This book showcases how the latest and most advanced types of analytical modeling and empirical analysis can help to create value in the global supply chain. Focusing on practical relevance, it shares valuable management insights and addresses key issues in operations management (OM), demonstrating how past research has led to various practices and impacts, while also exploring the aspirations of the latest research. It presents current research on various topics such as global supply chain design, service supply chains, product design, responsible supply chains, performance and incentives in operations, data analytics in health services, new business models in the digital age, and new digital technology advances such as blockchain. In addition, it presents practical case studies on the aforementioned topics. Beyond the value of its contents, the book is intended as a tribute to Professor Morris Cohen, who has been a major contributor to advancing the research frontier in operations management and a driving force in shaping the field. Given its scope, the book will appeal to a wide readership, from researchers and PhD students to practitioners and consultants.

This book presents applications of blockchain technologies to foster sustainable development in the textile and clothing supply chain. The concept of Textiles and Fashion Sustainability has grown to a wider extent today. Among the list of items to achieve Sustainability in Textiles and Fashion, the key element is the traceability of supply chains in terms of mapping and tracing the entire supply chain to ensure sustainable supply chain management. Reliable and transparent, efficient data is one of the crucial requirements for Textiles and Fashion Sustainability in today's advanced industrial context and this is possible in this advanced era by various technological advancements such as Block chain technologies. These days one can see a widespread application of blockchain technology in the Textiles and Clothing sector. The core competencies of blockchain technology namely transparency, data auditability, privacy, value transfer, and process efficiency and automation are very much essential for achieving the multifold objectives under the theme Textiles and Fashion Sustainability.

Outsourcing has become one of the most important trends used in managing the enterprise during the last ten years and is now transforming the corporation. At the same time, it is one of the most talked about and hotly debated topics of our times. This book analyses these trends with leading outsourcing practitioners providing a strategic look at how the modern corporation can succeed through outsourcing, the pitfalls and hidden costs of offshoring, what to include in an outsourcing contract, and what outsourcing will look like in the future.

Contemporary supply chains operate under the pressure of customer requirements, increasing price competition, sudden increases or decreases in demand, unforeseen obstacles and new threats. The right way to improve the functioning of the flow of material and accompanying information is not only the continuous collection of data but also their collection, analysis, inference and decision-making with the use of decision support systems, expert systems and artificial intelligence. Such procedures make it easier for logisticians not only to forecast processes but also to predict (forecast) and identify potential problems and facilitate the implementation of optimal modern solutions, paying attention to current trends in the supply chain market. An important issue that affects the quality, efficiency and availability (continuity) of the processes implemented within the supply chain is security. This is an area that is not clearly defined. This book uses theoretical and practical knowledge to define security in the supply chain as a state that gives a sense of certainty and guarantees the flow of material goods and services (in accordance with the 7w rule) as well as a smooth flow of information for the planning and management of logistics processes. Tools and instruments used to ensure the security of the supply chain contribute to the protection and survival in times of dangerous situations (threats) and adaptation to new conditions (susceptibility to unplanned situations). When analyzing the needs and structure of the 21st century supply chains, in the context of their security, it is impossible to ignore the problem of their digitization, which enables the determination of optimal routes and the anticipation of possible threats (crisis situations). Automatic data exchange between various departments of the company along the upper and lower part of the supply chain improves the functioning of the warehouse management through, among others, automation, robotization and pro-activity. It also contributes to efficient, good communication and market globalization. Automation also brings new, extremely attractive business models with regard to occupational safety, ergonomics and environmental protection. To meet the needs of creating modern supply chains, the book analyzes and presents current and future solutions that affect security and the continuity of supply chains.

Time-based competition is here to stay. Firms wishing to compete successfully must reengineer every function within the value chain. Here is a blueprint, drawn on the author's extensive field research in over 50 companies, that addresses the practical problems and tactical issues faced by executives and managers. Scholars and students of business, operations management, strategic management, international business, organizational behavior, materials management, engineering management, purchasing, and logistics will also find this work an invaluable aid in understanding how to benchmark an organization against the best time-based competitors in the world.

