Addressing today’s general requirements on sustainability, as captured by for example the UN sustainability goals, is a necessity within production operations. It means that production managers need ...to find and manage new working procedures and methods on the shop floor to increase resource efficiency and overall sustainability. Utilizing a green lean environmental improvement tool called Green Performance Map in manufacturing and pharma industry has proven successful results in engaging shop floor managers and operators in green kaizen and demonstrated the value of integrating the waste hierarchy model, hence operationalising the concept of circular economy. This paper presents results of eight industrial cases of pilot trials of the Green Performance Map, demonstrating how the waste hierarchy model was used as an operationalisation mechanism for increasing the circularity on the shop floor. This was made by prioritizing and executing environmental improvements identified by the shop floor team that implied moving up one or more steps in the waste hierarchy. By this action, resource efficiency was improved as well as the overall environmental behaviour. The research presented contributes to the green lean theory and its integration with circular economy in a production context. On managerial level, the research demonstrates a concrete way of how the circularity could be improved on the shop floor.
Display omitted
•Synchronisation of green-lean with circular economy concepts is absent in literature.•Green lean shop floor improvement work can benefit from the circular economy concept.•The waste hierarchy can be used to find circular economy solutions.•Circular economy is not always best-way to improve environmental issues in production.•The solutions can be categorized into Avoid, Circulate, Substitute or Other.
The effective utilization of capacity is an important operational goal that managers strive to achieve. Most textbooks use the following simple “bottleneck formula” to illustrate the calculation of ...process capacity: the capacity of each resource is first calculated by examining that resource in isolation; process capacity is then taken as the smallest (bottleneck) among the resource capacities. The bottleneck formula is, in fact, an approximation of the true process capacity and correctly calculates capacity only in some straightforward settings, for example, in processes where each activity requires only one resource and in processes where each resource is dedicated to only one activity. However, when activities require multiple resources simultaneously (collaboration) and when resources are capable of doing multiple activities (multitasking), the simple formula can be significantly inaccurate. Further, several commonly held managerial insights related to process capacity and least-capacity resources that emerge from the formula can be misleading. The main goal of this case is to alert students that, for processes with collaboration and multitasking, the use of the bottleneck formula brings the potential danger of reaching incorrect conclusions about capacity and what constitutes a bottleneck of a process and may eventually lead to erroneous decisions with significant financial impact, for example, investing in procuring an expensive resource without being able to realize the presumed increase in capacity. More generally, the case illustrates the principles of process capacity and bottleneck structures and clarifies some often-repeated misunderstandings on the relationship between process capacity and least-capacity resources. The case also illustrates the importance of using Gantt charts for conveniently displaying schedules of activities.
Fashion knockoffs, which refer to the copycat behaviours of some brands in fashion apparel, are widely seen. It is commonly believed that the presence of fashion knockoffs harms the ...original-designer-label (ODL) product seller. Motivated by the industrial interviews and real-world observations, we build game-theoretical models to examine the impacts of fashion knockoffs on the ODL product supply chain and its agents with the consideration of risk attitudes. Explicitly, in the basic model, we consider a common manufacturer producing for both a knockoff product seller and a risk sensitive ODL product seller. The ODL product seller and the knockoff product seller make pricing decisions to optimise their own profits. We interestingly find that the presence of fashion knockoffs benefits the ODL product supply chain and its agents when (i) the ODL product seller is risk averse and the ratio of demand uncertainty is relatively small or (ii) the ODL product seller is risk seeking and the ratio of demand uncertainty is sufficiently large. The findings indicate that a risk averse (seeking) ODL product seller is more prone to benefit from the presence of fashion knockoffs when selling fashionable (classic) products.
Purpose
In response to calls for conceptual frameworks and generic theory building toward the advancement of sustainability in supply chain resource utilization and management, the purpose of this ...paper is to advance a circular framework for supply chain resource sustainability (SCRS), and a decision-support methodology for assessing SCRS against the backdrop of five foundational premises (FPs) deduced from the literature on resource sustainability.
Design/methodology/approach
Taking a conceptual theory-building approach, the paper advances a set of SCRS decision-support criteria for each of the theoretical premises advanced, and applies the theory of constraints to illustrate the conceptual and practical applications of the framework in SCRS decision making.
Findings
This study uses recent conceptualizations of supply chains as “complex adaptive systems” to provide a robust and novel frame and a set of decision rules with which to assess the interconnectedness of environmental, economic, and social capital of supply chain resources from pre-production to post-production.
