The impact of supply chain-related factors on the environmental performance of manufacturing firms in Turkey

This paper investigates the impact of supply chain-related factors on the adoption of proactive environmental strategies, and the impact of such strategies on environmental investments and environmental performance. Data were collected from 96 Turkish manufacturers using an online questionnaire. The model was tested with PLS, a structural equation modelling method. The results show that a proactive environmental strategy leads to higher environmental investments which in turn lead to higher environmental performance. The results also show that two supply chain-related factors, organizational commitment and collaboration with suppliers, positively impact proactivity, whereas customer pressure does not have any significant direct impact on proactivity but it does positively impact environmental investments

Managing Supplier Involvement in New Product Development: A Multiple-Case Study

Existing studies of supplier involvement in new product development have mainly focused on project-related short-term processes and success-factors. This study validates and extends an existing exploratory framework, which comprises both long-term strategic processes and short-term operational processes that are related to supplier involvement. The empirical validation is based on a multiple-case study of supplier collaborations at a manufacturer in the copier and printer industry. The analysis of eight cases of supplier involvement reveals that the results of supplier-manufacturer collaborations and the associated issues and problems can best be explained by the patterns in the extent to which the manufacturer manages supplier involvement in the short-term ànd the long-term. We find that our initial framework is helpful in understanding why certain collaborations are not effectively managed, yet conclude that the existing analytical distinction between four different management areas does not sufficiently reflect empirical reality. This leads us to reconceptualize and further detail the framework. Instead of four managerial areas, we propose to distinguish between the Strategic Management arena and the Operational Management arena. The Strategic Management arena contains processes that together provide long-term, strategic direction and operational support for project teams adopting supplier involvement. These processes also contribute to building up a supplier base that can meet current and future technology and capability needs. The Operational Management arena contains processes that are aimed at planning, managing and evaluating the actual collaborations in a specific development project. The results of this study suggest that success of involving suppliers in product development is reflected by the firm’s ability to capture both short-term and long-term benefits. If companies spend most of their time on operational management in development projects, they will fail to use the ‘leverage’ effect of planning and preparing such involvement through strategic management activities. Also, they will not be sufficiently able to capture possible long-term technology and learning benefits that may spin off from individual projects. Long-term collaboration benefits can only be captured if a company can build long-term relationships with key suppliers, where it builds learning routines and ensures that the capability sets of both parties are aligned and remain useful for future joint projects.Purchasing;Innovation;New Product Development;R&D Management;Supplier Relations

Agent-based material transportation scheduling of AGV systems and its manufacturing applications

制度:新 ; 報告番号:甲3743号 ; 学位の種類:博士(工学) ; 授与年月日:2012/9/10 ; 早大学位記番号:新6114Waseda Universit

Development of Sustainable Methodologies in Product Design, Manufacturing and Education

The influence of sustainability in product design and manufacturing processes can be considered from two different points of view: the design of sustainable products and the sustainable manufacturing of those products. Of course, a basic assumption for the aforementioned elements to be realized is the appropriate training and education for sustainability of the young designers and engineers. In this research, sustainability has been applied to many fields, including design, manufacturing and education acting as an umbrella which covers all the three elements and has as the main target to promote sustainability. In today’s world, in which a considerable number of contrasting signs reveal that our society is currently contributing to the planet’s collapse, a new kind of engineer is needed, an engineer who is fully aware of what is going on in society and who has the skills to deal with aspects of sustainability. According to the literature review on the state-of-the-art associated to the subject, in the current research were developed tools and methodologies for the promotion of sustainability aspects that are related to product design, manufacturing and education. Product DesignThe research work was based on a framework, which was built according to the direct communication between users and designers. There is a need for a cultural transformation, which can be focused on consumers and promote the needed behavioural change. Moreover there is a need for a cultural transformation on the role of designers and engineers to the product design process, with an aim to address sustainability as well as emerging priorities from societal to environmental challenges. New tools and methodologies were generated, in order to promote sustainability to the users/citizens bringing them inside to the product design process, giving them the opportunity to be a vital part of it. ManufacturingSustainable manufacturing faces new challenges for developing predictive models and optimization techniques in order to produce more products. The first part of the current is related to the drilling process and cutting tool technology. The creation of mathematical models focused on maximization of productivity and cost reduction by identifying crucial parameters and processes influencing manufacturing effectiveness. The second part of the current research is associated to the development of models used by CAD/ CAM that allow a rapid improvement and an efficient design and manufacture.EducationThe third aspect of the research is associated with the education related to sustainability. The engineering students should develop sustainability competences such as critical thinking, systemic thinking, obtaining values consistent with the sustainability paradigm, except of just taking a course on sustainability, focus on the technological role of sustainability. Focus on that the current research was based on sustainable characteristics such as a) remote control freeware applications, b) share of valuable resources, c) distance learning methodology and d) active participation of the students.<br /

