2,607 research outputs found

    A Systematic Literature Review of Supply Chain Resilience in Small–Medium Enterprises (SMEs): A Call for Further Research

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    In this article, with the increased disruptions faced by businesses and the occurrence of natural disasters in the world, supply chain resilience remains a major challenge especially for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Despite the relevance of SMEs to the economy, there is limited scholarly work on resilience practices in SMEs and a limited understanding of how SMEs can achieve resilience. To understand the role of supply chain resilience in SMEs, we undertake a systematic literature review (SLR), which results in the identification and analysis of 101 journal articles, published between 2006 and 2019, on SME supply chain resilience. Our analysis into SME supply chain resilience highlights four focal areas: 1) the role of collaboration and culture; 2) the role of SMEs’ capabilities; 3) the role of Information Systems; and (4) the role of cost and financing. Our SLR investigation identifies future research directions and focal areas tailored to SMEs to help them to assess and develop their supply chain resilience

    Can Industry 5.0 Technologies Overcome Supply Chain Disruptions? - A Perspective Study on Pandemics, War, and Climate Change Issues

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    Industry 5.0 (I5.0) is the next industrial revolution that will leverage human intervention in collaboration with intelligent, logical, and smart machines to attain even more user-preferred and resource-efficient manufacturing and supply chain solutions. The main aim of this article is to study I5.0 technologies in supply chains when these are affected by disruptive phenomena such as those created by wars, climate change or pandemics. A systematic literature review methodology was conducted to understand the present knowledge connected with this theme. This study summarises 194 research articles from the period 2009 to 2022 to understand the present knowledge connected with this theme. The research findings show a significant gap related to the adoption of I5.0 technologies to prevent or overcome supply chain disruptions. 194 articles, including journal and review articles, were identified in the literature. The study provides a novel and insightful concept related to I5.0 within the context of supply chain disruptions. The potential applications of I5.0 and Industry 4.0 are elaborately discussed in three areas, namely: (1) disruptions in supply chains due to pandemics; (2) disruptions in supply chains due to war; and (3) disruptions in supply chains due to climate change. Finally, this study highlights research implications and proposes future research avenues that will contribute to further exploring the adoption of I5.0 technologies to prevent, manage and overcome disruptions in supply chains

    Strategies to Mitigate Supply Chain Disruptions in Grocery Businesses

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    Supply chains have become more complex in the global economy, which has made supply chain disruptions inevitable. Disruptions can cause loss of profitability and hinder business growth. The goal of this multiple case study was to explore strategies to mitigate the effects of disruption in grocery store supply chains. The conceptual framework for this study was the resource dependency theory, which stipulates that firms rely on other businesses in the external environment for critical resources to create a competitive edge. Four purposively selected participants from 4 grocery store businesses in Northwest Arkansas participated in semistructured interviews and provided organizational documentation for this study. The participants were supply chain managers who had knowledge about disruptions and had successfully mitigated disruptions in their grocery stores\u27 supply chains. Yin\u27s 5-step process was used to analyze data, which involved compiling the database, disassembling data, reassembling data, interpreting data, and making a conclusion. Four themes emerged from the data analysis: supply chain partners\u27 collaboration, multiple supply base and supplier qualification, inventory management, and information technology and communication. The uninterrupted flow of grocery merchandise to the community could result in a positive social change by helping to ensure that community members have timely access to food

    Additive Manufacturing in the Healthcare Supply Chain

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    Industrial Digitization, the Use of Real-Time Information, and Operational Agility: Digital and Information Perspectives for Supply Chain Resilience

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    Change is the permanent reality of the digital business world. Firms manage it by their ability and capability to cope with short-term and long-term deviations and disruptions. This paper presents an examination of the supply chain resilience (SCR) of firms operating in the Malaysian Service Sector. The data for this study were collected from 157 managers of 59 firms operating in seven sub-service sectors. Following Organizational Information Processing Theory (OIPT) and reviewing the relevant literature for the conceptualization, we tested a framework that suggests that the use of real-time information (URTI) enhances the SCR. We also found that the industrial digital environment has an important link with the URTI. The results indicate that the URTI is significantly associated with SCR and operational agility, which partially mediates the relationship between the URTI and SCR. We further discuss the theoretical contributions and implications with practical, and policy implications arising from this research