Through visits and interviews with material managers, procurement managers, design engineers and sales personnel, the author has compiled an unparalleled set of benchmarks and best practices in supply chain management. Some of the strategic time-based initiatives discussed include supply chain management, integrated order entry systems, process capability, component life cycle management, electronic data interchange, time-based logistics, automated manufacturing technology, design for manufacturability, and global strategic sourcing. Extra attention is given to supply chain management, a new form of business process reengineering focusing on quick response, spanning the functions of sales, order entry, design engineering, purchasing, manufacturing, and logistics. An examination of how to create a time-based culture based on the experiences of Fortune 500 firms interviewed by the author concludes this richly detailed analysis of time-based competition.

The days of cheap raw materials and energy sources are gone. Suppliers will demand price increases due to the rising costs of energy and materials. This book describes how your purchasing department is able to gain (more) profit for your company and includes new ideas for successful purchasing and supplier development in Asia. The author discusses how to reduce costs in productive (BOM) and non-productive materials (NPMs) and how to calculate product and tool costs. As well, the book shows ways to negotiate your results with your suppliers in Asia and build an effective system of supplier relationship management.

This second volume in this set of books discusses various sustainable approaches in textiles and the fashion sector with a focus on consumerism and the supply chain. Sustainability is one of the important aspects in today's industrial context, and is no exception to textiles and fashion. Sustainability and strict adherence to the principles of sustainability has become as one of the essential needs again for any industrial sector including textiles and fashion. There are countless measures in terms of various approaches to make the textiles and fashion sector sustainable. These measures, but not limited to, ranging from innovating and implementing new fibres and raw materials, introducing innovative manufacturing methods, chemicals, processes to focus on all the possible stages of a textile product's life cycle from cradle to grave. These approaches include making the textiles and fashion sector circular and also development of new products from sustainable raw materials/processes or combination of both.

This text helps readers to build a solid understanding of the key concepts in the management and operation of supply chains involving chilling, refrigeration or freezing. Emphasis is placed on environmental-particularly temperature-control as important in avoiding irreversible damage to product quality and safety and the resulting loss of profit and consumer confidence. The authors explain the important issues arising within the supply chain of perishable goods from production to consumption: topics that include planning and design, instrumentation and methods of implementation, and process monitoring and control. Reminding the student that cold supply chains are essential for the supply of products more various than foods, product-specific studies and examples are included for handling bananas and vaccines. The importance of product traceability and automation are highlighted. Cold Chain Management is a self-contained guide for graduate and final-year undergraduate students specializing in the study of supply chains, and their instructors. Researchers interested in logistics will find this book instructive when they wish to consider the particular problems associated with cold chains and anyone looking to begin a business in which refrigeration or freezing will be necessary will be well-served by reading this text.

This book adopts a case study based research approach to examine the contemporary issues in the fashion industry. It documents real-world practices in fashion business from production, marketing to operations. Founded on an extensive review of literature, these case studies discuss the challenges that are pertinent to the current business environment in this important industry, provide benchmarks and generate insights to practitioners as well as suggest future directions to researchers. The book serves as a nexus of the theories and the industrial practices that advances knowledge for both the academia and the private sector in fashion business.

