Methodologies for performance enhancement in decentralized supply chains

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Sustainable supply chain management trends in world regions: A data-driven analysis

This study proposes a data-driven analysis that describes the overall situation and reveals the factors hindering improvement in the sustainable supply chain management field. The literature has presented a summary of the evolution of sustainable supply chain management across attributes. Prior studies have evaluated different parts of the supply chain as independent entities. An integrated systematic assessment is absent in the extant literature and makes it necessary to identify potential opportunities for research direction. A hybrid of data-driven analysis, the fuzzy Delphi method, the entropy weight method and fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory is adopted to address uncertainty and complexity. This study contributes to locating the boundary of fundamental knowledge to advance future research and support practical execution. Valuable direction is provided by reviewing the existing literature to identify the critical indicators that need further examination. The results show that big data, closed-loop supply chains, industry 4.0, policy, remanufacturing, and supply chain network design are the most important indicators of future trends and disputes. The challenges and gaps among different geographical regions is offered that provides both a local viewpoint and a state-of-the-art advanced sustainable supply chain management assessment

Strategies to Minimize Perishable Food Loss in the Retail Grocery Business

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

Exploring supply chain sustainability risk in the UK fashion industry : a multiple case-study

Much has been written about fashion supply chains in recent years pertaining to the offshoring of production and sourcing by the companies in the UK fashion industry to other countries including inter alia Asia, as well as the attendant risks to such activities. Evidence suggests that businesses can experience disruptions from sustainability issues in their supply chains. In addition, there is an increasing focus on sustainability issues in global businesses and the UK fashion industry is not immune to these issues. Nevertheless, consideration of sustainability and its impact on risk pertaining to the supply chains in the UK fashion industry has not been actively pursued. Moreover, little is known about how sustainability issues manifest themselves as risks. Finally, the lack of a sustainability risk conceptualisation hinders the development of a sustainability risk management framework, which is critical to enable global fashion supply chains to survive and compete in a volatile and demand-driven sector. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to explore the phenomenon of sustainability risk and supply chain sustainability risk management processes within the context of the UK fashion industry.For the purpose of exploration, an inductive qualitative research approach and a multiple case study research method were adopted. The UK fashion industry has exhibited interesting dynamics in the last few decades. For example, UK textile and garment manufacturing has massively declined in size, yet the UK fashion industry demonstrates fierce competition and retailer concentration. Therefore, five fashion companies were theoretically sampled from the UK fashion industry. The selected companies were a good mix of small and medium size. All carried out their major operations such as sourcing, manufacturing, distribution, warehousing and customer service in the UK. This enabled the researcher to deeply explore and gain insights into the phenomenon of sustainability risk and supply chain sustainability risk management processes in the contemporary context of the UK fashion industry. Data was collected by semi-structured interviews, supported by observations and secondary sources. Interview transcripts were subject to narrative analysis based upon a social constructionist approach.This research identified seven major factors as barriers and drivers for supply chain sustainability risk management: organisational culture, growth of fast fashion, organisational resources, management structure, safeguarding brand reputation, stimulator of innovation and co-opetition. These findings were further grouped into a supply chain sustainability risk management typology. The typology implies that the case companies need to understand and should have knowledge about their current and potential future key sustainability risk and then need to have a certain organisational design and innovative management processes to manage their supply chain sustainability risk

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

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

Improvement of the Ecosilient Index

The Ecosilient Index, originally proposed by the authors Susana G. Azevedo, Kannan Govindan, Helena Carvalho and V. Cruz – Machado, is an integrated index that reflects simultaneously the resilience and the greenness of automotive companies and their supply chains. This index, based on a combination of supply chain management practices related to green and resilient paradigms, is a useful tool that reduces a complex situation to a single number, helping companies to understand their supply chain’s overall resilience and greenness and providing them a clear baseline for measuring their progress and improvement in both fields. The main objective of the present Master’s thesis is to improve this Ecosilient Index, in order to help automotive supply chains to better determine their overall resilient and green behaviours. For the development of the mentioned objective, it is first necessary to conduct a comprehensive review of the literature on resilient and green supply chains, in order to draw a global picture of both of them: broad definition, historical evolution and analysis of the resilient and green practices that are currently being implemented. Then, an overview of the automotive sector and a study of the present trends of the sector regarding resilience and greenness are provided, as the Ecosilient Index is focused on the automotive industry. Thanks to all the information compiled, some suggestions aimed at improving the current Ecosilient Index are proposed. First of all, a total of four supplementary practices have been suggested to be added in the combination of green and resilient supply chain management practices used in the original Ecosilient Index. Second, the relationships between both paradigms, resilient and green, have been examined. Last, but not least, some modifications have been applied in the construction of the Ecosilient Index. Finally, future research is needed as the improved Ecosilient Index is still at a theoretical level and has not been applied in real automotive supply chains. Therefore, it would be advisable to put into practice the two Ecosilient Indexes, the original and the new one, in order to compare them and validate the improvement suggestions proposed in the present Master’s thesis