Business process management and supply chain collaboration: a critical comparison

The link between a firm and supply chain (SC) members has been recognised as one of the key issues for ensuring business success and achieving competitive advantage. Indeed, working across organisational boundaries is required to accomplish effective responses to customers’ needs. Our preliminary research confirmed that there are positive relationships between business process management (BPM), supply chain collaboration (SCC), collaborative advantage and organisational performance. This study is a step further and uses a multiple case design to illuminate the results and gain a greater understanding from extensive discussions about these relationships. By means of semi-structured interviews, the three main issues were identified as: (1) the link between BPM and organisational performance; (2) the link between BPM and SCC; and (3) the contextual factors and benefits achieved from working collaboratively with SC partners. The different scenarios of the link between BPM and SCC were developed in a taxonomy, and the case studies were used to illustrate the experience of intra- and inter-organisational practices in the developing economy of Thailand. The case studies’ results explain in depth that both BPM and SCC are important for improving organisational performance and competitiveness. BPM not only improves organisational performance directly, but also assists with collaborative activities that in turn help to improve internal capabilities. Additionally, the comparisons in issues relating to firm size, industry type, relationship closeness and relationship length were also included in this study

Mycopopulations of grain and flour of wheat, corn and buckwheat

According to the nutritive characteristics, whole grain flour is a high quality product, due to its high vitamin, mineral, and dietary fiber content. However, the cereal grains are susceptible to the series of contamination during the ripening, harvesting, processing and storage. The aim of this work was to determine mold presence in grains and flour of wheat, corn and buckwheat. The determination of total number and identification of isolated genera and species of molds were the subject of this research. All samples were contaminated with the molds. The total number of molds per 100 cereal grains was between 60 cfu (wheat) and 120 cfu (buckwheat). The total number of molds in the samples of flour ranged from 6.0x101 cfu/g in white wheat flour to 5.0 x102 cfu/g in buckwheat whole grain flour (DG18 medium). Eight fungal genera (Alternaria, Aspergillus, Cladosporium, Chrysonilia, Fusarium, Penicillium, Rhizopus and Scopulariopsis) and fifteen species were isolated. The largest number of species of molds was isolated from the genus Aspergillus. About 66.7% of isolated fungi belonged to potentially toxigenic species. The results pointed out the necessity of grain surface treatment, preceding the milling of grains in wheat, corn and whole grain buckwheat flour production

Understanding Process Performance Measurement Systems

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the current state of Process Performance Measurement Systems (PPMS) by means of a systematic review of literature. The PPMS literature is reviewed using a systematic approach. Based on an extensive literature review only twelve articles that contain the term PPMS in the title were found. The literature analysis showed that PPMS is a relatively new topic in the area of performance measurement. In order to understand PPMS, it was crucial to explain the concepts of business process management, business performance measurement and Performance Measurement System (PMS) which are well known and used in the literature and practice. PPMS is a special type of PMS that should be used in process-oriented organizations. Limitations of this research lie in the fact that all the conclusions were derived only from the literature, not empirical research. The results presented in the paper continue towards providing an updated overview of the current state of performance measurement, especially PPMS in order to identify the existing research gaps on which ongoing and future research efforts regarding this topic can be focused