The book takes the inventory control perspective to tackle empty container repositioning logistics problems in regional transportation systems by explicitly considering the features such as demand imbalance over space, dynamic operations over time, uncertainty in demand and transport, and container leasing phenomenon. The book has the following unique features. First, it provides a discussion of broad empty equipment logistics including empty freight vehicle redistribution, empty passenger vehicle redistribution, empty bike repositioning, empty container chassis repositioning, and empty container repositioning (ECR) problems. The similarity and unique characteristics of ECR compared to other empty equipment repositioning problems are explained. Second, we adopt the stochastic dynamic programming approach to tackle the ECR problems, which offers an algorithmic strategy to characterize the optimal policy and captures the sequential decision-making phenomenon in anticipation of uncertainties over time and space. Third, we are able to establish closed-form solutions and structural properties of the optimal ECR policies in relatively simple transportation systems. Such properties can then be utilized to construct threshold-type ECR policies for more complicated transportation systems. In fact, the threshold-type ECR policies resemble the well-known (s, S) and (s, Q) policies in inventory control theory. These policies have the advantages of being decentralized, easy to understand, easy to operate, quick response to random events, and minimal on-line computation and communication. Fourth, several sophisticated optimization techniques such as approximate dynamic programming, simulation-based meta-heuristics, stochastic approximation, perturbation analysis, and ordinal optimization methods are introduced to solve the complex stochastic optimization problems. The book will be of interest to researchers and professionals in logistics, transport, supply chain, and operations research.

Today, supply chain transformation for creating customer value continues to be a priority for many companies, as it enables them to gain a competitive advantage. While value creation is shaped by external drivers such as market volatility, technology, product and service offering and disruption, it can be stymied by the internal stresses arising from the need to minimize costs, limitations in process redesign, waste minimization and the unavailability of knowledge capital. Therefore, for companies to survive and prosper, the relevant questions to ask would be how to identify the external/internal forces driving changes and how to map the business drivers to the attributes of transformation.

While the contemporary supply chain is well-structured, the evolving economic system is causing disruptions to this structure. The emergence of novel business paradigms non applicability of the traditional laws of supply and demand, dominance of negative externality effects and anomalies of high growth rate coexisting with high supply side uncertainty must be recognized in transforming supply chains. For example, healthcare delivery and humanitarian relief do not follow known supply/demand relationships; the negative externality effects are increasing sustainability concerns; and emerging economies, with dysfunctional business infrastructure, must manage high growth rates.

This book delves into the transformation issues in supply chains and extends the concepts to incorporate emerging issues. It does so through ten chapters, divided into three sections. The first section establishes the framework for transformation, while the second focuses on the transformation of current chains in terms of products, processes, supply base, procurement, logistics and fulfillment. Section three is devoted to capturing the key issues in transforming supply chains for emerging economies, humanitarian relief, sustainability and healthcare delivery.This work will be of interest to both academics and industrial practitioners and will be of great value to graduate students in business and engineering. It raises many questions, some provocative and provides many leads for in-depth research. Several approaches are suggested for new problems along with a discussion of case studies and examples from different industries."

This book discusses supply chain management, focusing on developments within modelling the dynamic behaviour of the supply chain. Aimed at postgraduate students, researchers and practitioners, this book provides an in-depth knowledge of the dynamics of supply chains. Business trends such as the globalisation process and the increase of competition across many industrial sectors have forced companies to concentrate on their core competences and to outsource those activities in which they do not excel. As a consequence, companies no longer produce and distribute their goods in isolation, but being part of a supply chain or supply network, i.e. a set of interrelated companies who ultimately deliver the goods and services to the final customer. Despite the prevalence of supply chains as the primary form of production and distribution, their performance can be seriously hampered by the complex dynamics resulting from the collaboration and coordination (or lack thereof) among their members. This book provides the reader with modelling tools to understand, analyse and improve the dynamic behaviour of supply chains. It assembles seminal works on supply chain models and recent developments on the topic in order to provide a comprehensive, unified vision of the field for researchers and practitioners who wish to grasp the challenges of supply chain management. Aside presenting the main elements, equations and performance indicators governing the dynamics of a supply chain, and the book addresses issues such as the effect of timely and accurately sharing the information across members, the influence of restrictions on the productive capacities of their members, or the impact of the variability of the lead times, among others. Furthermore, more complex supply chain structures such as non-serial supply networks or closed-loop supply chains are modelled and discussed. Relevant managerial insights regarding the causes of supply chain underperformance, as well as avenues to improve their efficiency can be extracted from the resulting models.

