Supply chain management (SCM) has been considered as the most popular operations strategy for improving organizational competitiveness in the twenty-first century. In the early 1990s, agile ...manufacturing (AM) gained momentum and received due attention from both researchers and practitioners. In the mid-1990s, SCM began to attract interest. Both AM and SCM appear to differ in philosophical emphasis, but each complements the other in objectives for improving organizational competitiveness. For example, AM relies more on strategic alliances/partnerships (virtual enterprise environment) to achieve speed and flexibility. But the issues of cost and the integration of suppliers and customers have not been given due consideration in AM. By contrast, cost is given a great deal of attention in SCM, which focuses on the integration of suppliers and customers to achieve an integrated value chain with the help of information technologies and systems. Considering the significance of both AM and SCM for firms to improve their performance, an attempt has been made in this paper to analyze both AM and SCM with the objective of developing a framework for responsive supply chain (RSC). We compare their characteristics and objectives, review the selected literature, and analyze some case experiences on AM and SCM, and develop an integrated framework for a RSC. The proposed framework can be employed as a competitive strategy in a networked economy in which customized products/services are produced with virtual organizations and exchanged using e-commerce.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
Taking an operational perspective on the relations between employee loyalty and business performance, we examine the relationships among employee loyalty, service quality, customer satisfaction, ...customer loyalty and firm profitability, and the contextual factors influencing these relationships. We developed a research model grounded in the service-profit chain notion of
Heskett et al. (1994) and empirically tested the model by conducting a survey of 210 high-contact service shops in Hong Kong. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), we observed that employee loyalty is significantly related to service quality, which in turn impacts customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, ultimately leading to firm profitability in high-contact service industries. Using multiple-group analysis of SEM, we found that the effect of employee loyalty on firm profitability through service quality, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty is robust under different scenarios of employee–customer contact level, market competitiveness, and switching cost in the sampled shops. This finding supports the generalizability of the observed relationships in various operating contexts.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
•Explore the impact of blockchain on the imported fresh food supply chain.•Provide pricing strategies for the blockchain-based supply chain when blockchain is beneficial.•Examine the value of ...blockchain in the sales of imported food.•Discuss the impact of retailers’ risk attitudes on blockchain-based fresh food supply chain.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, blockchain has been widely used to trace imported fresh food information from sources to destinations. Motivated by observations of real-world practice, we studied the role that blockchain played in imported fresh food supply chains. We first developed the basic models to examine the cases without and with blockchain. We derived the optimal pricing decisions for the supply chain and the conditions under which using blockchain was profitable under each model. To assess the robustness of the results, we then analyzed how risk attitudes affected the optimal supply chain decisions. We found some interesting results: When the effect of assuaging consumers’ safety concerns brought by blockchain was not obvious, blockchain was more likely to help the manufacturer and retailer increase their profits; otherwise, the value of blockchain was not significant. Besides, the risk-averse manufacturer and retailer would decrease their prices in response to the risks of demand fluctuations. Also, the blockchain platform would benefit from the risk-averse manufacturer and retailer but suffer from risk-averse consumers.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
ABSTRACT
Facilitated by physical showrooms, many online first retailers have embarked on the practice of omni‐channel retailing. This offline to online mode (information delivery offline and product ...fulfillment online) empowers consumers’ showrooming behavior in two ways, namely, intra‐product showrooming (intra‐SR) and inter‐product showrooming (inter‐SR). As the physical showroom usually displays a partial assortment of the online products, consumer inter‐SR, i.e., the behavior of inspecting one product offline but buying a different or related product online, is critical to firms’ decisions. Moreover, inter‐SR facilitated by the retailer's omni‐channel operations changes the nature of upstream competition between manufacturers. In this article, we develop a theoretical model to investigate consumer inter‐SR behavior and the information service provision in an omni‐channel supply chain. Our main findings are as follows. First, consumer inter‐SR benefits the manufacturer whose product is displayed online exclusively but hurts the manufacturer whose product is dual‐channel displayed; inter‐SR is beneficial to the omni‐channel retailer only when the inter‐SR intensity is not too high. Second, under the service compensation contract, the dual‐channel manufacturer and the retailer can be coordinated to provide enhanced information service; the online‐exclusive manufacturer, however, may be either better off or worse off depending on the relative strengths of the utility‐increasing effect and the service‐differentiating effect of the information service enhancement. Third, the consumers located far from the showrooms are more likely to be hurt by the inter‐SR behavior and the information service compensation, while the local consumers generally benefit from them. Finally, the in‐store inventory that facilitates immediate product fulfillment has a positive impact on the retailer's information service provision.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Social media have been increasingly adopted for organizational purposes but their operational implications are not well understood. Firms’ social media initiatives might facilitate information flow ...and knowledge sharing within and across organizations, strengthening firm-customer interaction, and improving internal and external collaboration. In this research we empirically examine the impact of social media initiatives on firms’ operational efficiency and innovativeness. Taking the resource-based view of firms’ information capability, we consider firms’ social media initiatives as strategic resources for operational improvement. We posit that firms’ social media initiatives enhance dynamic knowledge-sharing routines through an information-rich social network, leading to both operational efficiency and innovativeness. Collecting secondary data in a longitudinal setting from multiple sources, we construct dynamic panel data (DPD) models. Based on system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation, we show that firms’ social media initiatives improve operational efficiency and innovativeness. We identify the importance of an information-rich social network to the creation of knowledge-based advantage through firms’ social media initiatives, and discuss the theoretical and managerial implications from the perspective of operations management.
