Does sustainability matter for reshoring strategies? A literature review

Mapping the key challenges and managing the opportunities in supply chain distribution during COVID-19: a case of Myanmar pharmaceutical company

Purpose

This study aims to present a study on the supply chain process of a Myanmar-based pharmaceutical company (named ABC Pvt. Ltd. in this study) that produces pharmaceutical products across Myanmar and aims of bringing quality medical products and best care for Myanmar people’s health. The study aims to identify the key supply chain challenges and manage the opportunities executed by this pharmaceutical company to improve the supply chain process during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Design/methodology/approach

This work used a case study and conducted semistructured interviews with the manager, senior managers and senior staff of the ABC Company to improve the supply chain process and develop a comprehensive structural relationship to rank them to streamline the uncertainties, real-time information and agility in a digital supply chain using grey relational analysis (GRA) method.

Findings

From the data analysis and results, “Impact of political factor,” “Delay in import process” and “Weak internet connection,” and “Weak knowledge of the use of digital platform,” “Poor information sharing in online by employees” and “Information flow from top management to operational level” have been identified as top and bottom three key challenges, respectively. “Inventory management,” “Selection of transport method” and “Operational cost”, and “Marketing and brand Innovation,” “Online delivery of products” and “E-commerce enablement (Launching applications, tracking system)” are identified as the top and bottom three managing the opportunities, respectively.

Research limitations/implications

The findings of the study help to supply chain decision-makers of the company in their establishment of key challenges and opportunities during the COVID-19 era. As a leading company, it always tries to add value to its product through a supply chain system, effective management teams and working with skillful decision-making toward satisfying the demand on time and monitoring the supplier performance.

Originality/value

The novelty of this study is to identify the key supply chain challenges and opportunities by the GRA method to rank them, considering the case of Myanmar pharmaceutical manufacturing company as a case-based approach to measuring its performance during the COVID-19 outbreak era. This work will assist managers and practitioners help to the company to provide optimal services to its consumers on time in this critical situation.

The production and distribution of face masks to other countries: a strategic approach of Taiwan during COVID-19 outbreak

Purpose

COVID-19 pandemic has exposed that even the best of the developed nations have surrendered to the devastations imposed on the global supply chains. The purpose of this study is to explore how COVID-19 has exaggerated the supply chain of production and distribution of Taiwan-based face masks and also investigate the conscientious factors and subfactors for it.

Design/methodology/approach

In this study, an analytical hierarchy processes (AHP)-based approach has been used to assign the criterion weights and to prioritize the responsible factors. Initially, based on 26 decision-makers, successful factors were categorized into five main categories, and then main categories and their subcategories factors were prioritized through individual and group decision-maker’s contexts by using the AHP approach.

Findings

The results of this AHP model suggest that “Safety” is the most important and top-ranked factor, followed by production, price, work environment and distribution. The key informers in this study are stakeholders which consist of managers, volunteers, associations and non-governmental organizations. The results showed that good behavior of the employees under the “Safety” category is the top positioned responsible factor for successful production and distribution of face masks to the other countries with the highest global percentage of 15.7% and using sanitizers to protect health is the second most successful factor with the global percentage of 11.7%.

Research limitations/implications

The limitations faced in this study were limited to only Taiwan-based mask manufacturing companies, and it was dependent on the decisions of the limited company’s decision-makers.

Originality/value

The novelty of this study is that the empirical analysis of this study has been based on a successful Taiwan masks manufacturing company and evaluates the responsible factors for the production and distribution of Taiwan masks to other countries during COVID-19.

Digital Innovation for the Sustainability of Reshoring Strategies: A Literature Review

Recently, some critical events (e.g., the economic decline, the growing socio-ecologic burden, even more demanding customers, etc.) have led several companies to re-think their “shoring” decisions. Therefore, many of them decided to reshore manufacturing or to bring back home production activities previously offshored. This phenomenon represents one of the current imperatives for research. In fact, the location where manufacturing takes place has a massive influence on the sustainability of firms on a local and global level. Therefore, to better understand what makes reshoring strategies sustainable as well as to identify the drivers that can boost it, further research is still needed. The explorative nature of this paper recognizes some motivations or drivers for making reshoring strategies sustainable. To this end, a structured and narrative literature review has been conducted to grasp and describe the main motivations and implementation characteristics that can make reshoring decisions sustainable. The achieved results better define reshoring and the influence that some drivers, especially digital innovation, can play on the related strategies and on their sustainability. In doing so, this work is one of the first contributions that jointly approaches reshoring, sustainability, and digital innovation.

Challenges to competitive manufacturing in high-cost environments: checklist and insights from Swedish manufacturing firms

Research on competitive manufacturing (CM) in high-cost environments has earlier indicated that firms struggle to remain competitive and that manufacturing operations often have been offshored to low-cost environments. The purpose of this research is to explore and create a compounded view of challenges related to both internal and external environments of firms when operating in high-cost environments. This issue has been investigated through a qualitative case study involving five manufacturing firms in Sweden. This research has empirically derived the challenges associated with sustaining CM in high-cost environments and developed a prescriptive checklist. Seven main categories of challenges have been identified, ranging from a micro level related to product characteristics and employee involvement, to a macro level related to supply chain collaborations and industry systems. This research contributes to the existing literature on CM in high-cost locations by explaining and detailing what constitutes challenges in this kind of environment.

AHP-based support tools for initial screening of manufacturing reshoring decisions

Purpose

The existing literature expresses a strong need to develop tools that support the manufacturing reshoring decision-making process. This paper aims to examine the suitability of analytical hierarchy process (AHP)-based tools for initial screening of manufacturing reshoring decisions.

