SUPPLY CHAIN FLEXIBILITY: DRIVERS AND ENABLERS

This paper is intended to provide a critical review of the literature on the supply chain, especially with the driver and enabler factors. This study aims to reveal the drivers and enablers in the concept of supply chain flexibility. Literature Review involves some articles that come from major journals related to the topic, in the period 2006-2015. Supply chain involves a broad spectrum and deep, but in this writing is more focused on several sub-topics, including: Supply chain, Demand and supply chain, Supply chain governance, Sustainable supply chain, Supply chain flexibility, and Supply chain bias

Firm climate change risk and financial flexibility: Drivers of ESG performance and firm value

This study investigates how a firm's climate change risk (FCCR) and financial flexibility (FIFL) affect its value and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance. We use data from publicly listed US firms for 2012–2021. We employed four estimation methods: bootstrap quantile regression, feasible generalised least squares, a generalised method of moments, and fixed effects with Driscoll-Kraay standard errors. Our main findings indicate that climate change risk has a negative effect on firm value and a positive effect on ESG performance and that financial flexibility moderates these effects by reducing risk and enhancing value. These results are robust against alternative measures and estimation techniques. Our study provides novel insights into the influence of climate risk and financial flexibility on firm value and ESG performance. We also discuss the implications of our results for academics, practitioners, and policymaker

SUPPLY CHAIN FLEXIBILITY: DRIVERS AND ENABLERS-LITERATURE REVIEW

This paper is intended to provide a critical review of the literature on the supply chain, especially with the driver and enabler factors. This study aims to reveal the drivers and enablers in the concept of supply chain flexibility. Literature Review involves some articles that come from major journals related to the topic, in the period 2006-2015. Supply chain involves a broad spectrum and deep, but in this writing is more focused on several sub-topics, including: Supply chain, Demand and supply chain, Supply chain governance, Sustainable supply chain, Supply chain flexibility, and Supply chain bias

Development and testing of load flexibility KPIs in the ZEN definition

This paper discusses the flexibility KPIs proposed in the context of the Zero Emission Neighborhood (ZEN) definition for characterizing how a building or neighborhood exchanges energy with the surrounding energy system and presents preliminary results of testing them on single, archetype buildings. The KPIs are calculated as the deviation of a flexible load from a baseline, typical load. The results depend on the flexibility sources activated, as well as the flexibility drivers and flexibility goals deployed for the activation. It is shown how the mechanism of flexibility works and how the KPIs can be graphically represented, with emphasis on space heating. Numeric values of the KPIs are given in ranges, given their intrinsic case to case variability and the limited experience so far accumulated with testing them. This stated, it is shown that activating flexibility can bring reductions in ΔCost (in the range of 0% to 20%), in ΔEnergy Stress and ΔPeak power (in the range 20% to 50%) even if this is accompanied by a modest increase in ΔEnergy (in the range 0% to +5%) due to some energy losses.publishedVersio

Space standardisation and flexibility on healthcare refurbishment

One of the most common features and aims of a flexible solution is to help all stakeholders throughout the lifecycle of a healthcare facility, own or take (full or part) responsibility of reducing, mitigating or abating the redundancy impacts throughout a building’s lifecycle with the integration of flexibility and standardisation into healthcare refurbishment, this can be achieved effectively with task partitioning. This paper has acknowledged that there are barriers to task partitioning. Flexibility and standardisation strategies have been implemented globally across different sectors and industries. Refurbishment is usually undertaken to improve the current state or functionality of a building in order to extend its valuable life span. Flexible designs are intended to provide future proof solutions. This requires providing the ability to adapt to unforeseen future changes at a specific place and time. Standardisation can and should be used to improve efficiency and reduce errors, it has been implemented in many manufacturing processes such as the automobile industry, but the question is how will it impact buildings especially existing healthcare spaces? This paper is aimed at identifying the impact of space standardisation and flexibility on healthcare refurbishment, with the view to identifying best practice and prescribing possible processes for integrating and optimising space standardisation and flexibility during the refurbishment of healthcare facilities

Road user charging and social exclusion: The impact of congestion charges on at-risk groups.