    Reliable and Efficient In-Memory Fault Tolerance of Large Language Model Pretraining

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    Extensive system scales (i.e. thousands of GPU/TPUs) and prolonged training periods (i.e. months of pretraining) significantly escalate the probability of failures when training large language models (LLMs). Thus, efficient and reliable fault-tolerance methods are in urgent need. Checkpointing is the primary fault-tolerance method to periodically save parameter snapshots from GPU memory to disks via CPU memory. In this paper, we identify the frequency of existing checkpoint-based fault-tolerance being significantly limited by the storage I/O overheads, which results in hefty re-training costs on restarting from the nearest checkpoint. In response to this gap, we introduce an in-memory fault-tolerance framework for large-scale LLM pretraining. The framework boosts the efficiency and reliability of fault tolerance from three aspects: (1) Reduced Data Transfer and I/O: By asynchronously caching parameters, i.e., sharded model parameters, optimizer states, and RNG states, to CPU volatile memory, Our framework significantly reduces communication costs and bypasses checkpoint I/O. (2) Enhanced System Reliability: Our framework enhances parameter protection with a two-layer hierarchy: snapshot management processes (SMPs) safeguard against software failures, together with Erasure Coding (EC) protecting against node failures. This double-layered protection greatly improves the survival probability of the parameters compared to existing checkpointing methods. (3) Improved Snapshotting Frequency: Our framework achieves more frequent snapshotting compared with asynchronous checkpointing optimizations under the same saving time budget, which improves the fault tolerance efficiency. Empirical results demonstrate that Our framework minimizes the overhead of fault tolerance of LLM pretraining by effectively leveraging redundant CPU resources.Comment: Fault Tolerance, Checkpoint Optimization, Large Language Model, 3D parallelis

    A Measurement Instrument for Enterprise Architecture Resilience Research: A Pilot Study on Digital Transformation

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    Enterprise Architecture can contribute positively to enterprise resilience. In this connected dynamic world Enterprise Architecture Resilience is an emergent area of Information Systems research that is characterized through an abundance of conceptual work with little empirical research. To fill this gap, this paper reports on the development and validation of an instrument to measure various resilience attributes and barriers in context to digital transformation in organizations. We advance an extended model for a multi-stage measurement instrument development procedure, which incorporates feedback from both academics and practitioners. We identify two main contributions: First, we provide a validated measurement instrument for the study of Enterprise Architecture Resilience factors in context to digital transformation in organizations, which can be used to assist in further empirical studies that investigate phenomena associated with the enterprise architecture domain. Second, in doing so, we describe in detail a procedural model for developing measurement instruments that ensure high levels of reliability and validity, which may assist fellow scholars in executing their empirical research

    Implications of using Industry 4.0 base technologies for lean and agile supply chains and performance

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    Funding Information: The authors acknowledge the financial support of Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (Research Project PID2019-106577 GB-I00 by MCIN / AEI / 10.13039/501100011033 ), UJA- FEDER Andalusian Operational Program (Research Project 1261128 ), Andalusian Plan for Research, Development and Innovation - PAIDI 2020 (Research Project P20-00794 ), and Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT - MCTES) for its financial support via the project UIDB/00667/2020 (UNIDEMI). Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The AuthorsThe adoption of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies in recent years has generated conditions for substantial changes in supply chain management. However, research is still ongoing on how I4.0 technologies can be integrated into current supply chain models to improve supply chain capabilities and performance. This work aims to contribute to understanding the relationships between Industry 4.0 technologies and lean and agile supply chain strategies, and identifying the implications for the focal firm's operational performance. In this study, we focus on a specific group of emerging I4.0 technologies known as I4.0 base technologies (i.e., cloud computing, Internet of Things, and Big Data analytics), whose complementary features can enhance the data collection, storage, and sharing, as well as the analysis processes. Drawing on the Dynamic Capabilities Theory, a structural equation model is used to analyze data collected from 256 Spanish focal manufacturing firms. Results indicate that I4.0 base technologies do not have the same effects on lean and agile supply chain strategies. While I4.0 base technologies can make supply chains leaner, they have been found to have no significant direct effect on agile supply chain implementation. Further, findings indicate a direct relationship between the lean and agile approaches and that the latter generates mediation effects between lean and operational performance.publishersversionpublishe
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