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FZAB, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
•We analyse a multi-echelon, multi-facility green reverse logistics network design problem with dynamic characteristics.•We consider carbon emissions, vehicle selection, the allocation between the ...facilities and multi-period setting.•A comprehensive mixed-integer linear programming model is formulated.•A novel exact solution method “Improved Benders decomposition” algorithm is proposed.•We provide managerial insights on the impact of carbon emissions and the choice of the vehicle fleet on network decisions.
There has been extensive academic research on the optimisation of reverse logistics (RL) and closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) network design. However, the existing literature is lacking in several features of practical relevance, and the simultaneous consideration of dynamic characteristics, including the multi-period setting, inventory factors, environmental footprints, and scalability of the application. This shortcoming is primarily due to the challenges associated with computation complexity, mathematical formulation, and the need for a faster solution method to solve such large-scale problems in real-time. In this research, we address these challenges and investigate the multi-facility green RL network design problem, integrating carbon footprint and vehicle selection, entailing allocation between the facilities in the multi-period setting to incorporate the dynamic characteristics. We formulate a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model to minimise the total cost, comprising the carbon emission cost due to transport and production at the facilities. We also investigate the effects of carbon emissions and the choice of the vehicle fleet on the network's structure. The novelty of our research lies in the development and application of an exact solution method, namely “Improved Benders Decomposition (IBD)” with several algorithmic enhancements, including a strengthened master problem, valid inequalities, a heuristic, and a multi-stage strategy to accelerate the convergence of the Benders decomposition method. By combining these elements, the proposed IBD solves the MILP model, provides a faster solution methodology with improved convergence of the bounds, and addresses the inherent intractability of the existing problem. We apply our proposed heuristic on a set of 12 problem configurations under distinct scenarios. We show that the proposed IBD heuristic outperforms existing traditional methods in terms of solution quality, computational time, and robustness.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
We study a classical supply chain consisting of a supplier and a retailer in which the former can sell the product through the latter under a consignment contract with revenue sharing. In this case, ...the supplier faces both uncertain yield (supply) and demand. In practice, it is difficult to precisely elicit the joint probability distribution of random demand and yield. Therefore, we investigate how to match demand with supply for supply chain when only partial distribution parameters, such as the first-two moments, are known. We use a distributionally robust approach to solve this challenge within the framework of a stylized two-stage Stackelberg game model. Under centralized and decentralized settings, a simple closed-form expression of the optimal robust production quantity that can properly match supply and demand can be completely characterized. Then, by comparing the performance of the two settings, we show that a supply chain double-marginalization issue exists. As such, we propose a subsidy mechanism based on a revenue-sharing contract to improve supply chain performance, and also prove the existence of a Pareto-improvement set, which can plausibly overcome the low efficiency of the supply chain. Our numerical studies further observe the impact of demand and yield uncertainty on the double-marginalization effect, the Pareto-improvement set, and both contract parties' expected profit loss. We also extend our model to consider the case of endogenizing pricing and asymmetric demand information.
•We study a two-level supply chain with a revenue-sharing contract in the worst case.•We use a distribution-free approach to analyze a stylized two-stage Stackelberg game model.•A simple closed-form expression of the optimal worst-case production quantity can be completely characterized.•We propose a subsidy mechanism based on a revenue-sharing contract to improve supply chain performance.•We can prove the existence of a Pareto-improvement set for the supply chain parties.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
Fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21) is an important regulator of energy metabolism. FGF21 is inactivated by fibroblast activation protein (FAP). We investigated whether FGF21 and/or FAP are secreted ...from human white adipose tissue of individuals with obesity by measuring total FGF21, active FGF21, and FAP concentrations in arterialized blood and venous blood draining the subcutaneous abdominal adipose tissue (scAT). Measurements were performed under fasting conditions and after a high fat meal before and after diet-induced weight loss in 16 adults with BMI 27-35 kg/m
. FGF21 was not released from scAT, neither before nor after weight loss in agreement with an undetectable gene expression of FGF21 in this tissue. Although scAT showed significant gene expression of FAP, no release of FAP from the tissue could be detected. The high fat meal increased postprandial circulating FGF21 but not FAP. Circulating levels of FAP but not FGF21 were significantly reduced after weight loss. On the other hand, FAP expression in scAT was increased. In conclusion, release from scAT does not appear to contribute to circulating concentrations of FGF21 and FAP and their responses to ingestion of a high fat meal or weight loss, respectively, in individuals with obesity.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
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