Supply Chain Management

ABSTRACT Lean Six Sigma Executive Overview (Case Study) Templates are a guide to Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, and Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt Projects. Lean Six Sigma Practitioners use the DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control) Phases. The Lean Six Sigma Executive Overview (Case Study) include the most common tools used in the DMAIC Phases. There are Backup Slides that include the tools and templates of Optional or less often tools. There are guidelines in the notes section. These templates are used to document Lean Six Sigma Projects as they are executed. I wish you well on your projects. Steven Bonacorsi, Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt.

Inspired by the commercial desires of global brands and retailers to access the lucrative green consumer market, carbon is increasingly being counted and made knowable at the mundane sites of everyday production and consumption, from the carbon footprint of a plastic kitchen fork to that of an online bank account. Despite the challenges of counting and making commensurable the global warming impact of a myriad of biophysical and societal activities, this desire to communicate a product or service's carbon footprint has sparked complicated carbon calculative practices and enrolled actors at literally every node of multi-scaled and vastly complex global supply chains. Against this landscape, this paper critically analyses the counting practices that create the 'e' in 'CO2e'. It is shown that, central to these practices are a series of tools, models and databases which, in building upon previous work (Eden 2012; Star and Griesemer 1989) we conceptualize here as 'boundary objects'. By enrolling everyday actors from farmers to consumers, these objects abstract and stabilize greenhouse gas emissions from their messy material and social contexts into units of CO2e which can then be translated along a product's supply chain, thereby establishing a new currency of 'everyday supply chain carbon'. However, in making all greenhouse gas-related practices commensurable in enrolling and stabilizing the transfer of information between multiple actors these objects oversee a process of simplification reliant upon, and subject to, a multiplicity of approximations, assumptions, errors, discrepancies and/or omissions. Further the outcomes of these tools are subject to the politicized and commercial agendas of the worlds they attempt to link, with each boundary actor inscribing different meanings to a product’s carbon footprint in accordance with their specific subjectivities, commercial desires and epistemic framings. It is therefore shown that how a boundary object transforms greenhouse gas emissions into units of CO2e, the outcome is of distinct ideologies regarding ‘what’ a product's carbon footprint is and how it should be made legible. These politicized decisions, in turn inform specific reduction activities and ultimately advance distinct, specific and increasingly durable transition pathways to a low carbon society.

Abstract  This work presents the effect, in terms of  travel distance and material handling time reductions, of an optimal rather than a uniform item allocation in one-block picking warehouses, both with and without the use of a simple picking heuristic. Since developing efficient product-location strategies represents a critical issue in Operations Management, due to the impact on warehouse performance in terms  of both service level and operation costs, this paper focuses on an effective quantification of obtainable travel time reductions, obtaining a significant result for manufacturing companies aiming to determine the most appropriate material handling resource configuration. Building on previous work on the effect of slot-code optimization on travel times in single/dual command cycles, the authors broaden the scope to include the most general picking case, thus widening
the range of applicability and realising former suggestions for future research.

"English summary: The interpretation of Dutch Jewish Council Records

The main question in this thesis is: how do we interpret historical documents if we do not know the exact context in which they were created? It is a basic question for researchers and it will be all the more important in the digital age if we want to secure digital sustainability. The problem is demonstrated from the example of the Jewish Council Records that are part of the Information Bureau archives, at the Red Cross in The Hague. On these paper index cards a large amount of personal and procedural information was recorded by staff of the Jewish Council during the occupation of the Netherlands. On the appr. 180000 cards nearly every individual Jewish person was registered individually. After the war, the same card system was used by the Netherlands Red Cross as a basis for tracing the victims and to determine their fate.

Recreating the context
If we want to read the information on the cards and understand the meaning of the scribbled notes, we have to recreate the procedures that created these records. The card in itself is only the end product of a complicated chain of administrative events in a paper bureaucracy. The procedures changed many times and were scarcely documented. This means that the paper network has to be reconstructed, that existed when the records were created. The implication is that all the archives that may hold key-information have to be analysed. In that way the context of the Jewish Council records can be reconstructed. Context is required to interpret the information on these records. There are two layers of context. The first is the archives of the Information Bureau of the Red Cross and consists of deportation lists, personal files and other collections that were connected tot the Jewish Council Records after the war. The second level are the external archives that hold context information are scattered all over the Netherlands, but are mainly at NIOD-Amsterdam, National Archives the Hague and in local municipal archives.

