Mind the perception gap: An integrative performance management framework for service supply chains

Environmental Policy Making in Supply Chains under Ambiguity and Competition: A Fuzzy Stackelberg Game Approach

Despite the substantial efforts of governments in promoting sustainable development, there exists considerable debate regarding the environmental policy making approach under information ambiguity and competition. This study investigates market competition between a green and a non-green supply chain (SC) under two government regulation policies, namely, selling price and production quantities. To tackle the policy making challenges, a fuzzy game theoretical model was employed in a centralized and decentralized SC setting. The results revealed that SCs always achieve a higher expected profit under a decentralized structure, regardless of the type of the governments intervention policy. Also, the government’s policy making success was found to be highly dependent on the channel leadership, market competition, and the SC structure. Our findings suggest that the policy makers’ objectives in reducing environmental pollution and increasing revenue are highly achievable, without risk of losing channel coordination and maximum level of efficiency.

Supply chain efficiency framework to improve business performance in a competitive era

Purpose

The main aim of this paper is to develop a supply chain efficiency framework to improve overall business performance in the competitive era. This paper offers a critical literature review on supply chain efficiency that aims to reveal the basic research that has been carried out, the problem areas and requirements for the efficiency in the new era of the supply chain.

Design/methodology/approach

The methodology followed during this research involves beginning with a wide base of articles lying at the supply chain intersection, performance measurement topics, and then screening the list to concentrate on supply chain efficiency.

Findings

Findings show that supply chain efficiency in the modern era remains an open research field. This research contributes to the supply chain literature by clarifying the supply chain efficiency definition, defining key measurements and variables for supply chain efficiency and developing a supply chain efficiency framework to improve overall performance.

Practical implications

This study will be very useful to the scholars working in this field. The proposed framework would help researchers and academicians to understand every dimension and variable of supply chain efficiency, allowing practitioners to measure efficiency levels and identify improvement measures. This framework would also act as a comprehensive guide for future studies and business practices.

Originality/value

As there are several state-of-the-art review papers on various supply chain areas, there is a lack of literature available on supply chain efficiency studies that can provide a comprehensive framework for researchers on related literature. Thus, the present study seeks to bridge this gap in the supply chain literature. Also, this study will provide a strong basis for researchers and academicians to apply the supply chain efficiency measurement system to the dynamic supply chain.

Review of Key Performance Indicators for Process Monitoring in the Mining Industry

The sustainable development of an organisation requires a holistic approach to the evaluation of an enterprise’s goals and activities. The essential means enabling an organisation to achieve goals are business processes. Properly managed, business processes are a source of revenue and become an implementation of business strategy. The critical elements in process management in an enterprise are process monitoring and control. It is therefore essential to identify the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that are relevant to the analysed processes. Process monitoring can be performed at various levels of management, as well as from different perspectives: operational, financial, security, or maintenance. Some of the indicators known from other fields (such as personnel management, finance, or lean manufacturing) can be used in mining. However, the operational mining processes require a definition of specific indicators, especially in the context of increasing the productivity of mining machines and the possibility of using sensor data from machines and devices. The article presents a list of efficiency indicators adjusted to the specifics and particular needs of the mining industry resulting from the Industry 4.0 concept, as well as sustainable business performance. Using the conducted research and analysis, a list of indicators has been developed concerning person groups, which may serve as a benchmark for mining industry entities. The presented proposal is a result of work conducted in the SmartHUB project, which aims to create an Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) platform that will support process management in the mining industry.

Supplier flexibility in the order-to-delivery process – a customer perspective

Purpose

Flexibility is one enabler of efficient use of resources and is therefore an antecedent to sustainability. The purpose of this article is to identify supplier flexibility variables in, and related to, the order-to-delivery (OTD) process and categorize them into a framework, followed by empirically exploring the framework.

Design/methodology/approach

A perception-based survey was sent to Swedish purchasing managers. 289 responses were received. After descriptive gap analysis, exploratory factor analysis was applied to structure the responses into factors. This formed the basis for hierarchical linear regression analysis, explaining supplier flexibility.

Findings

A conceptual framework, specifying supplier flexibility into volume, delivery and information exchange dimensions and relating these dimensions to the OTD process, was developed. Significant negative gaps between actual and demanded volume flexibility and delivery flexibility were identified, while positive gaps were found for information exchange flexibility. The factor analysis revealed three factors. The regression analysis verified that OTD-related information exchange flexibility and OTD-related volume and delivery flexibility explain the variation in OTD-specific flexibility and are important antecedents for supplier flexibility in the OTD process.

Research limitations/implications

A contribution to research is the framework – with defined, related and empirically validated flexibility types.

Practical implications

The study proposes a perception-based way to capture supplier flexibility in the OTD process, which is of practical relevance when evaluating suppliers.

Originality/value

Identifying, conceptualizing and capturing types of supplier flexibility in the OTD process is new related to academic literature. Also the wide empirical study mapping supplier flexibility gaps is unique in its focus.

Exploring the consequences of judgmental and quantitative forecasting on firms' competitive performance in supply chains

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to examine the impacts of different forecasting methods (judgmental, quantitative and mixed forecasting) on firms' supply chains and competitive performance.

Design/methodology/approach

Working with three groups of manufacturing companies, we explore the consequences of judgmental, quantitative and mixed forecasting methods on firms' competitive performance in supply chains. The validity of constructs and path relationships was examined using structural equation modeling (SEM).

Findings

Our findings indicate that supply chain efficiency influences both cost reduction and customer satisfaction. In addition, the three dimensions of supply chain performance are shown to be direct antecedents of competitive performance. Our empirical results reveal that although all studied forecasting methods meaningfully influence supply chain performance, the mixed method, compared to the other two methods, has greater capabilities to enhance supply chain performance.

Originality/value

This research provides originality and insight into supply chain practices through forecasting methods to improve competitive performance.