An integrated QFD framework with multiple formatted and incomplete preferences: A sustainable supply chain application

Resilience strategies for sustainable supply chains under budget constraints in the post COVID-19 era

The COVID-19 outbreak has caused uncertainty risk surges, increased sustainable supply chain vulnerabilities, and challenges to sustainable supply chain resilience (SSCR) management. Therefore, improving SSCR is necessary to alleviate vulnerabilities, and SSCR management must generate large capital investments. However, the economic downturn brought about by the COVID-19 epidemic has made some companies have limited budgets that can be used to improve SSCR. Therefore, the design of resilience solutions needs to fully consider the constraints of budgetary costs. Most of the existing related literature only discusses optimal resilience solutions under certain cost constraints, so such resilience solutions cannot be applied to most enterprises. In this study, we set the cost constraint as a variable quantity, using resilience efficiency and customer satisfaction as indicators, to determine the changing laws of optimal resilience strategies when cost constraints change. These rules can be applied to enterprises with different budgeted costs. Our findings suggest that companies should prioritize sacrificing resilience measures (RMs) related to adaptive capacity when budget costs gradually decline, and RMs related to absorptive capacity are indispensable at all budget levels. Furthermore, the pursuit of environmental and social sustainability cannot be abandoned, no matter how limited the flexible budget may be.

A Pythagorean fuzzy ANP-QFD-Grey relational analysis approach to prioritize design requirements of sustainable supply chain

A sustainable supply chain (SSC) is vital for company’s sustainability success, so it is imperative to identify and prioritize SSC’s design requirements (DRs) for better SSC planning. For customer-centric markets, the customer requirements (CRs) need to be integrated into SSC’s DRs. This paper thus proposes a customer-centric approach based on Analytic Network Process (ANP), Quality Function Deployment (QFD), Grey Relational Analysis (GRA), and Pythagorean Fuzzy Set (PFS) to rank SSC’s DRs, considering CRs and information ambiguity. The PFS is combined with ANP, QFD, and GRA to better handle uncertainty in the SSC. The Pythagorean fuzzy ANP is applied to analyze the correlations among the sustainable CRs and determine the corresponding weights. The sustainable CRs are transformed into the DRs using the Pythagorean fuzzy QFD. The relationships among the resulting DRs are analyzed through Pythagorean fuzzy GRA to prioritize DRs. The approach is validated through a case study. The results obtained in this paper shows that the proposed method is efficient to prioritize DRs of SSC with the consideration of sustainable CRs under uncertain environment. The novelties of proposed method are that it not only offers a customer-oriented SSC planning method through the integration of ANP, QFD and GRA, but also can reflect the uncertain information with a broader membership representation space via PFSs. Based on the proposed method, the decision-maker can conduct comprehensive analysis to prioritize DRs and design appropriate SSC to fulfill CRs under uncertain environment.

The assessment of collaboration quality: a case of sugar supply chain in Indonesia

Purpose

This paper aims to evaluate the collaboration quality performance of sugar company Z and its stakeholders (farmers and distributors) by considering the sustainability aspects. This assessment shall be able to integrate qualitative and quantitative factors in the model, which is critical in sugar supply chains involving multi-stakeholders.

Design/methodology/approach

Integration of quality function deployment (QFD), the fuzzy analytical network process (FANP) and the data envelopment analysis (DEA) is administered to assess the efficiency score of each stakeholder involved. The evaluation encompasses collaboration behaviour factors since the input of collaboration activities will result in sustainability aspects such as revenue, green house gas (GHG) emissions and social impact. The analysis has been conducted in two scenarios, those are the basic scenario by utilising original data and the extended scenario by using projection data.

Findings

The result clarifies that the most influential behaviour factor in the collaboration activities is commitment (0.116), while the least important behaviour factors are power (0.008) and adaptation (0.008). Furthermore, by using the extended scenario, the overall efficiency for each benchmarking is higher compared to the condition before the improvement (basic scenario).

Research limitations/implications

The result of this study is only relevant to the particular sugar supply chain and involving limited sustainability variables. Therefore, in a further study, more variables such as technical and financial aspects could be explored further in the assessment process.

Practical implications

The result of this study is available for each stakeholder and can be fundamental for the constant improvement in sustainable supply chain (SSC) practices. It shows that an improvement of one stakeholder will positively impact the entire system.

Social implications

Smallholders and sugarcane farmers will recognise the significance of collaboration behaviour. Thus, they can enhance their mutual benefits by using the existing resources.

Originality/value

This paper arranges for a practical contribution by implementing advanced assessment methods in the sugar supply chain by taking into account the economic, environmental and social aspects. This comprehensive assessment process in the sugar supply chain is the novelty of this paper.

Supplier selection using hybrid multicriteria decision-making methods

Purpose

The paper develops a decision-making model for supplier selection combining quality function deployment (QFD), analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS). The efficacy of the model was demonstrated by applying it for supplier selection of lithium ion batteries.

