Sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) is continuously gaining importance. It has been studied widely in developed countries and to some extent also in developing countries. This paper ...contributes to the latter by studying environmentally related SSCM practices in Jordanian manufacturing firms and provides a base for policy- and decision-makers as it assesses the current situation of the Jordanian manufacturing companies in terms of voluntarily adopting sustainable development practices or doing so under external pressure. This study aims to evaluate how adopting sustainable practices can affect economic performance in developing countries within the context of Jordanian manufacturing companies. Based on existing literature, a questionnaire was developed covering aspects of sustainability in internal and external supply chain practices, SSCM drivers, and company performance. A total of 92 responses were analyzed to test the proposed hypotheses using regression analyses to test the single-variable hypotheses, and structural equation modeling to test the multivariate hypotheses. The results show that the adoption of SSCM practices is still in its initial stages for Jordanian manufacturers. Sustainability awareness is quite low, and Jordanian companies mostly do not seem to consider the environmental impacts of their manufacturing operations. The results also show a difference between manufacturing types: process industries were less likely to adopt SSCM practices voluntarily, while discrete industries were more likely to do so. Finally, for Jordanian manufacturers to compete in international markets, they should take further steps toward adopting sustainability. To enhance the investment potential of multinational companies, Jordan should take the advantages of the industrial parks/estates and adopt regulations that force manufacturers to adopt sustainability practices under external pressure.
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•Sustainable supply chain management practices in Jordan are still in their infancy.•Process industries adopt sustainable practices under external parties' pressure.•Poor environmental awareness reduces stakeholders' concerns to improve their SSCM.
Food supply chain is gaining significant importance among international researchers and practitioners. However, food loss and waste is a global issue that significantly impacts global food security ...and requires more attention from all parties to find solutions to eliminate their causes. Although the amount of food loss and waste is much higher in developed countries, this paper enriches the current literature by providing insights from developing countries. The study highlighted the challenges and obstacles which hinder the capability of citrus farmers and other stakeholders to reduce food loss and waste and improve their profit in one of the Mediterranean countries. This paper aims to identify the best practices for improving the sustainable performance of citrus supply chains. For this purpose, the system dynamics approach has been used to build and simulate scenarios to improve the environmental performance of citrus production in Jordan and to observe the reflections of that on both the economic and social dimensions. Five scenarios were proposed and discussed from the sustainability perspective. The results from all scenarios showed significant improvement in 'farmers' profit by 22.4%, 15.6%, 8.6%, 30.0%, and 23.2% when hiring more workers (S1), motivating workers (S2), re-usage of crates (S3), the combination of S1 and S3 (S4), and the combination of S2 and S4 (S5), respectively. Moreover, the self-sufficiency index has been improved by 18.9% in S1, S2, S4, and S5.
The study suggests that there is a significant relationship between the number of farmworkers, pre-harvesting loss, and citrus consumption per capita. The novelty of this research lies within its quest to expand the knowledge regarding the dynamic factors influencing the sustainability of citrus supply chains in developing countries and observe the interactions between the pillars of sustainability.
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•Seasonality and low income enforced workers to escape from working at farms.•Citrus loss at pre-harvesting stage in Jordan Valley was estimated at 20–30%.•Reusing packaging crates led to a major reduction in logistics costs.•Enhancing farmers' income would lead to improving sustainability performance.
This study aimed to investigate the role of systemic intelligence factors in explaining cognitive flexibility and cognitive holding power among university students using measures of the ...aforementioned phenomena. A random sample of (519) students participated in this research, and it was found that factors relating to systemic intelligence could predict cognitive flexibility and cognitive holding power. The elements of systemic intelligence that were most adept at explaining cognitive flexibility were systemic action through positive engagement and active response, while systemic perception was the most explanatory factor in terms of cognitive holding power. The study concluded that systemic intelligence, which has perceptual, cognitive, social and behavioural facets, contributes to student performance in learning settings; consequently, it is recommended that the role of systemic intelligence should be analysed by linking elements of this form of intelligence with the different variables and integrating systemic thinking skills into different learning activities.
Citrus supply chains (CSC) are increasingly important in research due to high loss and waste, increasing demand, wide application for other industries, and differences in CSCs from country to ...country. This study proposes a new structure for CSC by introducing collection points to collect citrus from the farms in Jordan Valley and transport it to a citrus hub responsible for receiving, packaging, and transporting the citrus to distribution centers. The objective of this structure is to minimize the loss and waste and provide a new supply chain (SC) with stable infrastructure to track citrus from the initial stages and implement technologies such as the Cold SC. Therefore, it is crucial to find the optimum number of collection points, citrus hubs, and locations based on carbon footprint and transportation costs. The model introduced was solved using Open Solver Adds-ins after collecting data such as distances and coordinates using Google Maps and the altitude of those coordinates from SolarGIS. After running the model, it was found that the optimum number of collection points is 52 and the optimum number of citrus hubs is two. The results showed that the transportation costs of one hub are lower by 30%, whereas for two hubs are lower by 60% compared to the current location of the central market of fruits and vegetables (CM). The “kg CO2 e/kg citrus” values are 0.48 and 0.24 for one hub and two hubs, respectively, which showed a significant reduction compared to CM, which was 0.69 kg CO2 e/kg citrus. Therefore, installing two citrus hubs will improve the overall sustainable performance of CSC. Future research might be directed to integrate the circular economy into CSC and find possible applications for citrus loss and waste.