The COVID-19 pandemic has vividly and dramatically demonstrated the importance of supply chains to the functioning of societies and our economies. The discussion in this timely book explores prominent issues concerning supply chain networks and labor. The readership is aimed to include students, researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers, interested in the wide range of topics presented in these pages. Labor has a particular focus as the driver behind supply chains, whether associated with food products, life-saving medicines and supplies, or high tech products that make innovation possible, just to name a few. The impacts of policy interventions, in the form of wage bounds, and their ramifications, in terms of volume of attracted labor, product prices, product volumes, as well as profits, are explored. Profit-maximizing firms are considered (with relevant associated issues such as waste management in the case of the food sector, for example), but also non-profits, as in blood services, as well as humanitarian organizations engaged in disaster relief. The book is filled with many network figures, graphs, and tables with data, both input and output and includes an appendix that provides the foundations of the underlying mathematical methodologies used. The book offers strong evidence for the need to provide a holistic, system-wide perspective for the modeling, analysis, and solution of supply chain problems with the inclusion of the critical labor resources. A formalism using the prism of supply chain networks, which yields a graphic representation of supply chains, consisting of multiple stakeholders, is constructed. Models that capture the behaviors and interactions of single decision-makers as well as multiple decision-makers engaged in supply chain activities of production, transportation, storage, and distribution, are considered. The models capture many realistic constraints faced by firms today, as they seek to produce and deliver products, while dealing with competition, various constraints on labor, a variety of disruptions, labor shortages, challenges associated with proper wage-determination, plus the computation of optimal investments in labor productivity subject to budget constraints. The book provides prescriptive suggestions in terms of how to ameliorate negative impacts of labor disruptions and demonstrate benefits of appropriate wage determination.

The global supply chain creates environmental and social burdens during different stages of production and distribution. Ethical and sustainable practices along the supply chain seek to minimize these burdens and ensure fair labor practices, lower emissions, and a cleaner environment. Ethical and Sustainable Supply Chain Management in a Global Context uses cases, qualitative studies, empirical results, and analyses of legal frameworks to focus on ethics and sustainability as they relate to the management of global supply chains. Featuring research on topics such as production planning, consumer awareness, and labor laws, this book is ideally designed for managers, policymakers, professionals, researchers, and students working in the field of sustainable development and related disciplines including marketing, economics, finance, operations management, supply chain management, environmental science, and waste management.

This book highlights the design, use and structure of blockchain systems and decentralized ledger technologies (B/DLT) for use in the construction industry. Construction remains a fragmented change-resistant industry with chronic problems of underproductivity and a very low digitization factor compared to other fields. In parallel, the convergence, embedding and coordination of digital technologies in the physical world provides a unique opportunity for the construction industry to leap ahead and adopt fourth industrial revolution technologies. Within this context, B/DLT are an excellent fit for the digitization of the construction industry. B/DLT are effective in this as they organize and align digital and physical supply chains, produce stigmergic coordination out of decentralization, enable the governance of complex projects for multiple stakeholders, while enabling the creation of a new class of business models and legal instruments for construction.

Supply Chain Management, Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP), and Advanced Planning Systems (APS) are important concepts in order to organize and optimize the flow of materials, information and financial funds. This book, already in its fifth edition, gives a broad and up-to-date overview of the concepts underlying APS. Special emphasis is given to modeling supply chains and implementing APS successfully in industry. Understanding is enhanced by several case studies covering APS from various software vendors. The fifth edition contains updated material, rewritten chapters and an additional case study.