How to obtain robust digital sustainability
To obtain robust digital sustainability, a detailed analysis of the interconnection of all these files is necessary. This analysis should be part of the meta-data. The paper bureaucratic network has to be reconstructed, and the remaining context-carriers have to indentified. Isolated digitisation of complex systems like the Jewish Council Records will lead to digital representations that cannot be interpreted. This is in fact what happened already, when microfilmed copies of the Jewish Council Records were transferred to ITS-Arolsen in the 1950’s. This organisation provided copies to Yad Vashem. Now all these microfilms are digitised and made available to institutions like the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. These ‘orphaned’ digital files have no metadata attached about the creation, history and interrelations with other archives. Researchers will not be able to use the full potential of these files, because the context-environment was lost.
It is also argued that the new historian of the paperless information age will not understand the way a paper bureaucracy works. If this problem is not addressed, misunderstandings will arise interpreting the products of a paper bureaucracy: deportation list and file-card etc.

The thesis provides a detailed description of all the interrelations between internal (in the Red Cross Information Bureau archives) and external archives. It also analyses the way the German occupying authorities exerted their rule over the information that was provided to the Jewish council. The German authorities were conducting a war against the Jews and used their power to restrict the communication of the Jewish council and to destabilise the day-to-day practice of the Jewish council."

Purpose – Stock keeping unit (SKU) classifications are widely used in the field of production and operations management. Although many theoretical and practical examples of classifications exist, there are no overviews of the current literature, and general guidelines are lacking with respect to method selection for classifying SKUs. The purpose of this paper is to systematically synthesise the earlier work in this area, and to conceptualise and discuss the factors that influence the choice of a specific SKU classification.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper structurally reviews existing contributions and synthesises these into a conceptual framework for SKU classification.

Findings – How SKUs are classified depends on the classification aim, the context and the method that is chosen. In total, three main production and operations management aims were found: inventory management, forecasting and production strategy. Within the method three decisions are identified to come to a classification: the characteristics, the classification technique and the operationalisation of the classes.

Research limitations/implications – Drawing on the literature survey, the authors conclude with a conceptual framework describing the factors that influence SKU classification. Further research could use this framework to develop guidelines for real-life applications.

Practical implications – Examples from a variety of industries and general directions are provided which managers could use to develop their own SKU classification.

Originality/value – The paper aims to advance the literature on SKU classification from the level of individual examples to a conceptual level and provides directions on how to develop a SKU classification.

Actualmente las organizaciones que buscan permanecer en el futuro, deben hacer planeación estratégica en virtud de los cambio es que ocurren y lo vertiginoso de los mismos, es así que todas las organizaciones, llámense empresas privadas o públicas, instituciones paraestatales, organizaciones de la sociedad civil, centros educativos o fundaciones eclesiásticas, así como los tres órdenes de gobierno requieren de planear su porvenir en el corto, mediano y largo plazo, así como de aprovechar su trayectoria histórica y su legado cultural.

The present article examines the practices of Hero Honda (Hero Moto Corp) and Bajaj Auto limited supply chain practices. The two wheeler supply chain is typical
in nature when to compare with other automobile segments. This article examines the practices of vendor selection, manufacturing locations and capacities of
various locations, manufacturing process and technologies, distribution management and other supply chain related aspects of above companies.
KEYWORDS
Bajaj Auto Limited, Distribution Channels, Hero Honda, Supply Chain and Vendors Management.

Abstract Supply chain collaboration has emerged as an important cooperative strategy leading to new focus on interorganisational boundaries as the determinants of performance. Although collaboration increasingly receives great attention both from practitioners and academics, relatively little attention has been given to systematically reviewing the research literature that has appeared about supply chain collaboration. The purpose of this paper is to examine previous studies on supply chain collaboration based on a taxonomy.