The importance of social exclusion in the context of congestion charging is discussed, and the groups most particularly at-risk identified. A new technique, based on generation and investigation of a synthetic population is introduced and used to establish the impacts on at-risk groups of six congestion charging schemes in Leeds. The distribution and severity of impacts are seen to depend crucially on the precise definition of the charge area, the basis of the charges and exemptions provided. Using the new technique, it can be seen how the impact on at-risk groups could be minimized without compromising the overall objectives of congestion charging. Further potential applications of the new technique are outlined

Defining flexibility of assembly workstations through the underlying dimensions and impacting drivers

The concept of mass customization is becoming increasingly important for manufacturers of assembled products. As a result, manufacturers face a high variety of products, small batch sizes and frequent changeovers. To cope with these challenges, an appropriate level of flexibility of the assembly system is required. A methodology for quantifying the flexibility level of assembly workstations could help to evaluate (and improve) this flexibility level at all times. That flexibility model could even be integrated into the standard workstation design process. Despite the general consensus among researchers that manufacturing flexibility is a multi-dimensional concept, there is still no consensus on its different dimensions. A Systematic Literature Review (SLR) shows that many similarities can be found in the multitude of flexibility dimensions. Through a series of interactive company workshops, we achieved to reduce them to a shortlist of 9 flexibility dimensions applicable to an assembly workstation. In addition, a first step was taken to construct a causal model of these flexibility dimensions and their determining factors, the so called drivers, through the Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) approach. In the next phase, a driver scoring mechanism will be initiated to achieve an overall assembly workstation flexibility assessment based on the scoring of drivers depending on the workstation design

Analysis and implementation of volume flexibility in manufacturing plans

Manufacturing flexibility - the ability to change or respond quickly has been heralded as a major competitive weapon for manufacturing organisations operating in turbulent markets and markets characterised by fierce competition and rapid developments in technology. It is also important for the achievement of new management paradigms such as time-based competition, lean production, business process re-engineering and mass customisation. However, many issues on the concept of manufacturing flexibility such as, the clarification of why flexibility is needed, when it is needed, and how it can be implemented in manufacturing organisations have not been sufficiently addressed and resolved in the literature. This research project has been carried out to resolve some of these issues by focusing on one aspect of manufacturing flexibility - volume flexibility. The research design, which was developed to address the research issues, comprised the use of both quantitative and qualitative research methods. The quantitative research method is an exploratory mail survey of UK manufacturing plants in all the major industrial classifications. The survey was used to obtain broad patterns and evidence concerning the conditions that drive manufacturing plants to require volume flexibility and also to identify the mechanisms which manufacturing plants employ to achieve volume flexibility. The qualitative research method is an explanatory case-based research. Manufacturing plants in each sector that responded to the survey and provided rich and contrasting information about the issues being investigated were selected for the case study research. The case study research was used to confirm the survey results (triangulation) and more importantly to explain the trends and patterns observed in the survey analysis. The research concluded that high variability in demand levels is a major driver of volume flexibility and that it is generic in nature. Other drivers of volume flexibility were also identified. However, the applicability of these drivers to manufacturing plants was found to be independent of the sector to which the plants belong but on other specific characteristics of the plants. Mechanisms being employed to achieve volume flexibility in UK manufacturing plants were identified and referred to as enablers of volume flexibility. These enablers are not sector dependent but they do depend on specific market conditions, and their perceived costs and benefits. Substitute and complementary enablers were identified. Substitute enablers can be used to replace other enablers to achieve volume flexibility and complementary enablers aid other enablers in achieving volume flexibility. The research project also identified strategies, which can be employed by manufacturing plants to implement the enablers in achieving volume flexibility