Supply chain scheduling is a relatively new research area with less than 20 years of history. It is an intersection of two traditional areas: supply chain management and scheduling. In this book, the authors provide a comprehensive coverage of supply chain scheduling. The book covers applications, solution algorithms for solving related problems, evaluation of supply chain conflicts, and models for encouraging cooperation between decision makers. Supply chain scheduling studies detailed scheduling issues within supply chains, as motivated by a variety of applications in the real world. Topics covered by the book include: Coordinated decision making in centralized supply chains, including integrated production and distribution scheduling, joint scheduling and product pricing, and coordinated subcontracting and scheduling. Coordination and competition issues in decentralized supply chains, including conflict and cooperation within scheduling decisions made by different parties in supply chains, and both cooperative and non-cooperative supply chain scheduling games. The book describes a variety of representative problems within each of these topics. The authors define these problems mathematically, describe corresponding applications, and introduce solution methods for solving each problem to improve supply chain performance.

The focus of Supply Chain Engineering is the engineering design and planning of supply chain systems. There exists a very large variety of supply chain system types, all with different goals, constraints, and decisions, but a systematic approach for the design and planning of any supply chain can be based on the principles and methods of system engineering. In this book, author Marc Goetschalckx presents material developed at the Georgia Tech Supply Chain and Logistics Institute, the largest supply chain and logistics research and education program in the world. The book can be roughly divided into four sections. The first section focuses on data management. Since most of planning and design requires making decisions today so that supply chain functions can be executed efficiently in the future, this section introduces forecasting principles and techniques. The second section of the book focuses on transportation systems. First, the characteristics of transportation assets and infrastructure are shown. Then four chapters focus on the planning of transportation activities depending on who controls the transportation assets. The third section of the book is focused on storing goods, and the last section of the book is focused on supply chain systems that consider simultaneously procurement, production, and transportation and inventory as well as the design of the supply chain infrastructure or network design. In each chapter, first a model of the process being studied is developed followed by a description of practical solution algorithms. More advanced material is typically described in appendices. This makes it possible to use an integrated, breath-first treatment of supply chain systems by using the initial material in each chapter. A more in depth treatment of a specific topic or process can be found towards the end of each chapter. End-of-chapter exercises are included throughout. This text is suitable for several target audiences. The first target is a course for upper-level undergraduate students on supply chains. The second target is the use in a capstone senior design project in the supply chain area. The third target is an introductory course on supply chains either in a master of engineering or a master of business administration program, and the final audience consists of students attending logistics or supply chain post-graduate or continuing education courses.

This book covers important issues related to managing supply chain risks from various perspectives. Supply chains today are vulnerable to disruptions with a significant impact on firms' business and performance. The aim of supply chain risk management is to identify the potential sources of risks and implement appropriate actions in order to mitigate supply chain disruptions. This book presents a set of models, frameworks, strategies, and analyses that are essential for managing supply chain risks. As a comprehensive collection of the latest research and most recent cutting-edge developments on supply chain risk and its management, the book is structured into three main parts: 1) Supply Chain Risk Management; 2) Supply Chain Vulnerability and Disruptions Management; and 3) Toward a Resilient Supply Chain. Leading academic researchers as well as practitioners have contributed chapters, combining theoretical findings and research results with a practical and contemporary view on how companies can manage the supply chain risks and disruptions, as well as how to create a resilient supply chain. This book can serve as an essential source for students and scholars who are interested in pursuing research or teaching courses in the rapidly growing area of supply chain risk management. It can also provide an interesting and informative read for managers and practitioners who need to deepen their knowledge of effective supply chain risk management.

