This book presents a series of studies analyzing critical factors that promote and constrain textile & clothing (T&C) production and trade in the Belt & Road (B&R) countries, and forces that drive the restructuring and transforming of global T&C supply chain and operations in the B&R context. The book also offers insights into the challenges and opportunities for T&C manufacturing in B&R countries through interviews with T&C experts, and also examines how Hong Kong can strengthen its "super-connector" role by facilitating sustainable trade and development in the T&C industries, as well as discussion on the impact of global trade wars on T&C trade. In the studies presented in this book, they offer topics ranging from the macro-economy, international business environment and strategies, logistics and supply chain, policy changes, to sustainability. The studies offer descriptive, theoretical and empirical analyses that explore T&C business and management related opportunities and challenges that are derived from the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Econometric analysis with the gravity model is applied to T&C trade and extended to cover other areas that have not been considered in previous studies, such as production costs, export supply chain costs, technologies, demographical factors, and factors related to the business environment and policies, including qualitative variables. Studies using in-depth interviews and linear regression analysis are also present to explore new factors for T&C trade and production relocation to B&R countries.

Company executives in every field are recognizing the critical importance of entering into the global economy. As transportation and logistics companies follow their clients' expansion into these international markets, they must be able to service their clients' supply chain needs in new economies and turbulent markets. Managing Growth and Expansion into Global Markets addresses the unique logistical, transportation, and distribution issues surrounding growth and expansion into global markets. It supplies a full overview of contemporary management assessment tools, to provide an understanding of exactly what it takes to enter foreign markets and avoid common pitfalls. Distilling the author's decades of experience in global supply chain management and international business, this book is ideal for those looking to grow and develop their global supply chains. The book details the benefits and drawbacks of both organic growth and merger and acquisitions into global markets. It illustrates the most common types of problems that occur during mergers and acquisitions and describes exactly what you can expect during the transition period. Explaining why some organizations transition new business units successfully while others struggle, this book will help you properly assess your best options to grow your organization and expand your supply chain capabilities. The book examines the array of legal and regulatory implications that you need to review, understand, and bring into your decision-making process. It also provides specific answers, strategies, and a best-practice outline that you can follow. A must-read for anyone involved with global growth and expansion in the supply chain arena, this book is also an ideal tutorial to help students and business-school attendees gain practical insights into global supply chain issues.

This book highlights the applications of blockchain technologies to foster sustainable development in different fields. The concept of Sustainability has grown widespread in today's context and there are many requirements to achieve Sustainability in any industrial sector including mapping, tracing the supply chain to ensure sustainable supply chain management. Reliable and transparent, efficient data is one of the key requirements for Sustainability in today's advanced industrial context. Achievement of Sustainability objectives in this advanced era demands various technological advancements such as Blockchain technologies. 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 sustainability.

Latin America is a well recognized and growing market, but its poor infrastructure, explosive urbanization, expensive and inefficient logistics, and multiple social problems continue to pose major problems to logistics professionals and academics. The uniqueness and complexity of these issues have long daunted scholars, and there remains an important gap in the literature around Latin American supply chain management and logistics (SCM&L). Supply Chain Management and Logistics in Latin America brings together leading scholars across Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, and the USA in order to address this gap. The chapters collected here, all of which are drawn from selected papers presented at the 2016 MIT SCALE Latin American Conference on Logistics and Supply Chain Management, offer perspectives from five different countries-Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Peru-and provide insights into cases and new methods written by people who have faced the challenges they discuss. The authors cover a broad range of subjects: in addition to general contributions to qualitative and quantitative methods in supply chain management and coverage of cases of global importance such as the Panama Canal expansion, they offer insights into regionally specific problems around freight corridors in Colombia, reverse logistics and recycling in Colombia, supply risk management in Colombia, and socially oriented logistics in low-income communities in Peru. Since Latin America is one of the most urbanized regions in the world, with about eighty percent of the population living in cities, questions around urban logistics also receive heavy coverage, with four chapters discussing issues unique to very high-density cities and megacities such as Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Bogota, and Quito. For its explorations of important themes, methods, and local topics within a crucial and ever-expanding market, Supply Chain Management and Logistics in Latin America is a valuable resource for educators, researchers, and practitioners.