Multi Agent Systems in Logistics: A Literature and State-of-the-art Review

Based on a literature survey, we aim to answer our main question: “How should we plan and execute logistics in supply chains that aim to meet today’s requirements, and how can we support such planning and execution using IT?†Today’s requirements in supply chains include inter-organizational collaboration and more responsive and tailored supply to meet specific demand. Enterprise systems fall short in meeting these requirements The focus of planning and execution systems should move towards an inter-enterprise and event-driven mode. Inter-organizational systems may support planning going from supporting information exchange and henceforth enable synchronized planning within the organizations towards the capability to do network planning based on available information throughout the network. We provide a framework for planning systems, constituting a rich landscape of possible configurations, where the centralized and fully decentralized approaches are two extremes. We define and discuss agent based systems and in particular multi agent systems (MAS). We emphasize the issue of the role of MAS coordination architectures, and then explain that transportation is, next to production, an important domain in which MAS can and actually are applied. However, implementation is not widespread and some implementation issues are explored. In this manner, we conclude that planning problems in transportation have characteristics that comply with the specific capabilities of agent systems. In particular, these systems are capable to deal with inter-organizational and event-driven planning settings, hence meeting today’s requirements in supply chain planning and execution.supply chain;MAS;multi agent systems

Evaluation of production control strategies for the co-ordination of work-authorisations and inventory management in lean supply chains

A decision support framework is proposed for assisting managers and executives to possibly utilise lean production control strategies to coordinate work authorisations and inventory management in supply chains. The framework allows decision makers to evaluate and compare the suitability of various strategies to their system especially when considering conflicting objectives, such as maximising customer service levels while minimising Work in Process (WIP) in a business environment distressed by variabilities and uncertainties in demand stemmed from customer power. Also, the framework provides decision guidance in selecting and testing optimal solutions of selected policies control parameters. The framework is demonstrated by application to a four-node serial supply-chain operating under three different pull-based supply chain strategies; namely CONWIP, Kanban, and Hybrid Kanban-CONWIP and exhibiting low, medium, and high variability in customer demand (i.e., coefficient of variation of 25%, 112.5%, and 200%). The framework consists of three phases; namely Modelling, Optimisation and Decision Support; and is applicable to both Simulation-Based and Metamodel-Based Optimisation. The Modelling phase includes conceptual modelling, discrete event simulation modelling and metamodels development. The Optimisation phase requires the application of multi-criteria optimisation methods to generate WIP-Service Level trade-off curves. The Curvature and Risk Analysis of the trade-off curves are utilised in the Decision Support phase to provide guidance to the decision maker in selecting and testing the best settings for the control parameters of the system. The inflection point of the curvature function indicates the point at which further increases in Service Level are only achievable by incurring an unacceptably higher cost in terms of average WIP. Risk analysis quantifies the risk associated with designing a supply chain system under specific environmental parameters. This research contributes an efficient framework that is applicable to solve real supply chain problems and better understanding of the potential impacts and expected effectiveness of different pull control mechanisms, and offers valuable insights on future research opportunities in this field to production and supply chain managers

