Using RFID-RTE to increase efficiency in the supply chain

This paper aims to explore the application of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) to Returnable transit equipment (RTE) in the supply chain. Particular attention is applied to the current structures of RTE networks as formulated by RTE providers. The problems related to RTE usage are described and the effect to the network analyzed. RFID is investigated as a tool to assist with the movement of the RTE both from the client’s and RTE provider’s point of view.

Corporate responsibility reporting of biodiversity in the supply chain

Industrial development, accompanying human population growth, has had a major role in creating the situation where bio-diverse materials and services essential for sustaining business are under threat. A major contributory factor to biodiversity decline comes from the cumulative impacts of extended supply chain business operations. However, within Corporate Responsibility (CR) reporting impacts on biodiversity due to supply chain operations have not traditionally been given equal weighting with other environmental issues. This paper investigates the extent of CR reporting in managing and publicising company biodiversity supply chain issues by reviewing a cross-sector sample of publicly available CR reports. The report contents were examined for suggestions of industrial sectorial trends in the level of biodiversity consideration. The reporting of environmental management system use within company supply chain management is assessed in the samples and is considered as a mechanism for responsible supplier partnership working.

Putting e-commerce adoption in a supply chain context

Purpose – The objective of this paper is to gain a better understanding of the impact of context on the adoption of e-commerce in supply chains. Design/methodology/approach – A literature review, 45 semi-structured interviews in four different supply chains in the UK healthcare sector, involving 16 different organisations, and additional documentation is used in this study. Findings – The adoption of e-commerce in supply chains is simultaneously affected by two contextual meta-variables: external pressure, which is influenced by supply chain structure, demand and industry characteristics; and internal readiness, which is influenced by IT, organisational and buying need characteristics. Different combinations of these two main variables lead to four different trade-off situations affecting adoption or non-adoption. Research limitations/implications – The empirical research has been undertaken in the specific context of the UK healthcare supply chains. It would be useful to test our findings in other sectors and countries. Practical implications – The paper helps to understand the contextual factors that affect e-commerce adoption and concludes with a framework that differentiates four situations that can improve managers' and researchers' understanding of e-commerce adoption in the future. Originality/value – The contribution of this paper is the recognition that the adoption of e-commerce is affected by factors in both an organisational and a supply chain context, which simultaneously lead to trade-off decisions. Also, unlike most other studies which refer to supply chains and are limited to an organisational perspective or at most a dyadic perspective, this paper builds up a supply chain picture of context by including perspectives from multiple actors in a chain.

Improving supply chain performance through improved visibility

Purpose – This paper seeks to investigate the links between different types of visibility, joint initiatives and business performance using the concepts of transparency as a measure of visibility in supply chains. The prognosis that increased supply chain visibility can be achieved through suppliers and customers working on joint initiative(s), the deployment of which leads to collaborative successes, is tested. Design/methodology/approach – Lamming et al.'s transparency concept was used as a basis for the development of a framework for assessing the visibility gaps between the focal company – Rolls-Royce (RR) – and their suppliers. The framework was applied to a particular supplier to identify visibility gaps; subsequently a joint initiative was launched across the supply chain and the benefits measured and assessed. A case study approach was followed due to the contemporary nature of the work undertaken. Findings – The supply chain's performance vis-à-vis schedule adherence was significantly improved as a result of the initiative launched. Additionally, there were improvements in visibility across capacity planning, material ordering and inventory management. Practical implications – The study demonstrated the value of using the developed transparency framework in a structured manner to generate improvements in the supply chain. RR will look to extend its use across other supply chains; the approach could also be extended out to other sectors. Originality/value – The development and application of the transparency frameworks in the aerospace sector are unique and have shown the value of the approach. The work has demonstrated tangibly that the exchange of high-quality information as part of an improvement initiative does lead to significant improvements in the overall performance of the supply chain.

