A Review of Supply Chain Data Mining Publications

The use of data mining in supply chains is growing, and covers almost all aspects of supply chain management. A framework of supply chain analytics is used to classify data mining publications reported in supply chain management academic literature. Scholarly articles were identified using SCOPUS and EBSCO Business search engines. Articles were classified by supply chain function. Additional papers reflecting technology, to include RFID use and text analysis were separately reviewed. The paper concludes with discussion of potential research issues and outlook for future development

Building resilience and innovation through intelligent diverse supplier engagement

This paper reports the main findings from a design science research project that sets out to explore and understand the need for a more scientific and democratised process for preselecting, vetting, and engaging start-up and SME suppliers in a manufacturing environment. The project, using aerospace manufacturing as a test case will investigate the feasibility of using artificially intelligent web-scraping, third-party APIs, and distributed ledger technologies (DLT) to provide a localised and highly automated manufacturing marketplace. This paper’s findings lend insight into emerging digital platform engagements between participating supply chain actors in open innovation environments

An aggregated fuzzy model for the selection of a managed security service provider

In this study, by analyzing the related literature, the companies providing security services and, more importantly, the data provided by a group of experts, a novel set of 39 criteria is extracted which assists the Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) selection process. The set is further categorized into eight general classes. The validity and weights of these criteria are measured by a group of experts in Iran. Due to the large number and often conflicting criteria, and the qualitative nature of the evaluations of the service providers, fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making methods (FMCDM) are adopted. In order to demonstrate the application of the proposed model, a numerical example is included, in which eight service providers are evaluated by four decision makers applying fuzzy TOPSIS, fuzzy VIKOR, fuzzy Group ELECTRE, and fuzzy SAW methods. Owing to the variations of the outputs of the applied MCDM methods, they are further analyzed by an aggregation method to propose a unique service provider. A comparison between the output of the aggregation method and the four applied Fuzzy MCDM methods is also made with the help of Euclidean, Hamming, Manhattan and Chebyshev distances. The comparison shows the minimum diversion between the outputs of the Fuzzy TOPSIS and the aggregation method, which indicates the appropriateness of the fuzzy TOPSIS method in this particular problem

Working process for Supplier Market Analysis, in line with IKEA's New Business approach

The world is continuously changing. Today many companies work hard to keep up with the surrounding world to stay competitive. To work with finding new business opportunities has become of higher importance than ever. IKEA is a global company facing a tremendous growth to reach their goal for 2020. To manage this growth and be able to secure supply to new retail markets, the company needs to increase their supplier base and also find new business opportunities to stay competitive and increase its existing market shares. IKEA has started up New Business, which is both an approach and an organisation. The organisation consists of allocated teams working proactive with finding new business opportunities and new suppliers/development partners. IKEA has found a gap, an absence of a working process for Supply Market Study and Supplier Mapping. These are two important steps in the process of finding new business opportunities and new suppliers/development partners. To facilitate the work and make a global comparison possible the purpose of this project is to develop a working process for Supply Market Study and Supplier Mapping, in line with the New Business approach. To develop a process that works in reality, a constructive research approach was used in this project combined with a multiple case study. The people interviewed were mainly people working in any of the IKEA´s purchasing operations areas, areas covering different geographical zones. Each one of the purchasing operation areas around the globe is a case in the multiple case study performed. A theoretical framework was created from the literature review. From the empirical study, together with a literature review, an analysis was made to generate the foundation for the developing of the working process. The analysis started with a cross-case analysis to identify differences and similarities between the cases to be able to develop an empirical framework. This framework was then compared with the theoretical framework. An interesting finding was that in the literature review, a gap was identified as the transition between the Supply Market Study and the Supplier Mapping, whereas the empirical study stressed the importance of its connection. The result of this was that only one process was developed in this project. The process was named Supplier Market Analysis, consisting of five main steps: Start-up, Macro Analysis, Industry Analysis, Supplier Mapping and Final Evaluation & Project Report. To note, the Supply Market Study is split into two parts, Macro Analysis and Industry Analysis.Världen förändras kontinuerligt. Företag arbetar idag hårt för att hålla jämna steg med omvärlden för att på så vis hålla sig konkurrenskraftiga. Att arbeta för att hitta nya affärsmöjligheter har blivit av allt större betydelse. IKEA är ett globalt företag som står inför en enorm tillväxt för att nå deras mål till år 2020. För att klara denna tillväxt och för att kunna säkra försörjningen till nya geografiska marknader behöver företaget öka sin leverantörsbas och även hitta nya affärsmöjligheter för att behålla sin konkurrenskraft och öka sina befintliga marknadsandelar. IKEA har startat New Business, vilket både innefattar ett synsätt och en organisation. Organisationen består av flertalet team som arbetar proaktivt med att hitta nya affärsmöjligheter och nya leverantörer/utvecklingspartners. IKEA har hittat en lucka, en avsaknad av en arbetsprocess för hur man ska studera geografiska marknaders tillgångar och kartlägga marknaders leverantörer, vilka är två viktiga steg i processen av att hitta nya affärsmöjligheter och nya leverantörer/utvecklingspartners. För att underlätta arbetet och möjliggöra en global jämförelse är syftet med det här projektet att utveckla en arbetsprocess för hur man ska utföra en studie av geografiska marknaders tillgångar och kartlägga marknaders leverantörer, det här i linje med New Business synsätt. För att kunna utveckla en process som fungerar i verkligheten, användes en ”constructive approach” i kombination med en multipel fallstudie. De flesta personerna som blev intervjuade arbetar i något av IKEAs geografiskt operativa inköpsområden, som var och ett täcker ett specifikt geografiska område. Varje område representerar ett fall i fallstudien. Ett teoretiskt ramverk skapades utifrån litteraturstudien. Från den insamlade empiriska informationen, tillsammans med litteraturstudien, gjordes en analys för att senare generera grunden för utvecklingen av arbetsprocessen. Analysen började med att identifiera skillnader och likheter mellan de olika fallen studerade i den empiriska studien för att kunna utveckla ett empiriskt ramverk. Det här ramverket jämfördes senare med det teoretiska ramverket. En intressant upptäckt från studien var att i litteraturstudien identifierades en lucka mellan övergången från att man studerat de Geografiska Marknadernas Tillgångar till att sedan Kartlägga Marknaders Leverantörer, samtidigt som en anslutning mellan dessa påpekades som viktig enligt den empiriska studien. Resultatet av detta var att endast en arbetsprocess utvecklades, vilken inkluderar båda områdena. Processen namngavs till leverantörs marknadsanalys, bestående av fem huvudsteg: Start, Makroanalys, Industrianalys, Leverantörskartläggning och Slutlig Utvärdering & Projektrapport. Att notera är att i resultatet är området studera de geografiska marknadernas tillgångar, som var studerat i studien, delat upp i två delar makroanalys och industrianalys. Det här är baserat på de upptäckter som gjorts under studiens gång