Leading the way in current thinking on environmental logistics, Green Logistics provides a unique insight on the environmental impacts of logistics and the actions that companies and governments can take to deal with them. It is written by leading researchers in the field and provides a comprehensive view of the subject for students, managers and policy-makers. Fully updated, the 3rd edition of Green Logistics has a more global perspective than previous editions. It introduces new contributors and international case studies that illustrate the impact of green logistics in practice. There is a new chapter on the links between green logistics and corporate social responsibility and a series of postscripts examining the effects of new developments, such as 3D printing, distribution by drone, the physical internet and the concept of peak freight. Other key topics examined include: carbon auditing of supply chains; transferring freight to greener transport modes; reducing the environmental impact of warehousing; improving the energy efficiency of freight transport; making city logistics more environmentally sustainable; reverse logistics for the management of waste; role of government in promoting sustainable logistics. The 3rd edition of Green Logistics includes indispensable online supporting materials, including graphics, tables, chapter summaries, and guidelines for lecturers.

Strategic alliances offer organisations an alternative to organic growth or acquisition when faced with the need to develop the business to a new level, innovate in terms of products or services or significantly reduce costs. The Strategic Alliance Handbook is a clear and complete guide to the nuts and bolts of the process behind successful collaborations. The book enables readers to understand the commercial, technical, strategic, cultural and operational logic behind any alliance and to establish an approach that is appropriate for the type of alliance they are seeking and the partner organisation(s) with whom they are working. Whether you are an alliance executive, responsible for the systems, strategy and performance of your organisation's alliancing programme or an alliance manager needing to ensure the success of a given partnership, The Strategic Alliance Handbook is an essential guide.

This book provides a thorough perspective on the realities of doing business in Ghana, outlining the economic, social, technological, and cultural dimensions of the society. It offers insight for entrepreneurs into the region's markets based on GDP growth, political and governmental systems, relationships with investors, and other factors. Considered a beacon of hope for Africa, Ghana is a country with a competitive labor force, stable political environment, and lots of economic opportunities for new business ventures. This book will offer academics a good understanding of the major issues affecting business development in Ghana, and inform students, scholars, managers, and leaders on the paths necessary to pursue launching a product or service in Africa.

In the last half of the twentieth century industry encountered a revolutionary change brought about by the harnessed power of seemingly ever-increasing capacity, speed and functionality of computers and microprocessors. This strength provided management and workers within industries with new capabilities for management, planning and control, design, quality assurance and customer support. Organized information flow became the mainstay of industrial companies. New tools and information technology systems emerged and evolved to enable companies to integrate the various departments (Design, Procurement, Manufacturing, Sales and Finance) within companies, particularly the lager ones, including international corporations. This was to give them a chance to meet new demands for product time to market, just in time supply of orders, and customer support. To the smaller company these changes were not so apparent. Neither the tools nor systems nor indeed their economic value seemed appropriate to them except for special cases. While all this was happening the structure of the larger companies began to disintegrate. Strong competitive pressures and globalization of the market place brought this about. Shedding unwanted competence and subcontracting it to others became common practice. Regional market pressures triggered companies to reorganize to create, produce, and distribute goods and services. Greater dependency on chains of supply from external companies became the norm. Medium and smaller sized companies began to gain some advantage and at the same time some were sucked into management and control systems governed by the larger companies.

Bikash Chatterjee emphasizes the criticality of applying the principles of Lean and Six Sigma within the paradigm of the drug development process. His guide to operational excellence in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries is a focused summary of the application of Lean Six Sigma theory to the regulated life sciences. From molecule discovery to the application of PAT Applying Lean Six Sigma in the Pharmaceutical Industry will highlight the importance of framing these initiatives within the key deliverables of drug development manufacturing and quality. Challenging conventional wisdom the author offers a quality and efficiency perspective as a foundation for the principles of Quality by Design, PAT and the new philosophies underlying Process Validation. Each chapter includes discussion around the considerations for applying Lean manufacturing and Six Sigma principles and their tools, culminating in a case study to illustrate the application. The book is organized to reflect the major work centers involved in the drug development lifecycle. Each chapter is stand-alone but together they illustrate the necessary synergy between Lean, Six Sigma and compliance sensibilities required to be successful in the pharmaceutical industry. These design, manufacturing and management techniques are not without their challenges. Bikash Chatterjee's book offers the roadmap for an industry that is struggling to reinvent many of its development and business processes.

