Publications

IEEE Technology and Engineering Management Society

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How green is a lean supply chain

This article presents a supply chain planning model that can be used to investigate tradeoffs between cost and environmental degradation including carbon emissions, energy consumption and waste generation. The model also incorporates other aspects of real world supply chains such as multiple transport lot sizing and flexible holding capacity of warehouses. The application of the model and solution method is investigated in an actual case problem. Our analysis of the numerical results focuses on investigating relationship between lean practices and green outcomes. We find that (1) not all lean interventions at the tactical supply chain planning level result in green benefits, and (2) an agile supply chain is the greenest and most efficient alternative when compared to strictly lean and centralized situations.

Green Procurement and Purchasing

The strategic role of purchasing is important due to its potential for promoting open communication among supply chain members and creating mutual benefits.

Product Deletion and Sustainable Supply Chains

Products and their associated material, capital, and information are critical flows within supply chains. Supply chain management needs to facilitate product portfolio management. Some example activities include material sourcing, product design and manufacture, product delivery and transportation, product usage, and service. Closing the supply-chain loop, especially for sustainable supply chains, include end-of-life disposal and repurposing activities. Sustainable supply chain development typically focuses on three major dimensions of organizational competitiveness, economic, social, and environmental. Organizations make product deletion continuously. These decisions can profoundly contribute to sustainability. Alternatively, sustainability performance of various supply chain process and product or material flows may also be strategic product deletion reasons. This chapter will review the integration of product deletion with sustainable supply chain management. It will entail the impact of product deletion on sustainable supply chains.

Justifying strategic alliances and partnering: a prerequisite for virtual enterprising

The objective of this paper is to help define and introduce the concept of justifying strategic relationships and agreements among enterprises. When enterprises choose major strategic projects they go through a management decision process that includes planning, analysis, evaluation, implementation, and improvement (auditing) of these projects. Analytical and decision tools to aid in strategic decision making are relatively rare, tools to aid in strategic alliance formation, are almost non-existent. This paper presents the argument that strategic alliances and relationships among enterprises can be analyzed using a strategic justification approach which will require that each side of a partnership or alliance make a ‘business case’ that will justify such a relationship. Some of the pertinent managerial and research issues within the area of strategic alliances, along with a discussion on its evolution are presented. A tool that can support the strategic alliance management process is presented. An illustrative example for the tool and its supporting methodology will provide additional insights.

IEEE Technology and Engineering Management Society TEMS Administrative Committee

Evolving brokering paradigms in e-commerce enabled manufacturing

Supplier selection and partnership formation is greatly influenced by how inter-organizational practices and organizational forms have evolved. Organizations can be in a number of stages in terms of their organizational practices. These stages and how they manage their relationships will be integral in deciding how they should be formed. One of the important and growing roles of this formation has to do with the introduction of third-party mechanisms or brokers to aid in this formation. These brokers and the roles they play, depending on the organizational form of the proposed inter-organizational relationship, will be defined. Supporting tools, practices and technology are then discussed. The major focus of these support items will be on agent and agent technology. Initially the paper provides a foundational discussion on the corporate (manufacturing) perspective on various practices and the evolving relationships among organizations. The paper concludes with some possible directions available to both managers and researchers in this important and growing area.

Editorial

Presents the introductory editorial for this issue of the publication.

Preparing Your Data for DEA

DEA and its appropriate applications are heavily dependent on the data set that is used as an input to the productivity model. As we now know there are numerous models based on DEA. However, there are certain characteristics of data that may not be acceptable for the...

Evaluating Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing Barriers With Interpretive Structural Modeling

Environmentally conscious manufacturing (ECM) has been a mainstay of sustainable organizational practices for at least two decades. The adoption of ECM practices needs to overcome a variety of barriers. To overcome these barriers and adopt these crucial practices, understanding their structure and relationship is needed. Interpretive structural modeling (ISM), can help us do this. ISM has been applied to a number of organizational decision problems. It is a technique that is helpful to managers in organizing the relationships among a series of factors that may influence their decision. The decision support technique has a long history dating back to the late 1960's and early 1970's. Yet, its application and investigation by researchers to a variety of topical areas has not occurred until very recently. This lack of application is especially true for investigation into topics related to ECM. We find that the barriers to this organizational practice can be further investigated and analyzed with ISM. This paper seeks to provide and overview of major barriers and an illustrative example of this procedure with initial insights. More complete evaluation and implementation of this technique is recommended for its validation.

The role of innovation in the implementation of green supply chain management practices

How organizational green practices become routinely embedded in supply chains remains underexplored in the literature. Based on the practice‐based view and normalization process theory, this study adopts a novel perspective on green supply chain management (GSCM) practices implementation and suggests that innovation is a crucial mechanism in such process. Specifically, we theorize and test the mediating effect of product and process innovation on the relationship between GSCM practices and sustainability performance. Survey data from 173 manufacturing firms were used to test the model hypotheses. Our findings show that product and process innovation mediate the relationship between GSCM practices and sustainability performance. The findings also suggest that the relevance of different innovation mechanisms depends on the stage of the operational lifecycle within which the practices are implemented. Our study provides insights for managers and scholars seeking to define innovation strategies to ensure the successful implementation of GSCM practices.