ERP Systems for Manufacturing Supply Chains: Applications, Configuration, and Performance provides insight into the core architecture, modules, and process support of ERP systems used in a manufacturing supply chain. This book explains the building blocks of an ERP system and how they can be used to increase performance of manufacturing supply chains. Starting with an overview of basic concepts of supply chain and ERP systems, the book delves into the core ERP modules that support manufacturing facilities and organizations. It examines each module's structure and functionality as well as the process support the module provides. Cases illustrate how the modules can be applied in manufacturing environments. Also covered is how the ERP modules can be configured to support manufacturing supply chains. Setting up an ERP system to support the supply chain within single manufacturing facility provides insight into how an ERP system is used in the smallest of manufacturing enterprises, as well as lays the foundation for ERP systems in manufacturing organizations. The book then supplies strategies for larger manufacturing enterprises and discusses how ERP systems can be used to support a complete manufacturing supply chain across different facilities and companies. The ERP systems on the market today tend to use common terminology and naming for describing specific functions and data units in the software. However, there are differences among packages. The book discusses various data and functionalities found in different ERP-software packages and uses generic and descriptive terms as often as possible to make these valid for as many ERP systems as possible. Filled with insight into ERP system's core modules and functions, this book shows how ERP systems can be applied to support a supply chain in the smallest of manufacturing organizations that only consist of a single manufacturing facility, as well as large enterprises where the manufacturing supply chain crosses multiple facilities and companies.

Blockchain Driven Supply Chains and Enterprise Information Systems examines initiatives for blockchain implementation in supply chain management and the integration of blockchain technology with existing enterprise management applications. The authors aim to establish common ground to provide solutions and best practices in the supply chain field, while tackling the challenges faced when integrating blockchain in supply chain policy. Chapters address both design and implementation aspects of supply chain platforms and enterprise information systems, and provide real-world use cases and examples from industry that address the impacts of using blockchain in the modern supply chain.

This textbook provides a comprehensive step-by-step guide for new public transport modelers. It includes an introduction to mathematical modeling, continuous and discrete optimization, numerical optimization, computational complexity analysis, metaheuristics, and multi-objective optimization. These tools help engineers and modelers to use better existing public transport models and also develop new models that can address future challenges. By reading this book, the reader will gain the ability to translate a future problem description into a mathematical model and solve it using an appropriate solution method. The textbook provides the knowledge needed to develop highly accurate mathematical models that can serve as decision support tools at the strategic, tactical, and operational planning levels of public transport services. Its detailed description of exact optimization methods, metaheuristics, bi-level, and multi-objective optimization approaches together with the detailed description of implementing these approaches in classic public transport problems with the use of open source tools is unique and will be highly useful to students and transport professionals.

Global Integrated Supply Chain Systems assimilates the principal views from international authors, who provide a combination of industrial experience and scholarly research, in the area of supply chain systems. This book discusses the business and technical reasons for integrating supply chain systems, and provides excellent arguments for globalization resulting through integration of supply chain systems. Readers of ""Global Integrated Supply Chain Systems"" will receive an excellent overall understanding of what comprises supply chain systems, why they should be integrated and how the resultant global organization will be able to compete and grow in this age of communication. They will also find practical business reasons for the crucial need to integrate supply chain systems in global enterprises and, more importantly, collaborating clusters of organizations.

This book presents scheduling with a medium- and short-term focus, which makes it possible to capitalize on fleeting market opportunities while simultaneously working to reconcile economic and environmental priorities. It introduces a new mixed-integer approach to hierarchical discrete-time and continuous-time scheduling, combining aspects of production and recycling, forward and reverse logistics as well as emissions trading for multi-stage supply chain networks. Problem-specific variants of relax-and-fix heuristics and genetic algorithms are also proposed. Given its scope, the book provides a range of practical tools and new perspectives for researchers and professionals in the field of supply chain management.

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Supply chain management processes have gradually shifted from a supply-driven focus to a demand-driven one in order to better synchronize demand and supply signals. "Bricks Matter" shows you how you can identify market risks and opportunities and translate these into winning tactics. Business cases highlight how business leaders are winning through market-driven approaches.Helps you understand how to apply the emerging world of predictive analytics for the better management of value networksIncludes business cases illustrating the market-driven approachReveals how businesses can identify market risks and translate these into supply-side tactics

As companies transition from demand-driven to market-driven approach, the focus in organizations shifts from one of vertical excellence to building strong market-to-market horizontal processes. Improve revenue by increasing market share, improve profit margins, and maintain high levels of customer service with the indispensable guidance found in "Bricks Matter."