Subproject 2: Sheep: Ethical Problems and Breeding Goals

- Lately production of various sheep and goat products has been raised especially in Mediterranean countries which have a long tradition in breeding such animals - Sheep and goat breeding in those countries in fact in the best choice in order to exploit the specific area and climate condition

Performance of supply chain collaboration – A simulation study

In the past few decades several supply chain management initiatives such as Vendor Managed Inventory, Continuous Replenishment and Collaborative Planning Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR) have been proposed in literature to improve the performance of supply chains. But, identifying the benefits of collaboration is still a big challenge for many supply chains. Confusion around the optimum number of partners, investment in collaboration and duration of partnership are some of the barriers of healthy collaborative arrangements. To evolve competitive supply chain collaboration (SCC), all SC processes need to be assessed from time to time for evaluating the performance. In a growing field, performance measurement is highly indispensable in order to make continuous improvement; in a new field, it is equally important to check the performance to test conduciveness of SCC. In this research, collaborative performance measurement will act as a testing tool to identify conducive environment to collaborate, by the way of pinpointing areas requiring improvements before initializing collaboration. We use actual industrial data and simulation to help managerial decision-making on the number of collaborating partners, the level of investments and the involvement in supply chain processes. This approach will help the supply chains to obtain maximum benefit of collaborative relationships. The use of simulation for understanding the performance of SCC is relatively a new approach and this can be used by companies that are interested in collaboration without having to invest a huge sum of money in establishing the actual collaboration

The role of collaboration in the UK green supply chains: an exploratory study of the perspectives of suppliers, logistics and retailers

Many companies around the world have started to realise that working alone will not be sufficient in their move towards a greener supply chain (SC). More specifically, recent UK government regulations on implementing strict CO2 reduction encourage SC operators to work collaboratively, in production and logistics or other operations, to achieve their green objectives. In this research, we look at some underlying factors of SC collaboration, focussing on suppliers, logistics and retailers, for the purpose of improving the environmental sustainability of companies’ SCs. To facilitate our study, we conduct case studies in two overseas supplier companies with the aim of providing a better understanding of how green issues imposed by European and UK customers influence the companies’ actions to meet agreed environmental goals. Based on the initial analysis of the case studies, we develop a conceptual framework which indicates that SC collaboration plays an important role in ensuring companies achieve environmental sustainability of their SCs. Subsequently, staff in middle-management and related roles in sixteen companies operating in the UK are interviewed. This allows us to understand their business practices in terms of SC collaboration with their suppliers and buyers to achieve the goal of CO2 reduction. Finally, drawing upon the information from company reports and websites, a number of UK leading retailers’ actions to reduce CO2 emissions are investigated. We develop a conceptual framework of SC collaboration for environmental sustainability to help companies improve their level of collaboration between suppliers and buyers in terms of meeting their environmental objectives. The proposed framework will serve as a base model for the companies using or considering SC collaboration to achieve their environmental agendas, in line with governmental green regulatory requirements

Retailer views on forecasting collaboration : conference paper for the Logistics Research Network (LRN), Dublin

Forecasting collaboration between retailers and suppliers is suggested to bring significant benefits in the form of increased efficiency and improved customer service. Yet, only few companies seem to be engaged in collaborative relationships. Even in the grocery sector, which is one of the most active promoters of supply chain integration efforts such as Efficient Consumer Response (ECR) and Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR), companies seem to have been slow to embrace collaborative forecasting. In this paper, data collected through in-depth interviews with twelve leading European grocery retailers is used to examine three hypotheses suggested to explain the slow adoption rate of collaborative forecasting in the European grocery sector. The data is found to support the proposition that retailers’ lack of forecasting capabilities is a more important obstacle to forecasting collaboration than the required investments in information technology. Evidence on the different forecasting needs of retailers and suppliers is also found. Some additionals elements of forecasting collaboration are also identified

Forecasting and Operational Research:A Review

From its foundation, operational research (OR) has made many substantial contributions to practical forecasting in organizations. Equally, researchers in other disciplines have influenced forecasting practice. Since the last survey articles in JORS, forecasting has developed as a discipline with its own journals. While the effect of this increased specialization has been a narrowing of the scope of OR's interest in forecasting, research from an OR perspective remains vigorous. OR has been more receptive than other disciplines to the specialist research published in the forecasting journals, capitalizing on some of their key findings. In this paper, we identify the particular topics of OR interest over the past 25 years. After a brief summary of the current research in forecasting methods, we examine those topic areas that have grabbed the attention of OR researchers: computationally intensive methods and applications in operations and marketing. Applications in operations have proved particularly important, including the management of inventories and the effects of sharing forecast information across the supply chain. The second area of application is marketing, including customer relationship management using data mining and computer-intensive methods. The paper concludes by arguing that the unique contribution that OR can continue to make to forecasting is through developing models that link the effectiveness of new forecasting methods to the organizational context in which the models will be applied. The benefits of examining the system rather than its separate components are likely to be substantial

Computing with RFID: drivers, technology and implications

Radio Frequency Identification or simply RFID has become an integral part of modern computing. RFID is notable in that it is the first practical technology to tightly couple physical entities and digital information. In this survey, we cater to the computing professional who is not familiar with the specifics of RFID, which we discuss in the context of supply chain management, its most popular application. We begin with a primer on supply chains, with particular reference to the relationship between efficiency and information flow. We recognize universal identification with bar codes and electronic data interchange as the two principle computing technologies that have played a central role in the optimization of supply chains. We then discuss RFID and supporting network technologies and identify their novel features and capabilities. We proceed by examining the performance improvements in supply chain management due to RFID and differentiate between different levels of tagging. We explore consumer applications and services using item-level RFID in particular. Such applications not only offer novel opportunities for business but also raise important social and policy challenges primarily related to privacy protection, which we discuss in more detail. We conclude by exploring how European law is attempting to address the new issues arising from the use of RFID and look ahead at the challenges encountered when computing with RFID before it can be made an effective end-user technology