A decision model for a strategic closed-loop supply chain to reclaim End-of-Life Vehicles

Closed-loop supply chain strategies for End-of-Life (EOL) products and their logistics operations have received greater attention in recent years from supply chain research community. These strategies include warranty–based acquisition, quantity–based acquisition, quality–based acquisition, centrally coordinated logistics operations and third-party logistics (3PL) operations. The proposed research integrates two important aspects of an automobile's closed-loop supply chain strategy. The first aspect is optimal transportation planning for raw material parts, newly manufactured and EOL products in a closed-loop supply chain, using demand, collection rate and capacity of associated facilities in the network as functional parameters. We formulated a mixed integer mathematical model for the closed-loop supply chain network with a multi-echelon inventory, multi-period planning and multi-product scenario, which are used to compute the maximum contribution margin generated through different strategies. The second aspect pertains to using the output of the proposed model in first stage to handle the sequential form of a cooperative game. The proposed two–phase decision model analyzes the realization times and delivery limits of different products as an indicator of swapping different strategies. We analyze three instances to understand and validate the applicability of the model. In these scenarios, sensitivity analysis has been performed to demonstrate the robustness of the proposed model. We present managerial insights, leading to flexibility in decision making. It is observed that the demand, collection rate and capacity of network facilities create highly sensitive trilogy for the contribution margin of proposed network. The outcome of this research firstly confers optimal amounts of mass flows in the closed loop supply chain network from a state of the end product (new products, recycled products and non–recycled used products) to a state of the raw material (ferrous metal, non-ferrous metal and shredder fluff). Secondly, authors culminated a confound dichotomy among all reintegration strategies (conveyance, acquisition and cannibalization) by distinct enumeration and quantification (regarding realization times and delivery limits) of each one to forge a robust planning horizon for original equipment manufacturer

Strategic design for inventory and production planning in closed-loop hybrid systems

This research studies inventory and production planning in a closed-loop system while considering both manufacturing and remanufacturing. We studied five inventory and production planning models under the continuous and periodic review systems using a discrete event simulation. Under the above review policies, different demand and return rates, as well as manufacturing and remanufacturing lead times, are considered. The total recoverable and serviceable inventory costs and production order variance are considered as the main performance indicators. From the total inventory cost viewpoint, our findings reveal the trade-off between stochastic demand, stochastic lead times, and review periods. It was found that the periodic review system outperforms the continuous review system for higher values of the review period and return to demand rate ratio. Furthermore, remanufacturing demonstrates an appreciable contribution to low order variance in periodic review systems for high values of return to demand ratio and lead times

A big data MapReduce framework for fault diagnosis in cloud-based manufacturing

This research develops a MapReduce framework for automatic pattern recognition based on fault diagnosis by solving data imbalance problem in a cloud-based manufacturing (CBM). Fault diagnosis in a CBM system significantly contributes to reduce the product testing cost and enhances manufacturing quality. One of the major challenges facing the big data analytics in cloud-based manufacturing is handling of datasets, which are highly imbalanced in nature due to poor classification result when machine learning techniques are applied on such datasets. The framework proposed in this research uses a hybrid approach to deal with big dataset for smarter decisions. Furthermore, we compare the performance of radial basis function based Support Vector Machine classifier with standard techniques. Our findings suggest that the most important task in cloud-based manufacturing, is to predict the effect of data errors on quality due to highly imbalance unstructured dataset. The proposed framework is an original contribution to the body of literature, where our proposed MapReduce framework has been used for fault detection by managing data imbalance problem appropriately and relating it to firm’s profit function. The experimental results are validated using a case study of steel plate manufacturing fault diagnosis, with crucial performance matrices such as accuracy, specificity and sensitivity. A comparative study shows that the methods used in the proposed framework outperform the traditional ones

A hybrid multi-criteria decision model for performance evaluation of sustainable supply chain

The implementation of Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM) is at the forefront of organizational activities. However, with a lack of unanimity regarding the implementation of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and the ambiguity surrounding decision making in this turbulent and chaotic environment, it is a tasking process. This paper brings together the KPIs identified from literature and practice via Systematic Literature Network Analysis (SLNA) and Text Mining. Subsequently, this paper evaluates and weights these KPIs through expert opinions via an online survey grounded on a 4-level hierarchical Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) model hinged on FAHP, FTOPSIS and TISM

Non-stationary stochastic inventory lot-sizing with emission and service level constraints in a carbon cap-and-trade system

Firms worldwide are taking major initiatives to reduce the carbon footprint of their supply chains in response to the growing governmental and consumer pressures. In real life, these supply chains face stochastic and non-stationary demand but most of the studies on inventory lot-sizing problem with emission concerns consider deterministic demand. In this paper, we study the inventory lot-sizing problem under non-stationary stochastic demand condition with emission and cycle service level constraints considering carbon cap-and-trade regulatory mechanism. Using a mixed integer linear programming model, this paper aims to investigate the effects of emission parameters, product- and system-related features on the supply chain performance through extensive computational experiments to cover general type business settings and not a specific scenario. Results show that cycle service level and demand coefficient of variation have significant impacts on total cost and emission irrespective of level of demand variability while the impact of product’s demand pattern is significant only at lower level of demand variability. Finally, results also show that increasing value of carbon price reduces total cost, total emission and total inventory and the scope of emission reduction by increasing carbon price is greater at higher levels of cycle service level and demand coefficient of variation.The analysis of results helps supply chain managers to take right decision in different demand and service level situations

Knowledge discOvery And daTa minINg inteGrated (KOATING) Moderators for collaborative projects

A major issue in any multidiscipline collaborative project is how to best share and simultaneously exploit different types of expertise, without duplicating efforts or inadvertently causing conflicts or loss of efficiency through misunderstanding of individual or shared goals. Moderators are knowledge based systems designed to support collaborative teams by raising awareness of potential problems or conflicts. However, the functioning of a Moderator is limited by the knowledge it has about the team members. Knowledge acquisition, learning and updating of knowledge are the major challenges for a Moderator's implementation. To address these challenges a Knowledge discOvery And daTa minINg inteGrated (KOATING) framework is presented for Moderators to enable them to continuously learn from the operational databases of the company and semi-automatically update their knowledge about team members. This enables the reuse of discovered knowledge from operational databases within collaborative projects. The integration of knowledge discovery in database (KDD) techniques into the existing Knowledge Acquisition Module of a moderator enables hidden data dependencies and relationships to be utilised to facilitate the moderation process. The architecture for the Universal Knowledge Moderator (UKM) shows how Moderators can be extended to incorporate a learning element which enables them to provide better support for virtual enterprises. Unified Modelling Language diagrams were used to specify the ways to design and develop the proposed system. The functioning of a UKM is presented using an illustrative example

Accuracy on random datasets.

<p>Different randomly selected instances were used to build the training and testing sets every time. For all such variable tests and for all species considered, the developed models performed consistently with high accuracy.</p

Workflow representation for novel miRNA identification in <i>Miscanthus</i>.

<p>Workflow representation for novel miRNA identification in <i>Miscanthus</i>.</p

Read data, training and testing set information for each species.

<p>Read data, training and testing set information for each species.</p

Work flow of miReader algorithm.

<p>Work flow of miReader algorithm.</p