Anita Romsdal

Principles for Real-Time, Integrated Supply Chain Control: An Example from Distribution of Pharmaceuticals

This paper investigates how to control an integrated supply chain based on demand-driven principles and sharing of real time information. A set of principles to support a unified supply chain control model is proposed based on theory and previous and ongoing research and illustrated in a case example from the pharmaceutical industry. Essential elements include application of pull-based control principles, automated decision support, advanced visualisation, and automated replenishment concepts. Expected effects include improvement of supply chain speed and reliability, and reduced resource consumption. However, implementation challenges associated with financial, political and trust issues in supply chain relationships remain.

Supply chain strategies for speciality foods: a Norwegian case study

Abstract Despite strong market interest in speciality foods, producers find market access and distribution challenging. This exploratory research includes a literature review and five case studies of supply chains relating to shellfish, cheese, meat, potato and miscellaneous speciality foods in the mid-Norway region. The study identifies key supply chain configuration parameters from the extant literature, and these are used to analyse the cases. The study makes three main contributions to the literature: an analytical framework for analysing the supply chain characteristics of speciality foods; important supply chain factors for accessing the conventional food supply chain; and five propositions for improving market access. We argue that the speciality foods supply chain should be configured according to these propositions to ensure responsiveness to customer needs and to strengthen market access.

Tactical and Operational Issues in a Hybrid MTO-MTS Production Environment: The Case of Food Production

Hybrid production environments that combine MTO and MTS strategies have emerged to enable production systems to better respond to changes in consumer and market demand. This paper discusses some of the tactical and operational production planning and control (PPC) issues involved in such hybrid production environments, using the food industry as an illustrative case. The discussion identifies MRP combined with WLC as a promising approach for incorporating MTO items into an MRP planning environment on the tactical and operational levels. Additional techniques are required to incorporate uncertainty and provide flexibility in this particular context and these should be further investigated taking different food supply chain characteristics into consideration.

Sustainable Food Supply Chains: Towards a Framework for Waste Identification

Reduction of waste in food supply chains is an important sustainability issue. More efficient utilisation and management of the resources and values created in food supply chains can contribute to improving competitiveness, and environmental and social responsibility. This study uses the seven wastes approach from lean theory to classify categories of waste in fresh food supply chains and to identify at which stage of the supply chain waste occur. A case is used to illustrate the applicability of the classification. The analysis identifies four categories of waste in the fresh food supply chain; time, distance, energy and mass. The study indicates that the majority of waste is hidden in time, energy and mass categories, related to overproduction, defects and transportation.

Applicability of ERP for Production Network Planning: A Case Study

A production network enables a company to develop capabilities to respond to diversity in national or regional demand, while at the same time integrate and coordinate their activities. Many companies have implemented enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to overcome problems associated with coordination and planning in an organization, in recent years. In addition, advanced planning and scheduling (APS) systems have emerged to address the planning insufficiencies of ERP systems. However, due to complexity and competence dependency of these systems, advantages of them are overlooked by large organizations, and therefore ERP systems are still in use for planning. ERP systems are used in production networks for coordination of various plans and decisions across network partners. This paper aims to assess the fit and alignment between ERP functions and production network requirement for supporting production planning processes. Using a case study approach, the paper illustrates and discusses the applicability of ERP systems for planning in production networks. The case study showed that ERP systems have limited ability in coordinating order allocation in the network, detailed short term production planning and inter network distributions. It is concluded that use of ERP systems for network planning may in fact limit the network’s ability to reap the full benefits associated with planning across several facilities in a network.

Engineering Change Management in the Engineer-to-Order Production Environment: Insights from Two Case Studies

Engineering changes (ECs) are part of any Engineer-to-order (ETO) project. The engineering change management (ECM) literature provides various tools, methods and best practices, and this study investigates ECM practices in the ETO production environment. Through two exploratory case studies, we identify five main ECM challenges; EC impact analysis, EC data management, internal and external collaboration and communication, and EC post-implementation review. Both companies have implemented the main ECM steps recommended in literature but there are considerable weaknesses in the execution of the post-implementation review process. More ETO cases are needed to confirm the findings and investigate how ECM tools and approaches vary by different dimensions.

The Responsiveness of Food Retail Supply Chains: A Norwegian Case Study

This paper describes a case study which highlights responsiveness in a Norwegian retail supply chain. The dynamics in the conventional food market is increasing which is seen in online and multichannel shopping concepts, a wide range of campaigns and promotions, and demographic changes. While the conventional food supply chains are designed to handle large product volumes efficiently, this might impact on the responsiveness. This study explores the relation between the responsiveness and demand pattern in Norwegian food retail supply chains, and identifies key principles for the associated planning and control models.