Closing the gap: The role of distributed manufacturing systems for overcoming the barriers to manufacturing sustainability

The demand for distributed manufacturing systems (DMS) in the manufacturing sector has notably gained vast popularity as a suitable choice to accomplish sustainability benefits. Manufacturing companies are bound to face critical barriers in their pursuit of sustainability goals. However, the extent to which the DMS attributes relate to sustainable performance and impact critical barriers to sustainability is considerably unknown. To help close this gap, this article proposes a methodology to determine the relative importance of sustainability barriers, the influence of DMS on these barriers, and the relationship between DMS attributes and sustainable performance. Drawing upon a rich data pool from the Chinese manufacturing industry, the best–worst method is used to investigate the relative importance of the sustainability barriers and determine how the DMS attributes influence these barriers and relate to sustainability. The study findings show that “organizational barriers” are the most severe barriers and indicate that “reduced carbon emissions” has the highest impact on “organizational” and “sociocultural barriers” whereas public approval” has the highest impact on “organizational barriers.” The results infer that “reduction of carbon emission” is the DMS strategy strongly linked to improved sustainable performance. Hence, the results can offer in-depth insight to decision-makers, practitioners, and regulatory bodies on the criticality of the barriers and the influence of DMS attributes on the sustainability barriers, and thus, improve sustainable performance for increased global competitiveness. Moreover, our study offers a solid foundation for further studies on the link between DMS and sustainable performance

Critical factors of digital supply chains for organizational performance improvement

Technological advancement is redefining supply chains (SCs) processes and soon traditional ways of managing SCs will no more be feasible and effective. Due to recent advancement in technology, digitalization has become an emerging topic among decision-makers and researchers. To cope-up with this emerging trend in customer behavior and remain competitive, organizations must move from their traditional ways of managing their SCs to digital supply chains (DSCs) for improved organizational performance. Therefore, the purpose of this article is in two folds: First, to identify critical factors of DSCs that are essential for transitioning traditional SCs to DSCs to improve organizational performance. Second, interpretive structural modeling is used to establish the relationship among critical factors and (matriced’ impacts croise´s multiplication applique´e a´un classement used to identify the driving and dependency power of the critical factors. Thus, this article identified fifteen DSC critical factors and established their direct and indirect effect on DSCs. The results show that “SC resilience”, and “proactive prevention” have the highest dependency power factors whilst “integration” and “advanced operational models” have the highest driving power factors. This article can help SC managers and decision-makers to understand the critical factors essential in adopting DSCs for improving organizational performance