Redesigning a food supply chain for environmental sustainability – An analysis of resource use and recovery

© 2019 Elsevier Ltd Food supply will need to increase by around 70% from its current levels in order to meet the world population growth of 9.6 billion by 2050. Food waste is the biggest challenge in global food security, wherein approximately 20–30% of food waste occurs in the post-harvest stage of the food supply chain (FSC) in developing countries. This food waste generates significant negative environmental effects in addition to the unnecessary usage (and wastage) of resources consumed in producing the wasted food. Whilst India is the major producer and exporter of many agricultural crops, there is a lack of research that evaluates the environmental impact of the Indian FSCs. The environmental impact of the same product varies according to the resources consumed and so it is important that the environmental impact of individual supply chains be considered. Also, there is a lack of studies that uses the result of environmental impact assessment to identify the operational and resource inefficiencies in FSC and develop a framework for sustainable FSC. Thus, this study aims to identify operational and resource inefficiencies present in FSC through environmental impact assessment and propose a framework for redesigning the FSC to improve environmental sustainability. Life cycle assessment approach is used for assessing the environmental impact. This framework has been applied to a mango food supply chain

A Case Study to Explore Influence of Traceability Factors on Australian Food Supply Chain Performance

Traceability in food supply chain has been an area of interest due to the challenges associated the nature of the food supply chain with short code date, high safety and risk associated with quality. With the introduction of EU Regulation 178/2002 to have mandatory traceability for food supply without defined structure of product or process to be traced makes the level of traceability a vulnerable aspect across the supply chain. The level of traceability is strongly associated with the resources required to trace & track and the supplier buyer relationship, which would help to implement an effective traceability systemThe objective of the study is to understand the interrelationship between the level of traceability (breadth, depth and quality of information) and the resources required (technology,financial and human) in achieving the given level of traceability and contribution of supplier-buyer relationship on the supply chain traceability performance using a case study based approach. The study shows as the dairy products are split into individual unit for the retail stores and not associating the batch number to the product movement from the distribution center to the retailers would create the critical traceability uniform tracking and tracing system would help in efficiency gain by reducing the product receiving time approximately from 4 hours to 20 minutes, which can reduce in humanly efforts at this stage and may help in achieving huge cost savings

Analysis of global manufacturing virtual networks in the aeronautical industry

The evolution of organizations that work in multinational environments has considerably altered their production strategies. One of the consequences has been the appearance of Global Manufacturing Virtual Networks (GMVNs), which include all kinds of enterprises and production centres and establish a new type of horizontal collaboration and relations between independent companies and even competitors who establish occasional collaborations on projects they could not take on individually. This paper analyses the causes behind the formation of such networks, their strategy, structure, dynamics and evolution, taking into account areas such as strategic intercompany alliances, synchronization of their value and supply chains, their information systems, the cultural aspects of the organizations in question and, finally, their convergence with another of the more relevant future trends in production: mass customization. The proposed model shall be applied to the aeronautical industry which is one of the industries which has developed the GMVN concept. The case study of the engine manufacturer Rolls Royce will provide a better understanding of the evolution of its strategic positioning, as well as the dynamic and fluent nature of its virtual relations. This will demonstrate its effectiveness by clarifying and putting these organizations in perspective and analyzing their evolution over the next few year

Structural elements of coordination mechanisms in collaborative planning processes and their assessment through maturity models: Application to a ceramic tile company

Maturity is defined as a measure to evaluate the capabilities of an organization in regards to a certain discipline. The Collaborative Planning Process is a very complex process and Coordination mechanisms are especially relevant in this field to align the plans of the supply chain members. The objective of this paper is to develop a maturity model and a methodology to perform assessment for the Structural Elements of Coordination Mechanisms in the Collaborative Planning Process. Structural elements are specified in order to characterize coordination mechanisms in a collaborative planning context and they have been defined as key areas to be assessed by the maturity model. The identified structural elements are: number of decision-makers, collaboration level, interdependence relationships nature, interdepen-dence relationships type, number of coordination mechanisms, information exchanged, information processing, decision sequence characteristics and stopping criteria. Structural elements are assessed using the scheme of five levels: Initial, Repeatable, Defined, Managed and Optimized. This proposal has been applied to a ceramic tile company and the results are also reported.Cuenca, L.; Boza Garcia, A.; Alemany Díaz, MDM.; Trienekens, JJ. (2013). Structural elements of coordination mechanisms in collaborative planning processes and their assessment through maturity models: Application to a ceramic tile company. Computers in Industry. 64(8):898-911. doi:10.1016/j.compind.2013.06.019S89891164