Packaging plays a key role in preserving food products during transportation. Therefore, selecting proper packaging crates to transport fruits from farms to the market can dramatically reduce loss ...and waste. This study aims to evaluate the environmental impact of two packaging alternatives when transporting citrus products in Jordan using the loss ratio, as an indicator to select the best packaging, based on the traveled distances. The research team tracked transportation trucks from several farms to the market. In addition, data were collected from the department of statistics in Jordan to build the model using OpenLCA Software with defined system boundaries. However, the results revealed that polypropylene crates performed better than polystyrene crates. Citrus loss during transportation was cut by at least 60% when using polypropylene crates. The use of polypropylene crates reduced product damages by handling better the vibration and load stress, especially with increased transport distances to the “Central Market of fruits and vegetables”. Different impact categories were evaluated. We selected 3 categories based on the hotspot analysis performed: climate change, resource depletion, and water resource depletion. Farm waste has the highest impact with ranges of 58–69%, 77–85%, and 77–81%, respectively. Other impactful waste is waste from packaging and inedible parts; they influence the impact categories up to 23%, 11%, and 17%, in the same order. In terms of environmental impact, the polypropylene crates have fewer impacts since they are reusable and recyclable at the end of the product life cycle. Therefore, we recommend adopting polypropylene crates when transporting citrus products to the market. As a future research direction, the study suggests performing a similar analysis to evaluate the effect of packaging crates on other agricultural products in Jordan.
This study investigated the ability of language teachers’ practices to predict self-efficacy in reading among Jordanian students participating in PISA 2018. The study adopted the secondary analysis ...method by analyzing the responses of 8,963 15-year-oldmales and females in 313 schools who participated in PISA 2018. Statistically significant differences in students’ perceptions were found in teacher-directed instruction, teacher support for students, teacher motivating students to engage in reading, and enjoyable reading. Additionally, female students exhibited more reading self-efficacy than male students. There were statistically significant differences in students’ perceptions of controlling the classroom environment, and feedback in favor of males. The multiple linear regression analysis indicated that five factors explained a statistically significant proportion of the variance in self-efficacy in reading (14.7%). Enjoyment of reading was the factor that contributed the most with a percentage of 10.2%, followed by teacher enthusiasm with 3.6%.
•Centralized citrus supply chain (SC) performed better in terms of sustainability.•Applied life cycle costing identified costs drivers and their contributions to the fuctional unit.•Circular economy ...can cut the costs of the citrus and provide more social benefits.•Centralized closed-loop ASC can create jobs and improve self-sufficiency index.
The focus on food supply chain (FSC) sustainability has grown due to demand, food loss and waste, and environmental impacts. This study aims to quantify citrus life cycle costs (LCC) and determine the main drivers and their contributions. LCC was used to assess the cradle-to-grave cost of 1 kg of citrus sold to consumers at the retailer stage. A comparison was made between an existing citrus supply chain (SC) and a proposed closed-loop structure. In addition to the current citrus SC, four different cases were analyzed and evaluated: the centralized linear citrus SC, the centralized linear citrus SC with a 33 % increase in labor income, the centralized closed-loop citrus SC, and the centralized closed-loop citrus SC with a 33 % increase in labor income. The results showed significant reductions in functional unit's (FU) costs of 48 %, 38 %, 54 %, and 44 %, respectively, compared to the current citrus SC. Labor accounted for 47–62 % of the FU costs, while agriculture inputs and transportation contributed 15–28 % and 12–16 %, respectively. The study revealed that a centralized citrus closed-loop SC improves economic viability, especially when recycling citrus waste as compost for farms. Transportation currently contributes the most to FU costs (45 %), but in the closed-loop citrus SC, labor becomes the highest contributor (62 %). This cradle-to-grave citrus SC approach identifies drivers and contributions to the FU's costs, showcasing differences when integrating a circular economy. Future research may explore the impact of other byproducts on FU costs.
Fabrication of natural polymers and biomaterials is often a challenging task given the complexity of their chemical structures and the requirements needed by delicate technique(s) used to combine and ...reshape these materials into a useful application. In the present study, a simple centrifugal method is suggested for combining Zein protein with xanthan or arabic gums to prepare a suitable bed of microfibres that can host a poorly water-soluble drug, such as hydrochlorothiazide. By varying the dwelling speed of centrifugation for these blends at a set temperature with an appropriate solvent system consisting of ethanol, distilled water, and citric acid, microfibres were produced in an average diameter range of 3.3 pm-6.7 pm. These fibres were characterized for their compatibility using thermogravimetric analysis and modulated temperature differential scanning calorimetry and were visualized using scanning electron microscopy. The findings have shown general good miscibility/ homogeneity. Although future investigations may further explore features of this system for oral drug delivery, it is hoped that this work will help establish a simple and scalable fabrication method for these types of blended compositions.
This paper studies manufacturing processes in a wooden furniture manufacturing company. The company suffers from long manufacturing lead times and an unbalanced production line. To identify sources ...of waste and delay value stream mapping (VSM) and a discrete event simulation model is implemented. VSM is used to visualize and analyze the major processes of the company and provide quantifiable KPIs; the manufacturing lead-time and then Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) settings. A discrete event simulation model is then built to analyze the company on a wider scale and provide the data required to identify bottlenecks. Building on the data gathered from the production lines and the simulation model, two-bottleneck detection methods are used, the utilization method, and the waiting time method. Then based on the comparison of the two methods a third bottleneck detection is utilized; the scenario-based method, to identify the primary and secondary bottlenecks. After the bottlenecks are identified, changes are then evaluated using the simulation model and radar charts were built based on the improved simulation model, which evaluates the effect of changes in the utilization and OEE results. This work managed to neutralize the effect of one of the main bottlenecks and minimize the effect of the other. The manufacturing utilization was increased by 15.8% for the main bottleneck resources followed by 2.4% for the second one. However, it is hard to convince the traditional administration of this small size manufacturing plant to adopt a completely revolutionizing, costly, and risky (at such level) lean manufacturing approach. This paper studies and provides a much lower in cost and verified scheme of enhancement.
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