Every day human organisations fail. Building Anti-Fragile Organisations explores a powerful alternative framework for risk in the design and management of human systems. Anti-Fragility is a new way of thinking about mitigating risk that builds on earlier work on the characteristics of biological systems that, being more than just robust, actually improve their resilience through being stressed. Professor Bendell explains how applying this concept to the development and management of organisations, services and products, allows us to identify the characteristics that will not only mitigate against the realisation of hazards, but enable growth in protection, strength and anti-fragility over time. In this context, anti-fragility also encompasses flexibility, agility and the exploitation of opportunities. At the organisational level, anti-fragility (or its absence) is determined by the organisational strategy, structure and systems, its people, relationships and culture. The book focuses on establishing the Anti-Fragile concept of the firm, and explores its application in private and public sector organisations of all types. It identifies characteristics relevant to survival in a turbulent world, and how our approaches to risk and governance need to change in order to create and manage anti-fragile organisations. It provides practical insight into the concept of Anti-Fragility and its deployment within human organisations of all types, and give readers the opportunity to start to make sense to applying the concepts within their own worlds.

Knowledge management has been widely applied to various industries as a good strategy to help improve firms' performance. As globalisation accelerates and international trade increases more and more, maritime transport operations have become one of the vitalest industries to receive large attention from international managers. This is because the managers have perceived that the maritime transport system is an integrated entity within the global logistics and supply chain, and it should be therefore managed in the most efficient and effective ways possible, as an organic body within a global logistics system. Taking this approach, this book examines how maritime transport operators - such as shipping companies, port terminal operators and freight forwarders - could successfully play a role within the global logistics flow wherein they are embedded by improving their logistic value, i.e. maritime logistics value. As per the objective, the current book suggests a knowledge management based solution. It attempts to systematically investigate what types of knowledge are needed in the maritime logistics industry, how maritime operators could effectively acquire the knowledge, and whether the acquired knowledge would help maritime operators enhance maritime logistics value. This book provides not only comprehensive understandings of knowledge management strategy, but also its practical application to the maritime logistics industry. This would therefore be a useful guidebook for the managers, academics, and undergraduate / postgraduate students in the field of maritime transport and global logistics, to help them to gain comprehensive knowledge of the application of knowledge management strategy to the industry--

Based on the author's real world experience during the course of her career in supply management, engineering, and as a project management professional, this unique guide demonstrates a practical and proven approach to using project management strategies, tools, and techniques to consistently create successful procurement practices that go beyond mere cost savings. Procurement Project Management Success integrates supply management best practices and processes with those applicable from the field of project management. It explains how to initiate, plan, manage, and complete both simple and complex procurement projects successfully. Through the use of scheduling, communication plans, risk management and other project management processes, these procurements satisfy stakeholders by setting expectations, continuously communicating status, and getting the best value for the dollar. This book shows project managers all the steps and processes used in procurement, and details for procurement professionals how adding and applying a few project management processes and techniques to their skill set can substantially improve both their company's results and their career opportunities.

Much of your company's success in global trade will be determined by how well you manage contracts and agreements for sale or purchase. Mastering the Business of Global Trade: Negotiating Competitive Advantage Contractual Best Practices, Incoterms, and Leveraging Supply Chain Options explains the key elements any international business person must know, but more importantly, it also describes how to use negotiation skills, leveraged options, and Incoterms to extract the maximum benefits from your supply chain. At the end of the day, landed costs determine pricing and profits. As such, the book clearly explains how landed cost modeling works and how you can use these business models to leverage supply chain options. Illustrating how Inco terms impact compliance and risk, it details options to help you reduce your exposure to risk as well as best practices to help you steer clear of compliance issues that can cause costly delays. Managing global supply chains is about constantly striving for efficiency, driving down costs, and increasing profits. With this book, you will not only learn how to negotiate better contracts, but you will also learn how to manage relationships with freight forwarders and customhouse brokers in a manner that will help you get the most value from your service agreements. The book establishes a very simple, yet comprehensive, roadmap that both the neophyte and the more experienced global supply chain executive can easily follow and master. By following the time-proven advice and roadmap detailed in these pages, you will learn that it is possible to engage in more deals and increase your returns, while reducing your overall risk exposure. This book is part of The Global Warrior series.