This paper provides an evaluation and analysis of the supply chain configuration of Tesla, the challenges faced, and the enablers needed to deal with them. The present supply chain with respect to the processes, facilities, transportation, inventories, information system and people is touched upon. The key findings show that Tesla have suppliers not conventional to the auto-world as it deals with the electric powertrain. Tesla has a ‘vertical integration approach’ which can help in few aspects with regards to not being reliant on suppliers and lowering the cost of the final products, but the downsides being loss in flexibility and focus. The challenges with respect to climate change, political instability, raw materials scarcity and labor aspects is covered with potential enablers being the implementation of Sustainable Supply Chain Management by triple bottom line approach and Technological developments in the field of Material Science, IoT, Robotics, AI and sustainable energy sources. Initiatives for enabling a wholistic supply chain in a networked economy without silos between business teams and partners are enabled with new business models and recommendations

This Handbook / Guidance Note has been prepared to identify and flag issues a prudent underwriter ought to consider and evaluate relating to the steel industry risk selection, determination and calculation of loss estimates when deciding whether to accept a risk and, if so, on what terms.

This  study  aims  to  clarify  the  position  of  Amazon  in  the  retail  industry  which  it primarily gained through high-­‐level supply  chain  and  logistics  developments. The first part  of this research describes the retail industry, especially E-­‐Commerce, as well as supply chain
practices whereas the second part focuses on Amazon as a representative company. Drivers of the company's supply chain as well as numerous product and service developments such as Anticipatory Shipping, Amazon's Chaotic Storage Model and Amazon's Logistics Network Plan are identified and discussed. It becomes apparent that constant innovation in a supply chain context has more extensive and significant long-­‐term effects on company success than large profit figures. A  comparison of Amazon with Apple, Google, Walmart and other relevant companies shows that Amazon's  supply chain  is  more  diverse,  implying  that numerous services that are offered  by  competitors  are  combined  within  Amazon and its supply chain. Amazon's supply chain may be  described by an efficient and flexible inventory management, fast delivery fulfillment,  effective  collaborations with partners, strategic acquisitions of supporting systems and companies and a high  level of customer service. The results of this research  paper  may  direct  future studies towards  the investigation of further  competitive  advantages  of Amazon  as well as how potential threats  and weaknesses a company faces may be overcome in a supply chain context.

The leather-processing industry (LPI) is constantly polluting the environment in Bangladesh. As a result, stakeholders are continuously pressurizing managers working in LPI to embrace green leather-processing activities. Thus, the green concept is attracting significant attention from managers in the Bangladeshi LPI. However, the industry is struggling with many barriers to implementing green supply chain management (GSCM). There are many studies regarding barriers to GSCM. However, those studies failed to show the possible pathways to implement GSCM. This study addresses the gap by evaluating barriers to GSCM considering effective pathways to GSCM. In this study, the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is integrated with Elimination Et Choix Traduisant La Realite (ELECTRE-I) method to identify and prioritize the barriers and to rank the possible pathways to implementing GSCM in the leather industry. To accredit the proposed framework, it is implemented on a leather-processing factory in Bangladesh. A sensitivity analysis is performed to inspect the strength of the outcome of this method. The outcome of this study indicates that the high cost of advanced technology is the most important barrier to implement GSCM while green technology and techniques are the most effective pathways to GSCM. The findings of this research will support researchers and practitioners by giving insights on barriers and possible pathways to implementing GSCM.

Recent studies advocate that digital technologies are key enabling factors for the introduction of servitized business models. At the same time, these technologies support the implementation of the circular economy (CE) paradigm into businesses. Despite this general agreement, the literature still overlooks how digital technologies enable such a CE transition. To fill the gap, this paper develops a conceptual framework, based on the literature and a case study of a company implementing a usage-focused servitized business model in the household appliance industry. This study focuses on the Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, and analytics, and identifies eight specific functionalities enabled by such technologies (improving product design, attracting target customers, monitoring and tracking product activity, providing technical support, providing preventive and predictive maintenance, optimizing the product usage, upgrading the product, enhancing renovation and end-of-life activities). By investigating how these functionalities affect three CE value drivers (increasing resource efficiency, extending lifespan, and closing the loop), the conceptual framework developed in this paper advances knowledge about the role of digital technologies as an enabler of the CE within usage-focused business models. Finally, this study shows how digital technologies help overcome the drawback of usage-focused business models for the adoption of CE pointed out by previous literature.

