outcomes across supply chain trading partners. The main objective aims to understand the on extent of the relationship to which the phenomenon of bullwhip effect can be explained by e-SCM system diffusion, optimal inventory positioning, strategic information sharing and global optimisation strategies. These seamless linkages between supply chain partners seem to entrench velocity on quasi-real-time information flow in consumer demand and supply sides, inventory status and availability, and capacity availability. This study found empirical research evidence on e-SCM systems that retail supply chain businesses have fastidiously adapted to technology clockspeed for the last five years. The majority of the respondents (92%) for both upstream and downstream echelon categories agreed that e-SCM systems have a significant role to play in mitigating the consumer demand order variability in the supply chain network. This study further discovered that the migration from in-house IT systems to integrated e-SCM systems (65%) would entrench close integration of information exchange and processes across different parts of the organisation and inter-organisational linkages. The e-SCM systems diffusion also depicted a positive linear relationship to the extent to which the organisations efficiently and timeously communicate the future strategic needs and demand order replenishments throughout the entire supply chain network. However, the access to advance economic information negatively related to e-SCM systems with the virtue of legal constraints and template-based information attachments

    Internet of Things and Modern Supply Chain Management

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    Information flow has a great influence over the flow of materials in the supply chain industry. The behavior by which the materials flow is highly affected by how the information flows throughout the organization in a smooth manner. To develop the supply chain performance and improve the efficiency of information sharing a lot of practices have been developed to achieve that target. However nowadays with the expansion of companies and having complicated structures of communication, ordinary practices cannot suffice any longer. Additionally, a lot of time is not utilized properly wasting a lot of time and lowering the efficiency of the organization. This research aim is to investigate the development of the internet of things and how when properly utilized it can make a huge impact on modern supply chain management. This research aim is to provide a theoretical basis on how companies can use internet of things to allow easier access for information throughout the organization with minimal effort. The research questions to be addressed in this research are (1), What is the impact of the internet of things on modern supply chain management (2) what are the possible improvements and future work that can be done with regards to the internet of things (3) is it easy to use. An application of internet of things in the supply chain management is developed based on literature findings. The applications aim is to take place to match between execution flexibility and information abundance. Information sharing aimed should be providing high quality information for the higher ups and management before making crucial and swift decisions. To improve the flexibility of the operations and improve the pace within the working environment information must be gathered in a swift manner. It was determined that there are several reasons behind the turbulent flow between materials flow and information flow. Numerous plan changes in response to demand changes, varying planning processes which would subsequently cause problems when designing a supply chain model to organize the information flow. Moreover, it was also found that another reason was insufficient data which resulted in the inability of sharing information between various departments

    Modelling and Determining Inventory Decisions for Improved Sustainability in Perishable Food Supply Chains

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    Since the introduction of sustainable development, industries have witnessed significant sustainability challenges. Literature shows that the food industry is concerned about its need for efficient and effective management practices in dealing with perishability and the requirements for conditioned storage and transport of food products that effect the environment. Hence, the environmental part of sustainability demonstrates its significance in this industrial sector. Despite this, there has been little research into environmentally sustainable inventory management of deteriorating items. This thesis presents mathematical modelling based research for production inventory systems in perishable food supply chains. In this study, multi-objective mixed-integer linear programming models are developed to determine economically and environmentally optimal production and inventory decisions for a two-echelon supply chain. The supply chain consists of single sourcing suppliers for raw materials and a producer who operates under a make-to-stock or make-to-order strategy. The demand facing the producer is non-stationary stochastic in nature and has requirements in terms of service level and the remaining shelf life of the marketed products. Using data from the literature, numerical examples are given in order to test and analyse these models. The computational experiments show that operational adjustments in cases where emission and cost parameters were not strongly correlated with supply chain collaboration (where suppliers and a producer operate under centralised control), emissions are effectively reduced without a significant increase in cost. The findings show that assigning a high disposal cost, limit or high weight of importance to perished goods leads to appropriate reduction of expected waste in the supply chain with no major cost increase. The research has made contributions to the literature on sustainable production and inventory management; providing formal models that can be used as an aid to understanding and as a tool for planning and improving sustainable production and inventory control in supply chains involving deteriorating items, in particular with perishable food supply chains.the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Royal Thai Government