Although tens of thousands of global users have implemented Systems, Applications, and Products (SAP) for enterprise data processing for decades, there has been a need for a dependable reference on the subject, particularly for SAP materials management (SAP MM). Filling this need, The SAP Materials Management Handbook provides a complete understanding of how to best configure and implement the SAP MM module across various types of projects. It uses system screenshots of real-time SAP environments to illustrate the complete flow of business transactions involved with SAP MM. Supplying detailed explanations of the steps involved, it presents case studies from actual projects that demonstrate how to convert theory into powerful SAP MM solutions. Includes tips on the customization required for procurement of materials and inventory management Covers the range of business scenarios related to SAP MM, including the subcontracting cycle and consignment cycle Provides step-by-step guidance to help you implement your own SAP MM module Illustrates the procure to pay lifecycle Depicts critical business flows with screenshots of real-time SAP environments This much-needed reference explains how to use the SAP MM module to take care of the range of business functions related to purchasing, including purchase orders, purchase requisitions, outline contracts, and request for quotation. It also examines all SAP MM inventory management functions such as physical inventory, stock overview, stock valuation, movement types, and reservations-explaining how SAP MM can be used to define and maintain materials in your systems.

Traditional costing models for new systems and new buildings in industry, defence or government, have tended to focus on the costs of acquisition and implementation, with scant regard for the costs of running the system or decommissioning after use. The pressure to minimize expenditure and provide value for money from reduced resources means that complex projects have to encompass a wide range of often conflicting issues and interests. Systems Lifecycle Cost-Effectiveness shows how to manage the difficulties that can arise. Optimizing the system lifecycle cost-effectiveness is complex and influenced by many factors. Massimo Pica presents a variety of models for calculating cost, benefits and risk in projects, and explains how the human factors associated with a system's design and consequent value are as important as the technical costs associated with its construction or creation. This comprehensive text can be used by students, experienced system engineers, cost analysts and managers to improve their understanding of the wide range of issues involved in the evaluation of system life cycle cost-effectiveness.

Transparency and accurate management information are essential if you want to ensure that the supply chain is working for your business. Supply Chain Visibility is a critical primer for readers with backgrounds in supply chain management, system integration, strategy consulting, and enterprise software. Jonah McIntire sets the stage for a new framework that empowers business leaders to connect their projects, tasks or work streams back to the strategic message that it is worth applying organizational resources to supply chain visibility. Drawing on research findings, he reviews the prerequisites needed for a successful visibility solution and suggests a visibility fitness scorecard to compare the quality of widely varying approaches. The second section of the book reviews in detail the eight most common types of supply chain visibility and offers a set of indicators of potential fit for each one. The book also explains how to acquire visibility technology and the available options, and includes guidance on best practice for in-house designed systems. If you or your organization are moving into this area, Jonah's insights will place you in a far stronger position to decide exactly how to leverage the benefits of supply chain visibility solutions; they also walk you carefully through the minefields of ineffective approaches or technologies to give you the greatest chance of success.