Circular Economy  has been usually indicated as a promising approach to promote economic development and sustainability. Despite this general agreement, the Circular Economy paradigm is still little adopted by companies, as they need to face several challenges. In this context, Product-Service Systems (PSS) Business Models play a major role, as they have been proposed as an opportunity for promoting sustainability. Today, digital technologies are seen as a  key factor to enable PSS, allowing at the same time the introduction of Circular  Economy  into companies.  However,  little attention has been set on how  new  digital technologies can  overcome  in practice  the main  Circular  Economy challenges. To fill this gap, this paper explores such a role through a case study of a company who leverages Internet of Things, Big Data and Analytics in the provision of its PSS Business Model. Based on the findings of the empirical investigation, the role that the selected digital technologies play in overcoming the Circular Economy challenges is presented and discussed

Despite companies face several challenges when redesigning their supply chain for the Circular Economy, the literature lacks a systematisation of such challenges and of the ways to overcome them. Through a systematic literature review, this paper identifies and systematises 24 challenges that may hamper a supply chain redesign for the Circular Economy. Sixteen among these challenges are well known from research in related topics. On the contrary, the remaining eight are relatively new or take a different relevance within the Circular Economy context. A multiple case study in the household appliance supply chain is carried out, to explore how these challenges appear in practice and how companies may tackle them. The cases analysed involve actors at different supply chain levels, and findings suggest that a great degree of vertical integration by one actor in the supply chain is not a necessary condition for Circular Economy implementation. The empirical study, in conjunction with the literature analysis, leads to the development of a framework linking the challenges to specific levers that companies may pursue to overcome them. The framework can be seen as a reference for managers undertaking the path towards Circular Economy

ABSTRACT Interest in third-party logistics has been steadily increasing over the last two decades. Recently, increased focus by researchers has produced a solid literature base of academic research. In this article, a meta-analytic approach is employed to provide a quantitative review of the empirical literature and examine relevant constructs. Fifty-four samples across 69 peer-reviewed journal articles, yielding a total of 9,386 observations, were obtained and analyzed. We used transaction cost economics and the resource-based view as lenses to hypothesize a structural model of the relationships among relational governance structure, logistics customer service, and firm performance. Additional relationships were also found and analyzed, helping to clarify the mixed existing findings in the literature. The paper concludes by mapping out future directions for 3PL research, based on the study's findings. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

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This study explores how innovations surrounding supply chain communication systems (SCCS) affect channel relationships and market performance. Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm, the study hypothesizes that certain SCCS innovations can be viewed as firm resources that enhance channel capabilities, which in turn affect a firm’s market performance. The empirical research is based on 184 responses from a survey with U.S. supply chain and logistics managers using structural equation modeling as the analytic method. The results suggest that the effect of applied technological SCCS innovations on channel capabilities is mediated by interfirm systems integration. In contrast, administrative SCCS innovations enhance information exchange and coordination activities directly. Furthermore, the influence of applied technological innovations for SCCS is not strong enough to affect either responsiveness of the partnership or firm performance, whereas administrative innovations for SCCS affect both.

Abstract The study seeks to identify the main facilitators and barriers of tacit knowledge transfer that influence innovation capabilities of the supplier within the buyer–supplier collaboration.The conceptual paper is based on a systematic literature review of 23 peer reviewed journal articles from Elsevier/Science Direct, Emerald, Springer and Scopus. Literature related to buyer–supplier context, tacit and explicit knowledge transfer, knowledge management for innovation purposes was reviewed and synthesised. Findings of the study indicate that organisational contextual factors, relationship strength, internal knowledge brokers, communication and transparency and link duration positively support tacit knowledge transfer and innovation. Complementarity of skills act as a barrier to operational knowledge transfer; however, it supports learning leading to supplier development and innovation in new product development. Conversely, knowledge stickiness is cited as a barrier to tacit knowledge transfer after reaching diminishing returns. The study synthesises the main facilitators of tacit knowledge transfer for managers/practitioners to consider in the buyer–supplier collaboration which can influence supplier innovation on projects such as new product development. The study has further proposed a model that will be tested quantitatively in the subsequent empirical study.