Supply chain collaboration in industrial symbiosis networks

A strategy supporting the development towards a circular economy is industrial symbiosis (IS). It is a form of collaborative supply chain management aiming to make industry more sustainable and achieve collective benefits based on utilization of waste, by-products, and excess utilities between economically independent industries. Based on an extensive analysis of published studies on existing IS collaborations and interviews with central stakeholders of a comprehensive IS, this paper investigates IS from a supply chain collaboration perspective. A theoretical framework is built and used to discuss how industrial symbiosis pursues sustainability and to identify the main collaboration aspects and performance impacts. This framework is then used in the analysis of selected published cases. Based on this, we derive propositions on the organizational and operational requirements for collaboration in the context of IS networks, related to the supply chain integration and coordination practices. As IS has only received little attention in the operations and supply chain management community, our propositions directly lead to future research directions. Furthermore, the analysis in this paper provides directions to increase the feasibility and resource efficiency of IS networks and can hence be used by stakeholders involved in these networks

Reducing schedule instability by identifying and omitting complexity-adding information flows at the supplier-customer interface

Within the supply chain context, schedule instability is caused by revisions to forecast demand from customers, problems with scheduled deliveries from suppliers, and disruptions to internal production. Supply chain partners attempt to address schedule instability by regular exchanges of information flows on current demand and delivery forecasts. However, if these updating information flows are unreliable and likely to be over-ridden by subsequent updated schedules, then the problem of schedule instability at the supplier-customer interface is not being solved. The research hypothesis investigated in this paper is whether supply chain partners may reduce schedule instability at the supplier-customer interface by identifying and omitting complexity-adding information flows. To this aim, previous work by the authors on an information-theoretic methodology for measuring complexity is extended and applied in this paper for identifying complexity-adding information flows. The application consists of comparing the complexity index of actual exchanged information flows with the complexity index of scenarios that omit one or more of these information flows. Using empirical results, it is shown that supply chain partners may reduce schedule instability at the supplier-customer interface by identifying and omitting complexity-adding information flows. The applied methodology is independent of the information systems used by the supplier and customer, and it provides an objective, integrative measure of schedule instability at the supplier-customer interface. Two case studies are presented, one in the commodity production environment of fast-moving consumer goods, and another in the customised production environment of electronic products sector. By applying the measurement and analysis methodology, relevant schedule instability-related insights about the specific case-studies are obtained. In light of the findings from these case studies, areas for further research and validation of the conditions in which the proposed research hypothesis holds are also proposed

Upstream Supply Chain Visibility and Complexity Effect on Focal Company’s Sustainable Performance: Indian Manufacturers’ Perspective

Understanding supply chain sustainability performance is increasingly important for supply chain researchers and managers. Literature has considered supply chain sustainability and the antecedents of performance from a triple bottom line (economic, social, and environmental) perspective. However, the role of supply chain visibility and product complexity contingency in achieving sustainable supply chain performance has not been explored in depth. To address this gap, this study utilizes a contingent resource-based view theory perspective to understand the role of product complexity in shaping the relationship between upstream supply chain visibility (resources and capabilities) and the social, environmental, and economic performance dimensions. We develop and test a theoretical model using survey data gathered from 312 Indian manufacturing organizations. Our findings indicate that supply chain visibility (SCV) has significant influence on social and environmental performance under the moderation effect of product complexity. Hence, the study makes significant contribution to the extant literature by examining the impact of SCV under moderating effect of product complexity on social performance and environmental performance