Value aggregation to goods and services is unbelievably important to the balance of trade of modern nations, yet it receives minute attention by economists and policy-makers alike. In Competitiveness in the Real Economy, Rui Vinhas da Silva shows that the nature and dynamics of contemporary global competition requires a sharper focus on value aggregation. He provides a rounded, integrative and multi-disciplinary perspective linking national competitiveness, economics and management. The emphasis is on a transversal philosophy of value aggregation as a key driver of national competitiveness across sectors in the real economy and from production to the consumption of goods and services. The links between exports, inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI) and country competitiveness are examined along with the role of exports and the attraction of FDI inflows in building national GDP. The author emphasises that culture, the notion of being cosmopolitan and understanding aspirational and discriminatory consumers with high disposable income are key drivers of success in the global economy. Acknowledging that the complexity of problems comes from diversity of global actors, the author highlights the limitations of current economics in responding to contemporary challenges. His concern about the management sciences and management learning is that solutions do not lie in the formulation and prescription of universal laws, but are contextually-laden and derive from an informed intuition that is partly taught and partly experiential. The book addresses the implications of all this for how the management skills needed for competitive advantage might best be developed.

* A perfect guide for marketing and sustainable procurement and supply chain professionals in large companies, local authorities and governments and NGOs globally. * Can be used as a supplementary text on postgraduate and advanced undergraduate courses aimed at responsible marketing and procurement. * The book can be used internationally - ethical buying and selling behaviours are proliferating in almost all countries of the world. * Written by a leading authority on ethical consumption.

The way organizations manage their value chain has changed dramatically over the past decade. Today, organizations take account of economic issues, but they also adopt a broader perspective of their purpose including social and environmental issues. Yet despite its global spread, sustainable value chain management remains an uncertain and poorly defined ambition, with few absolutes. The social and environmental issues that organizations should address easily can be interpreted as including virtually everything. Current literature on the topic seeks to understand the effects and management of initiatives dealing with diversity, human rights, safety, philanthropy, community, and environment. However, the penetration of social and environmental considerations into value chain management is described as 'desire lacking reality' thereby making the idea a patchy success. The objective of this research anthology is to investigate different angles of sustainable value chain management. The book's 27 chapters fill holes and explore new fields; the chapters are organised in five sections: Sustainable value chains - context, drivers, and barriers; Sustainable value chains - managing activities; Sustainable value chains - managing networks and collaboration; Sustainable value chains - integrative perspectives; and Sustainable value chains - specific sectorial and industry perspectives.

Managers involved at a senior level in the purchasing function require very particular financial skills. They need to: analyse the financial health and stability of their suppliers; model different cost and price scenarios; understand and manage budgets; and be comfortable with the financial aspects of capital purchases. Finance for Purchasing Managers is written from this perspective using buyer's language and interpretation. Richard France explores four key areas of expertise required of a buyer in today's environment: Financial analysis of suppliers - this includes understanding the financial aspects of a buyer's own organisation plus analysing key suppliers and how to use information to gain a negotiating edge. Pricing, costing and cost modelling - including costing methods and their application and how an understanding of these can give buyers a greater understanding when dealing with supplier quotations. Managing resources - including budgeting and sources of finance. This shows how budgets are drawn up and the importance of understanding the implications of the buyer's decisions on a supplier's cash flow forecast. Finally, capital and revenue purchasing decisions and techniques - covering standard investment appraisal techniques and how these can be used for deciding on the best deal from a choice of suppliers for both capital items as well as a standard long term parts supply contract. Finance for Purchasing Managers may be used to support the CIPS Level 6 Course 'Finance for Purchasers' but also offers a readable and practical guide for those at a senior level in purchasing whether in the public or private sector.

Equality, Diversity and Opportunity Management presents a comprehensive analysis of the processes of governance, leadership, policy and strategy formulation, decision-making, practical and financial management, and real-world implementation of the Equality, Diversity, Opportunity, and Discrimination (or anti-Discrimination) Agenda. The leadership, cost, and management of the Agenda for Equality, Diversity, Opportunity, and Discrimination (or anti-Discrimination) is discussed in three mandatory areas: c Employment and the Workplace c Service Provision and customer service c Neighbourhood and Community Management The necessary choice of these three key areas of application reflects a typical focus of government policy, legislation, and case law for the UK, Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand, and in many other countries that implement active Human Rights Agendas. You will find the book strongly orientated towards issues of corporate governance, personal and vicarious responsibility, leadership, cost management, implementation, and delivery. It deals directly, professionally, and in a non-opinionated manner with challenging (and sometimes unpopular or unwanted) issues of equality and inequality, diversity, a lack of opportunity or social mobility, and the widespread incidence of discrimination. The work suggests practical and realistic means to deal with such issues, whether at the level of corporate governance, leadership, policy and strategy, the incurring of unnecessary cost, or at the level of operational and departmental management procedure and process. Equality, Diversity and Opportunity Management is written at the same time from scholarly, objective, applied, proportionate, 'hands-on', and practitioner based perspectives.