    Green supply chain quantitative models for sustainable inventory management: A review

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    [EN] This paper provides a systematic and up-to-date review and classification of 91 studies on quantitative methods of green supply chains for sustainable inventory management. It particularly identifies the main study areas, findings and quantitative models by setting a point for future research opportunities in sustainable inventory management. It seeks to review the quantitative methods that can better contribute to deal with the environmental impact challenge. More specifically, it focuses on different supply chain designs (green supply chain, sustainable supply chain, reverse logistics, closed-loop supply chain) in a broader application context. It also identifies the most important variables and parameters in inventory modelling from a sustainable perspective. The paper also includes a comparative analysis of the different mathematical programming, simulation and statistical models, and their solution approach, with exact methods, simulation, heuristic or meta-heuristic solution algorithms, the last of which indicate the increasing attention paid by researchers in recent years. The main findings recognise mixed integer linear programming models supported by heuristic and metaheuristic algorithms as the most widely used modelling approach. Minimisation of costs and greenhouse gas emissions are the main objectives of the reviewed approaches, while social aspects are hardly addressed. The main contemplated inventory management parameters are holding costs, quantity to order, safety stock and backorders. Demand is the most frequently shared information. Finally, tactical decisions, as opposed to strategical and operational decisions, are the main ones.The research leading to these results received funding from the Grant RTI2018-101344-B-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by "ERDF A way of making Europe". It was also funded by the National Agency for Research and Development (ANID) / Scholarship Program/Doctorado Becas en el Extranjero/2020 72210174.Becerra, P.; Mula, J.; Sanchis, R. (2021). Green supply chain quantitative models for sustainable inventory management: A review. Journal of Cleaner Production. 328:1-16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.129544S11632

    Strategies to Minimize Perishable Food Loss in the Retail Grocery Business

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    Supply chain managers in the retail grocery industry face significant challenges in reducing the wastage of perishable food. Perishable food spoilage and deterioration in the retail grocery industry result in a significant loss of profitability and consumer satisfaction. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore the strategies that supply chain managers in the retail grocery business used to minimize perishable food loss. The perishable inventory theory was used as the conceptual framework. Data were collected from semistructured interviews with 6 Pennsylvania retail grocery supply chain managers who implemented strategies to minimize perishable food loss and from organizational documents. Data analysis was carried out using Yin\u27s 5-step process of compiling, disassembling, reassembling, interpreting, and concluding data. The 3 emergent themes resulting from data analysis were inventory strategy, logistics and deliveries strategy, and information technology strategy. Member checking occurred after transcription and summarization of the interview data. The findings indicated that supply chain managers use first-in-first-out approaches to inventory management, rotation, replenishment, information sharing, and on-time purchasing to minimize perishable food loss. The findings and recommendations of this study might be valuable to supply chain management and retail grocery leaders to create strategic solutions to mitigate the loss of perishable food. The findings of this study might contribute to positive social change through the reduction of perishable food loss, an increased supply of food, lower retail prices to the consumer, and improved customer satisfaction

    Application of Optimization in Production, Logistics, Inventory, Supply Chain Management and Block Chain

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    The evolution of industrial development since the 18th century is now experiencing the fourth industrial revolution. The effect of the development has propagated into almost every sector of the industry. From inventory to the circular economy, the effectiveness of technology has been fruitful for industry. The recent trends in research, with new ideas and methodologies, are included in this book. Several new ideas and business strategies are developed in the area of the supply chain management, logistics, optimization, and forecasting for the improvement of the economy of the society and the environment. The proposed technologies and ideas are either novel or help modify several other new ideas. Different real life problems with different dimensions are discussed in the book so that readers may connect with the recent issues in society and industry. The collection of the articles provides a glimpse into the new research trends in technology, business, and the environment
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