Towards a national circular economy indicator system in China: an evaluation and critical analysis

It is widely acknowledged that China’s economic miracle has been achieved at the expense of its natural capital and environment. In order to deal with this problem, the circular economy (CE) has been chosen as a national policy for sustainable development. National laws and regulations have been enacted to facilitate the implementation of CE and national CE demonstration projects have been initiated such that national benchmarking activities could be completed. China is the first country to release nationally focused CE indicators so that objective and credible information on the status of CE implementation can be recognized. These CE indicators are valuable metrics for policy and decision-makers and can help achieve CE goals and outcomes. This unique indicator system has not been communicated to international communities. This paper aims to more broadly introduce this unique national CE indicator system. China’s CE efforts are first detailed with various provisions of the national indicator system. A critical analysis of such an indicator system is presented. We show that certain benefits can be gained, but substantive revision is also needed due to the lack of a comprehensive set of sustainability indicators which should include social, business indicators, urban/industrial symbiosis, absolute material/energy reduction, and prevention-oriented indicators. Concerns related to barriers on implementation are also presented in this paper. The knowledge gained from Chinese efforts on CE indicators are valuable to both developed and developing nations seeking to implement sustainable development measures within their regulatory policies.

Sustainability indicators for the food supply chain

The chapter provides an overview of sustainability performance evaluations of a supply chain. It introduces a new methodology for sustainability assessment of food supply chains, and demonstrates it by using an example of potato supply chains in the UK. The framework identifies indicators within three dimensions of sustainability (economic, social and environmental) and applies them to stages of agriculture, food processing, wholesale, retail and catering. The framework assigns importance ratings (determined with help from an expert) for sustainability indicators using the Analytic Network Process. The chapter discusses possible applications of the framework and further trends in sustainability benchmarking.

EMR IEEE JOURNAL OF PRACTICE

Prospective authors are requested to submit new, unpublished manuscripts for inclusion in the upcoming event described in this call for papers.

Circular Supply Chain Stakeholder Mapping for Blockchain Governance of Lithium-ion Battery Safety

The application of blockchain (BC) technology in the lithium-ion battery (LIB) circular supply chain can provide significant support to help in this practice. Yet BC application is limited due to various complexities—accurate information and data from stakeholders is plays a significant role in that complexity. This study aims to identify stakeholder roles in BC application to address safety issues during the circular supply chain—a critical issue for the adoption of CE for LIB to help mitigate LIB materials scarcity. We survey and gather input from 40 experts in CE, lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), BC, and safety-related issues from academia and practice. The Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed (RACI) matrix project management tool is used to categorize and map stakeholders by their level of power and involvement. The results provide insights into five theory-based hypotheses and practical implications for BC application in this environment. The study provides a methodology to identify stakeholder roles for BC development in mitigating CE LIB safety issues using the RACI matrix. Part of the study also considers the heterogeneity in stakeholder involvement in this process. This process and methodology also provide a way to evaluate and support long-term transdisciplinary research and innovation. The application of BC technology in the supply chain has been touted as inevitable, but a significant barrier is understanding stakeholder roles ranging from development to application and improvement. This study examines a methodology to identify and map stakeholders and further provides research and practice insights to the application of BC technology to solve safety issues in the LIB circular supply chain.

Using data envelopment analysis to evaluate environmentally conscious waste treatment technology

As environmental issues become increasingly important for organizational operations, the roles of organizational practices and technology in improving environmental performance increase. Some of these new practices and technologies are difficult to evaluate using traditional approaches. In this paper we analyze a decision making case study concerning the investment and adoption of environmentally conscious waste treatment technology in a government supported agency. Data envelopment analysis, and some of its extensions, will be used to evaluate the technologies. The results show that this tool could be useful in evaluating these technologies. Managerial insights on the use of these models, including caveats on the use of DEA, are also presented.

Facilitating Sustainable Innovation through Collaboration : a multi-stakeholder perspective

No abstract is provided for this article.

Managing large-scale global enterprise resource planning systems: a case study at Texas Instruments

At a time when many companies are embarking on enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations, despite the belief among CEOs that approximately two-thirds of such systems are said to be failures, Texas Instruments’ (TI) multi-stakeholder ERP system offers many lessons for future adopters. A constancy of vision, providing visibility of the ERP system to external constituents via Web linkages, and standardization of internal processes and important information technology systems to support market needs, were the foundation for the success of this implementation. In this paper, we detail the management of this implementation from a process-oriented perspective. The lessons learned from this effort help to support and further the academic and practitioner literature especially in the area of large-scale information systems management.