Design/methodology/approach

The proposed methodology involved identifying customer requirements for lithium ion batteries and translating them to requisite technical characteristics using QFD. Further, separate sourcing, safety and sustainability-related supplier parameters were proposed taking into account the manufacturer's point of view. The relative weight of each parameter was then calculated using AHP, and finally, TOPSIS was used to select the best supplier.

Findings

The proposed methodology was applied to six suppliers of lithium ion batteries, and the obtained results were used to select the most and least preferred suppliers.

Practical implications

The obtained results cannot be generalized and are valid to the case environment. However, the proposed approach can be used for any environment related to supplier selection after capturing the corresponding parameters. The proposed approach does not restrict the number of parameters to be considered.

Originality/value

Many researches related to supplier evaluation are reported in literature, but few studies are available related to supplier performance evaluation for lithium ion batteries using QFD, AHP and TOPSIS. The study will provide a guideline for comparing and selecting supplier on the basis of performance in general and its application to lithium ion batteries in specific.

IOT Framework to Support Maritime Highway Program

As one of the largest archipelagic countries in the world, Indonesia has been running the maritime highway system in recent years. This study focuses on how to improve the role of IOT platform in the maritime highway system. Furthermore, in this study, the authors are designing a new IOT system framework to support the operation of the maritime highway program in the seaport logistics system in archipelago countries, especially Indonesia. Each part of the port management stakeholders like port authority, commodity products company, shipping companies, and the government with their different policies (unique) in each island region has created its own IT system and links it to every website in its organization partially and not yet fully integrated. This research provides newly integrated frameworks with the IOT approach, and also a few recommendations related to practical and theoretical contributions that can be further developed in the seaports sector.

Analysis of the Impact of the “Sea Toll” Program for Seaports: Resilience and Competitiveness

Maritime transportation is one of the most important global activities, especially for archipelagic countries. Inland components that exist within the seaport system, such as port authorities who manage passenger and cruise services even for container unloading and loading areas, have become an important aspect to improve performance and determine competitive strategies for seaports. The importance of this interdependence between ports with passenger services and container seaports led us to investigate the impact of the “sea toll” program on seaport resilience and competitiveness. Although the concept of a “sea toll” was initiated by the US government in 2011, there are only a few, if any, studies or clear standards related to the development of “sea toll” systems in archipelago countries. We conducted an empirical study in Indonesia through an online survey of key stakeholders of seaports, including shipping companies, seaport authorities, commodities companies, and government. The data were analyzed using the analytical hierarchy process technique and the results showed that the “sea toll” had an impact on seaport resilience and competitiveness. For seaport resilience, the “sea toll” had an impact on the strategic alliance. For competitiveness, the “sea toll” had an impact on seaport performance, including ship calling frequency and reliability.

Sustainability performance evaluation: Literature review and future directions

Current global economic activities are increasingly being perceived as unsustainable. Despite the high number of publications, sustainability science remains highly dispersed over diverse approaches and topics. This article aims to provide a structured overview of sustainability performance evaluation related publications and to document the current state of literature, categorize publications, analyze and link trends, as well as highlight gaps and provide research recommendations. 128 articles between 2007 and 2018 are identified. The results suggest that sustainability performance evaluation models shall be more balanced, suitable criteria and their interrelations shall be well defined and subjectivity of qualitative criteria inherent to sustainability indicators shall be considered. To address this subjectivity, group decision-making techniques and other analytical methods that can deal with uncertainty, conflicting indicators, and linguistic evaluations can be used in future works. By presenting research gaps, this review stimulates researchers to establish practically applicable sustainability performance evaluation frameworks to help assess and compare the degree of sustainability, leading to more sustainable business practices. The review is unique in defining corporate sustainability performance evaluation for the first time, exploring the gap between sustainability accounting and sustainability assessment, and coming up with a structured overview of innovative research recommendations about integrating analytical assessment methods into conceptual sustainability frameworks.

Environmentally Concerned Logistics Operations in Fuzzy Environment: A Literature Survey

Growing environmental awareness coupled with stricter governmental regulations has fueled the need for integrating sustainability into supply chain and logistics activities. Accordingly, recent studies in the literature have emphasized the significance of environmentally concerned logistics operations (ECLO). Research in the broad area of ECLO encompasses a wide range of topics including sustainable supply chain, green supply chain, closed-loop supply chain, low-carbon logistics, and waste management. In this paper, a comprehensive content analysis and area review is presented. Over 800 papers published between 1994 and 2017 in peer-reviewed journals, proceedings, and book chapters are utilized. These papers are analyzed in consecutive stages after being reviewed under a structural dimension process that addresses the fields of environmentally concerned logistics operations. Following the state-of-the-art review, a detailed analysis of ECLO research with a special emphasis on fuzzy applications is provided. The findings clearly indicate that the fuzzy multi-criteria decision making technique is a frequently used hybrid method, whereas fuzzy sets theory and other fuzzy hybrid techniques identify a gap in the related literature. This paper provides further critical analysis and other research suggestions in order to clarify these gaps and offer additional research perspectives. This information may provide extensive data that will enable future researchers to fill these gaps within this field.