Research limitations/implications
The paper contributes to theory building in sustainability research, and the SCRS decision framework developed could be applied in tandem with existing quantitative hybrid life-cycle and input-output approaches to facilitate targeted resource sustainability assessments, with implications for research and practice.
Originality/value
The novel SCRS framework proposed serves as a template for evaluating SCRS and provides a decision-support methodology for assessing SCRS against the five theorized FPs.
Under the carbon trading mechanism, carbon asset has become an important resource and new production factor for enterprises, and are one of the key factors for production operations. As an emerging ...mortgage-loan model, carbon asset pledge financing (CAPF) can not only revitalize the carbon assets, but also address insufficient capital for enterprises. For carbon emission-dependent engineering machinery enterprises, this paper examines the impacts of CAPF on the performances of an emission-dependent and capital-constrained remanufacturer. Based on the benchmark without financing, the pure carbon asset pledge financing (PCAPF) strategy and the hybrid carbon asset pledge financing (HCAPF) strategy, are explored. The results show that: (i) Whether the remanufacturer chooses CAPF depends on initial capital, only when its initial capital is below a threshold, it can benefit from the CAPF loan. (ii) The choice of PCAPF and HCAPF for a remanufacturer depends on the quantity of carbon assets, compared with no capital constraint, the PCAPF and HCAPF are all conducive to increasing the quantity of remanufactured products and reducing carbon emissions. (iii) The HCAPF always has a higher contribution rate to the remanufactured quantity and consumer surplus than PCAPF, while the former strategy contributes less than the latter in terms of reducing carbon emission and gaining profit. (iv) Due to the relatively high interest, the HCAPF strategy can realize higher environmental performances and consumer welfare than the strategy of PCAPF.
The main objective of this paper is to improve logistics and design to improve the register timber in stock and timber in the sale itself to optimalization of pre-production and production operations ...in the forestry industry. The proposal could improve the registration using RFID technology. The proposal based on RFID technology will ensures smooth and easy flow of information. Technology will be introduced in stocks, which will result in better record keeping and transfer of timber storage and at the same time will be introduce RFID technology in the timber sale.
Co-production and co-creation occur when citizens participate actively in delivering and designing the services they receive. It has come increasingly onto the agenda of policymakers, as interest in ...citizen participation has more generally soared. Expectations are high and it is regarded as a possible solution to the public sector’s decreased legitimacy and dwindling resources, by accessing more of society’s capacities. In addition, it is seen as part of a more general drive to reinvigorate voluntary participation and strengthen social cohesion in an increasingly fragmented and individualized society. Co-Production and Co-Creation: Engaging Citizens in Public Services offers a systematic and comprehensive theoretical and empirical examination of the concepts of co-production and co-creation and their application in practice. It shows the latest state of knowledge on the topic and will be of interest to students at an advanced level, academics and reflective practitioners. It addresses the topics with regard to co-production and co-creation and will be of interest to researchers, academics, policymakers, and students in the fields of public administration, business administration, economics, political science, public management, political science, service management, sociology and voluntary sector studies.
This case focuses on operational challenges faced by customer service centers, or call centers. The specific context for these cases is Patelco, which is a California based credit union. Patelco is ...facing a rising number of complaints about customer service, specifically, about the long delay customers had to face when they called one of Patelco‘s four call centers. The purpose of this case is to expose students to the statistical analysis of some of the raw data, obtained from such an environment, to support the investigation of call center performance. Important managerial insights can be drawn by summarizing the data graphically as well as quantitatively. In particular, the data can be used to show students how to perform a number of useful hypothesis tests, which are often needed to answer important questions that arise when assessing the performance of any system. The outcomes from these analyses can provide important managerial insights. In the operations management literature, and in practice, a number of modeling assumptions are made about the distribution of data to facilitate quantitative analysis. However, these assumptions are often not statistically validated. This case study gives students an opportunity to test such assumptions. This case can be used in graduate and undergraduate classes in Operations Management, Supply Chain Management and Service Operations to review statistical concepts related to the topic of queuing analysis, or in a Statistics class to illustrate data analysis and statistical tests in a real-world context.
Supplemental Material:
Supplemental material is available at
https://doi.org/10.1287/ited.2022.0272ca
and the Teaching Notes and Excel spreadsheet of solutions are available at
https://www.informs.org/Publications/Subscribe/Access-Restricted-Materials
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