The main objective of this study is to examine the effect of intellectual capital, debt policy, company size, supply chain and liquidity on earnings per share and dividends per share as intervening variables in companies registered in the LQ 45 stock market index that consists of 45 companies for the 2014-2016 period in Indonesia. Using a purposive sampling method obtained data (panels) of 60 observation data from 20 companies. Multiple regression analysis is used to analyze two models. Model 1 analyzes the influence of intellectual capital, debt policy, company size and liquidity on dividends per share and model 2 analyzes the effect of intellectual capital, debt policy, company size and liquidity on supply chain and consequently earnings per share by including dividend per share as an interprening variable. The first Analysis regression Model 1 found that supply chain, human capital efficiency, debt policy, company size, and liquidity, statistically significant affected dividend p...

Resumo: O objetivo deste estudo é verificar quais aspectos associados à estrutura organizacional e à capacidade de prestação de serviços contribuem para o desempenho de fornecedores logísticos no contexto de relações B2B (business to business) com empresas cliente, configuradas em cadeias de suprimentos (CS). Uma amostra, incluindo 80 empresas fornecedoras de serviços logísticos no sul do Brasil, foi obtida através de uma survey num universo de empresas que desenvolvem atividades logísticas de armazenagem, controle de estoque, transporte, entregas programadas, operações portuárias e desembaraço aduaneiro. O questionário utilizado continha escalas múltiplas para representar as variáveis dos constructos relacionados à estrutura organizacional, capacidade dos serviços e desempenho. As respostas refletiram a percepção que os fornecedores de serviços logísticos tinham de suas atividades em relação ao seu principal cliente na cadeia de suprimentos. Utilizando análise estatística multivari...

The goal of the firm is to maximize shareholder value. While most firms devote their main efforts to exploit financial value drivers such as mergers and ac- quisitions, not enough attention is being paid to managerial value drivers like re- ducing time to market, increasing throughput, or improving logistics, operations and supply chain management, although these managerial drivers have a

• The process development and optimization potential needs to be driven by the individial coporate value chain. • The identification of this specific value chain and the related indicators is essential to limit the scope of any analysis and optimization to the core business • The process framework consisting of clearly defined value chain, the related processes and the corresponding indicators is a prerequisite for a meaningful and efficient process analysis and continuous process optimization.

Streszczenie: Celem artykułu jest przedstawienie możliwości zastosowania bezzałogo-wych statków powietrznych w łańcuchach dostaw, aby zwiększyć elastyczność ich funk-cjonowania, tak by osiągnęły one pożądany poziom zwinności. W artykule nakreślono bariery funkcjonowania łańcuchów dostaw w obszarach zurbanizowanych, wskazano czynniki ograniczające elastyczność łańcuchów dostaw w obszarze realizacji dostaw do klienta. Zwrócono także uwagę na wprowadzane w miastach strefy niskiej emisji, co jest szczególnie istotnym ograniczeniem z perspektywy europejskiej. Przedstawiono kon-cepcję drona i w skrócie nakreślono rozwój bezzałogowych statków powietrznych w cią-gu lat. Scharakteryzowano możliwe pola eksploatacji dronów, ukazując wszechstronność tej technologii. Wymienione zadania można traktować w kontekście celów szczegóło-wych artykułu. Ze względu na wagę problemu, uwzględniono ograniczoną podaż ropy naftowej jako czynnik, który wpływa istotnie na funkcjonowanie łańcuchów dostaw nie tylko na obszarach zurbanizowanych i który długookresowo będzie zwiększał swoją siłę oddziaływania. W tym układzie przedstawienie kwestii prawnych dotyczących korzy-stania z dronów oraz obaw wynikających z ich popularyzacji – mimo że rozwinięte do znaczącej części artykułu – należy traktować jako tło rozważań. Słowa kluczowe: zwinne łańcuchy dostaw, transport powietrzny, bezzałogowe statki po-wietrzne, drony. Abstract: This paper presents the possibility of using unmanned aerial vehicles in the supply chain to increase operation flexibility and to gain the desired level of agility. The