Firm Size Effects on Venture Capital Syndication: The Role of Resources and Transaction Costs

The present paper examines firm size effects on the decision of venture capital firms to participate in a venture capital investment syndication network. The authors submit that firm size effects in venture capital syndication are dependent on resource acquisition motives and transaction cost considerations. Analysis of 317 venture capital firms in 6 European countries reveals a curve linear relationship between firm size and venture capital syndication participation. We also find positive and negative moderating effects of firm size. The implication of our findings is that there are both advantages and disadvantages in syndicated investment for the smaller and larger venture capitalist.Firm Size;Resource-Based View;Syndication Networks;Transaction Cost Theory;Venture Capital

Business Strategies for Transitions towards Sustainable Systems

This paper develops a strategic perspective for business to address persistent sustainability issues by contributing to the innovation of societal systems. Sustainability issues at the level of societal sectors or domains cannot be addressed by single organizations but require co-evolutionary changes in technology, economy, culture and organizational forms. We present the case of transition management in the Netherlands – an approach combining systems analysis with new modes of governance to influence the direction and speed of structural changes towards sustainability – and the activities of two firms working in this new context. From the two specific cases we conceptualize business strategies at different levels to advance sustainable development.transition management;sustainability;business development;systems

Resource and thermal management in 3D-stacked multi-/many-core systems

Continuous semiconductor technology scaling and the rapid increase in computational needs have stimulated the emergence of multi-/many-core processors. While up to hundreds of cores can be placed on a single chip, the performance capacity of the cores cannot be fully exploited due to high latencies of interconnects and memory, high power consumption, and low manufacturing yield in traditional (2D) chips. 3D stacking is an emerging technology that aims to overcome these limitations of 2D designs by stacking processor dies over each other and using through-silicon-vias (TSVs) for on-chip communication, and thus, provides a large amount of on-chip resources and shortens communication latency. These benefits, however, are limited by challenges in high power densities and temperatures. 3D stacking also enables integrating heterogeneous technologies into a single chip. One example of heterogeneous integration is building many-core systems with silicon-photonic network-on-chip (PNoC), which reduces on-chip communication latency significantly and provides higher bandwidth compared to electrical links. However, silicon-photonic links are vulnerable to on-chip thermal and process variations. These variations can be countered by actively tuning the temperatures of optical devices through micro-heaters, but at the cost of substantial power overhead. This thesis claims that unearthing the energy efficiency potential of 3D-stacked systems requires intelligent and application-aware resource management. Specifically, the thesis improves energy efficiency of 3D-stacked systems via three major components of computing systems: cache, memory, and on-chip communication. We analyze characteristics of workloads in computation, memory usage, and communication, and present techniques that leverage these characteristics for energy-efficient computing. This thesis introduces 3D cache resource pooling, a cache design that allows for flexible heterogeneity in cache configuration across a 3D-stacked system and improves cache utilization and system energy efficiency. We also demonstrate the impact of resource pooling on a real prototype 3D system with scratchpad memory. At the main memory level, we claim that utilizing heterogeneous memory modules and memory object level management significantly helps with energy efficiency. This thesis proposes a memory management scheme at a finer granularity: memory object level, and a page allocation policy to leverage the heterogeneity of available memory modules and cater to the diverse memory requirements of workloads. On the on-chip communication side, we introduce an approach to limit the power overhead of PNoC in (3D) many-core systems through cross-layer thermal management. Our proposed thermally-aware workload allocation policies coupled with an adaptive thermal tuning policy minimize the required thermal tuning power for PNoC, and in this way, help broader integration of PNoC. The thesis also introduces techniques in placement and floorplanning of optical devices to reduce optical loss and, thus, laser source power consumption.2018-03-09T00:00:00