Product safety and security in the global supply chain: Issues, challenges and research opportunities

A number of high profile product safety events and recalls have heightened public attention to the safety and security of the products that people consume and use. While product safety isn’t a new topic, the effect of the global supply chain in creating or exacerbating safety risks and vulnerabilities is both timely and relevant. In this essay we focus on how the field of operations management can provide fresh perspectives and insights in addressing the challenges of product safety and security in the global supply chain. We first examine the product safety issues and challenges that arise in five industries that are increasingly globalizing their supply chains: food, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, consumer products and automobiles. We describe four areas where operations management theory and methodologies can provide fresh insights and innovative solutions in addressing these problems; regulation and standards, product lifecycle management, traceability and recall management, and supplier relationships

An Algorithm for Technology Choice in Local Area Network Design

Technological advances in both the manufacturing and office sectors have emphasized the need to link processors and communications equipment into Local Area Networks (LANs) to facilitate communication and promote resource sharing. Interviews with designers and users of LANs revealed that a primary problem in the acquisition of a LAN is making technology choices in a cost effective manner when the available technologies and their costs are constantly changing. Since no standards for technology choice currently exist and user demand is expected to increase, system flexibility is also an important concern. The problem of technology choice is formulated as a dynamic integer program. Because of the numerous combinations of technology and network configuration pairings, the Sweeney-Tatham reduction method is utilized to reduce the problem to a computationally tractable size. Finally, the formation is applied to the actual case of an institutional user seeking to network 29 buildings. The resulting reduced problem can be solved on a microcomputer as a shortest path problem.facilities/equipment planning: design, industries: communication, dynamic programming: applications

The Impact of a Customer Service Intervention and Facility Design on Firm Performance

The purpose of this research was to investigate the impact of a customer service intervention and store design on store performance within a regional food retailing chain. A longitudinal study examines the organization's implementation of a customer service intervention which utilized new service standards and customer feedback mechanisms. Moreover, the chain provided a natural experiment, since the forty-six stores in this chain represented three levels of facility design ranging from the traditional supermarket to the extended "store of the future" format. A theoretical model relating the customer service intervention, variations in store design, and customer satisfaction to sales performance was developed. Using both operational performance data from each of the stores and 1,537 responses from customer satisfaction surveys, a LISREL model was used to test the predictive fit of the model. The results indicate that both the store design and the customer service intervention had a significant, positive impact on customer satisfaction which, in turn, significantly affected sales performance (sales per labor hour). In addition, the customer service intervention had a direct effect on sales performance, although there was no support for a direct relationship between store design and sales performance. This research provides a theoretical basis in helping management understand how to leverage customer service for improved sales performance.service quality, customer satisfaction, customer service intervention, service standards, facility design service productivity