How is it possible to sell a kitchen at 30 per cent below market price? Why are hot dogs cheaper in IKEA than in the supermarket? How can IKEA sell the Lack table at half the price it was when it was launched 35 years ago and how can it be achieved with a substantial profit? Strategic Sourcing and Category Management examines how IKEA - and other cost leading companies - use category management to create advantages with direct and indirect sourcing. With 25 years' experience from IKEA, where he had the responsibility to develop and execute the company's purchasing strategy, author Magnus Carlsson shares his insights on important topics: when category management is profitable and why; how teams repeatedly create value and results; what the main approaches are in different categories; how a company implements category management; the difference between success and failure. In this new edition of Strategic Sourcing and Category Management, Magnus Carlsson has added new themes including examples and references from companies such as Maersk, Carlsberg, P&G and Aldi, illustrating the application of cost leadership that spans far beyond IKEA. Even there, the cost leadership lessons are not limited to home furnishings as the company is sourcing categories such as food, components, materials, transports and indirect materials, with a total purchasing spend of approximately EURO7 billion. But maybe even more importantly, the book illustrates how teams create value by thinking differently and asking the right questions, allowing an understanding that goes beyond mere tools and processes.

Marketing High Profit Product/Service Solutions addresses one of the most exciting and growing strategic marketing opportunities facing product and service companies - 'bundling'. Many customers want bundled products and services which represent integrated solutions to their problems, rather than buying individual products and services piecemeal, and if you become that supplier it can transform a company. There are many outstanding examples: Magna International grew in several stages from a supplier of basic individual auto parts to a company manufacturing a product/service 'super-bundle'; ultimately sourcing and assembling the entire car itself. GE developed their business involving the supply of medical imaging machines to hospitals to become a 'super-bundler' of complete hospital radiological floor imaging operations planning, installation, and integration. IBM transformed their position as a supplier of individual hardware, software, and peripherals to companies into a product/service solution 'bundler' of increasing complexity, and finally into the 'super-bundle' of BPO (Business Process Outsourcing); representing an outsourced and complete integrated IT solution set for clients' entire global operations. Roger More explores what was learned by these leading companies (amongst others) when they transformed their market strategies to become bundlers of complex integrated customer solutions. Over many years the author has developed and tested new concepts, maps and tools for use by a wide variety of managers in developing strategies for these bundled product/service solutions. His book now offers these maps and tools to all who invest in a copy.

Adaptive Supply Chain Management develops new viewpoints on the SCM goal paradigm, problem semantics, and decision-making support.

Drawing upon years of research and practical experience, and using numerous examples, the authors unite conceptual considerations of supply chains with a constructive level of engineering and solutions to real-world problems. Adaptive Supply Chain Management provides advanced insights into dynamics, complexity, and uncertainty in supply chains from the perspectives of systems analysis, control theory, and operations research. It also considers supply chain adaptability, stability, and crisis-resistance.

Providing readers with a comprehensive view of advanced SCM concepts, constructive mathematical techniques and models, Adaptive Supply Chain Management is an invaluable text for practitioners and researchers who specialize in SCM and operations.

This comprehensive book provides students with the skills and savvy needed to become successful buyers in any area of retail. Its simple and straightforward approach presents step-by-step instructions for typical buying tasks, such as identifying and understanding potential customers, creating a six-month merchandising plan, and developing sales forecasts. This new edition contains up-to-date coverage of important retailing trends and technological advances, including social responsibility, sustainability, fast fashion, and the use of new media and social networking. Ample activities-drawn from real-world merchandising and incorporating current trends-give students the opportunity to apply critical skills as they would in a professional environment.