Design/methodology/approach

Two AHP-based tools for the initial screening of manufacturing reshoring decisions are developed. The first tool is based on traditional AHP, while the second is based on fuzzy-AHP. Six high-level and holistic reshoring criteria based on competitive priorities were identified through a literature review. Next, a panel of experts from a Swedish manufacturing company was involved in the overall comparison of the criteria. Based on this comparison, priority weights of the criteria were obtained through a pairwise analysis. Subsequently, the priority weights were used in a weighted-sum manner to evaluate 20 reshoring scenarios. Afterwards, the outputs from the traditional AHP and fuzzy-AHP tools were compared to the opinions of the experts. Finally, a sensitivity analysis was performed to evaluate the stability of the developed decision support tools.

Findings

The research demonstrates that AHP-based support tools are suitable for the initial screening of manufacturing reshoring decisions. With regard to the presented set of criteria and reshoring scenarios, both traditional AHP and fuzzy-AHP are shown to be consistent with the experts' decisions. Moreover, fuzzy-AHP is shown to be marginally more reliable than traditional AHP. According to the sensitivity analysis, the order of importance of the six criteria is stable for high values of weights of cost and quality criteria.

Research limitations/implications

The limitation of the developed AHP-based tools is that they currently only include a limited number of high-level decision criteria. Therefore, future research should focus on adding low-level criteria to the tools using a multi-level architecture. The current research contributes to the body of literature on the manufacturing reshoring decision-making process by addressing decision-making issues in general and by demonstrating the suitability of two decision support tools applied to the manufacturing reshoring field in particular.

Practical implications

This research provides practitioners with two decision support tools for the initial screening of manufacturing reshoring decisions, which will help managers optimize their time and resources on the most promising reshoring alternatives. Given the complex nature of reshoring decisions, the results from the fuzzy-AHP are shown to be slightly closer to those of the experts than traditional AHP for initial screening of manufacturing relocation decisions.

Originality/value

This paper describes two decision support tools that can be applied for the initial screening of manufacturing reshoring decisions while considering six high-level and holistic criteria. Both support tools are applied to evaluate 20 identical manufacturing reshoring scenarios, allowing a comparison of their output. The sensitivity analysis demonstrates the relative importance of the reshoring criteria.

Back-shoring vs near-shoring: a comparative exploratory study in the footwear industry

After decades of off-shoring strategies, companies are often critically re-evaluating their earlier location decisions; in doing so, sometimes they implement the so-called relocation of second degree. Among them, back-shoring (i.e., relocation to the home country) and near-shoring (relocation to the home region) are two of the alternatives attracting growing interest from scholars. This paper aims to shed new light on the variables influencing the choice made between these two alternatives. As requested in the extant literature, a contingency approach is adopted, focusing attention on the footwear industry. Given the exploratory nature of the paper, evidence from 41 back-shoring and near-shoring strategies are analysed, comparing data from Spanish and Italian companies. Collected data are adapted to test hypotheses concerning three sets of variables: firms’ characteristics, motivations for the second degree relocation and its barriers. Collected data show that firm’s size directly influences the chosen alternative since larger companies prefer to near-shore instead of back-shore. When considering motivations, while the “made in” effect does not influence the firm’s choice, availability of skilled contractors and/or government aids induces companies to relocate to the home country instead of the home region. Finally, companies fearing encountering barriers, in terms of skilled contractors’ availability and/or (re-)development of internal manufacturing competences, will prefer the back-shoring rather than the near-shoring option. The study is focused on two countries (Spain and Italy) where the manufacturing sector (and the footwear industry within it) is still relevant to the local economy. Findings cannot be generalized to countries/industries where the local industry has been totally dismantled, without a previous in-depth analysis. The findings obtained offer managers useful insights on the elements that should be carefully evaluated when considering back- and near-shore alternatives. Additionally, valuable insights are provided for policy makers that plan to design industrial policies supporting back-reshoring policy initiatives. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper in the extant literature addressing variables influencing the choice between back- and near-shoring alternatives.

Barriers to adoption of blockchain technology in green supply chain management

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to identify the barriers to the adoption of blockchain technology in green supply chain management (GSCM) and further analyze the cause and effect relationship to prioritize the barriers for making strategic decisions.

Design/methodology/approach

The study examines 15 potential barriers related to the adoption of blockchain in GSCM which is identified from the literature review and finalized after subsequent discussions with industry professionals. Integrated Fuzzy-Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory approach is used to analyze cause and effect relationships and prioritize the barriers. Fuzzy set theory is used to handle the uncertainty and vagueness associated with the personnel biases and data deficiency problems. Three small to medium enterprises’ (SMEs’) are considered for gathering data and further analyzing the crucial barriers that are impeding the adoption of blockchain technology in GSCM.

Findings

The findings reveal that “lack of management vision” and “cultural differences among supply chain partners” are the most influencing barriers, whereas; “collaboration challenges” and “hesitation and workforce obsolescence” are the most influential barriers in the adoption of blockchain in GSCM.

Research limitations/implications

The study is developed based on 15 selected barriers which were further tested using data from three SMEs’ in the emerging economy of India. The adoption of blockchain technology in GSCM is at a nascent stage and more research studies are necessary to extend the knowledge base.

Practical implications

Managers need to eliminate the barriers and extend the blockchain technology application in GSCM. Managers need to develop the mission and vision of the company by doing proper alignment of blockchain technology with GSCM goals. Second, managers need to make strong collaborations and remove the hesitation and workforce obsolescence barrier by providing the right education and pieces of training.

Originality/value

Blockchain technology in GSCM is in a nascent stage. This study extends the knowledge base by identifying and further prioritizing the leading blockchain barriers that need to be overcome for effectively adopting blockchain in GSCM.