Integrated strategic supply chain positioning for SME's:an empirical study

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report on an investigation into the selection and evaluation of a suitable strategic positioning methodology for SMEs in Singapore. Design/methodology/approach – The research methodology is based on critical review of the literature to identify the potentially most suitable strategic positioning methodology, evaluation and testing of the methodology within the context of SME's in Singapore, and analysis to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the methodology and opportunities for further research. Findings – This paper illustrates a leading integrated strategic positioning decision making process, which has been found to be potentially suitable for SMEs in Singapore, and the process is then applied and evaluated in two industrial case studies. Results in the form of strengths, weaknesses and opportunities are evaluated and discussed in detail, and further research to improve the process has been identified. Practical implications – A practical and integrated strategic supply chain positioning methodology for SMEs to define their own competitive space, among other companies in the manufacturing supply chain, so as to maximize business competitiveness. Originality/value – This paper contributes to the knowledge of the strategic positioning decision process as well as identifies further research to adapt the process for SMEs in Singapore.

Supply chain strategies for competitive manufacture

Few people would argue that there is one single solution to the design of a manufacturing supply chain. Relatively recent concepts such as strategic outsourcing and partnership sourcing are extremely valuable to some manufacturing organisations. This paper presents the findings of a comprehensive survey of manufacturing sourcing practices in the UK. This study has set out to understand current and intended practices that manufacturing companies have with their key suppliers, and also the decision processes and circumstances that have caused these relationships to occur.

Using min-sum loopy belief propagation for decentralised supply chain formation

Modern business trends such as agile manufacturing and virtual corporations require high levels of flexibility and responsiveness to consumer demand, and require the ability to quickly and efficiently select trading partners. Automated computational techniques for supply chain formation have the potential to provide significant advantages in terms of speed and efficiency over the traditional manual approach to partner selection. Automated supply chain formation is the process of determining the participants within a supply chain and the terms of the exchanges made between these participants. In this thesis we present an automated technique for supply chain formation based upon the min-sum loopy belief propagation algorithm (LBP). LBP is a decentralised and distributed message-passing algorithm which allows participants to share their beliefs about the optimal structure of the supply chain based upon their costs, capabilities and requirements. We propose a novel framework for the application of LBP to the existing state-of-the-art case of the decentralised supply chain formation problem, and extend this framework to allow for application to further novel and established problem cases. Specifically, the contributions made by this thesis are: • A novel framework to allow for the application of LBP to the decentralised supply chain formation scenario investigated using the current state-of-the-art approach. Our experimental analysis indicates that LBP is able to match or outperform this approach for the vast majority of problem instances tested. • A new solution goal for supply chain formation in which economically motivated producers aim to maximise their profits by intelligently altering their profit margins. We propose a rational pricing strategy that allows producers to earn significantly greater profits than a comparable LBP-based profitmaking approach. • An LBP-based framework which allows the algorithm to be used to solve supply chain formation problems in which goods are exchanged in multiple units, a first for a fully decentralised technique. As well as multiple-unit exchanges, we also model in this scenario realistic constraints such as factory capacities and input-to-output ratios. LBP continues to be able to match or outperform an extended version of the existing state-of-the-art approach in this scenario. • Introduction of a dynamic supply chain formation scenario in which participants are able to alter their properties or to enter or leave the process at any time. Our results suggest that LBP is able to deal easily with individual occurences of these alterations and that performance degrades gracefully when they occur in larger numbers.

Decentralised supply chain formation:a belief propagation-based approach

Decentralised supply chain formation involves determining the set of producers within a network able to supply goods to one or more consumers at the lowest cost. This problem is frequently tackled using auctions and negotiations. In this paper we show how it can be cast as an optimisation of a pairwise cost function. Optimising this class of functions is NP-hard but good approximations to the global minimum can be obtained using Loopy Belief Propagation (LBP). Here we detail a LBP-based approach to the supply chain formation problem, involving decentralised message-passing between potential participants. Our approach is evaluated against a well-known double-auction method and an optimal centralised technique, showing several improvements: it obtains better solutions for most networks that admit a competitive equilibrium Competitive equilibrium as defined in [3] is used as a means of classifying results on certain networks to allow for minor inefficiencies in their auction protocol and agent bidding strategies. while also solving problems where no competitive equilibrium exists, for which the double-auction method frequently produces inefficient solutions.