Atanu Chaudhuri

Supply chain risk assessment during new product development: a group decision making approach using numeric and linguistic data

Companies strive to minimise supply chain related risks during new product development as any glitch while developing new products can lead to considerable delay in product launch with severe financial implications. However, many organisations face difficulty in properly assessing the vulnerabilities of their globally dispersed supply chains during the product development stage as no suitable procedure for that purpose seems to be readily available in the literature. The present research is an attempt to fulfil this requirement. A step-by-step approach for supply chain risk assessment during new product development, involving group decision making, is suggested. This approach can use both numeric and linguistic data and helps in determining vulnerability scores for various sub-systems and for each supplier of the most vulnerable sub-system. This is followed by failure mode effect analysis (FMEA) which helps prioritise failure modes of vulnerable suppliers and thus create specific control plans to mitigate supply related failures. Using this approach, organisations can devise control plans to alleviate the supplier related risks during new product development. Although, the methodology is illustrated through an application in aircraft manufacturing, it can also be used in other discrete and process manufacturing industries.

The reality of India: folding constraints into business strategy

Purpose – This report provides a framework to better understand how constraints faced by companies and their customers in emerging markets can be converted into competitive advantage and thereby into factors for growth.Design/methodology/approach – Based on a literature review, a framework is developed to understand how companies can generate competitive advantage from constraints that affect companies, their customers or both. The framework is explained with case studies of Indian companies and multinational organizations (MNCs) operating in India.Findings – A multitude of constraints affect companies operating in emerging markets such as India. India is an emerging market where MNCs would like to have a presence but are deterred by constraints. Some of these constraints affect companies, while others affect customers. Although many multinational organizations are struggling to meet their business goals in India, many local companies and some MNCs have successfully navigated the constraints and managed t...

Interplant coordination, supply chain integration, and operational performance of a plant in a manufacturing network: a mediation analysis

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships at the level of plant in a manufacturing network, labelled as networked plant in the paper, between inter-plant coordination and operational performance, supply chain integration (SCI) and operational performance and inter-plant coordination and SCI. Design/methodology/approach This paper is developed based on the data obtained from the sixth version of International Manufacturing Strategy Survey (IMSS VI). Specifically, this paper uses a subset of the IMSS VI data set from the 606 plants that identified themselves as one of the plants in a manufacturing network. Findings This paper finds that external integration is significantly related to operational performance of networked plant, whereas internal integration is not. As an enabler for external integration, the influence of internal integration on operational performance of networked plant is mediated by external integration. This paper also provides evidence to the purported positive impact of internal integration on inter-plant coordination, as well as the positive impact of inter-plant coordination on external integration. It further suggests that inter-plant coordination can influence operational performance of networked plant through external integration and also mediate the relationship from internal integration to performance through external integration. Originality/value This paper contributes to the SCI literature and extends the understanding of the impact of SCI on the operational performance by selecting networked plant as a unit of analysis. Besides, this paper distinguishes inter-plant coordination from SCI and investigates the relationship between inter-plant coordination, SCI, and operational performance for the first time.

Propagation of risks and their impact on performance in fresh food retail

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to carry out structural analysis of potential supply chain risks and performance measures in fresh food retail by applying interpretive structural modeling (ISM). Design/methodology/approach – Inputs were taken from industry experts in identifying and understanding interdependencies among food retail supply chain risks on different levels (sourcing and logistics outside the retail stores; storage and customer interface at the stores). Interdependencies among risks and their impact on performance measures are structured into a hierarchy in order to derive subsystems of interdependent elements to derive useful insights for theory and practice. Findings – Using the ISM approach the risks and performance measures were clustered according to their driving power and dependence power. Change in/inadequate government regulations’ are at the bottom level of the hierarchy implying highest driving power and require higher attention and focussed mitigation strategies. Risks like...

A Combined QFD and Integer Programming Framework to Determine Attribute levels for Conjoint Study

In a recent paper, Chaudhuri and Bhattacharyya propose a methodology combing Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and Integer Programming framework to determine the attribute levels for a Conjoint Analysis (CA). The product planning decisions, however, are typically taken one to two years before the actual launch of the products. The design team needs some flexibility in improving the Technical Characteristics (TCs) based on minimum performance improvements in Customer Requirements (CRs) and the imposed budgetary constraints. Thus there is a need to treat the budget and the minimum performance improvements in CRs as flexible rather than rigid. In this paper, we represent them as fuzzy numbers instead of crisp numbers. Then a fuzzy integer programming (FIP) model is used to determine the appropriate TCs and hence the right attribute levels for a conjoint study. The proposed method is applied to a commercial vehicle design problem with hypothetical data.

A Decade of Lean in Healthcare: Current State and Future Directions

Over the last decade, many healthcare organizations have adopted lean thinking to reduce wastages and to improve flow efficiency in the patient flow processes. But there is limited research done on understanding the sequence to be followed by healthcare organizations to implement lean in their different departments, and on the applicability of various lean tools in different healthcare settings. This article aims to bridge this gap, map the current state of lean in healthcare and identify future research directions. Key concepts of lean thinking are introduced, and the current body of knowledge between 2002 and 2014 is explored to answer key research questions on the application of lean in different healthcare settings. Further, this article is one of the first attempts to classify healthcare services according to the service process matrix. Results show that different healthcare services pose unique challenges to lean implementation due to their inherent characteristics of service delivery. Research opportunities exist to determine the appropriate path which a hospital should follow while implementing lean, to identify the most appropriate set of lean tools and for empirically validating the benefits of lean.

Procurement scheduling for complex projects with fuzzy activity durations and lead times

Research focuses on complex projects manufacturing products like ships.Aims to align procurement schedule with work breakdown structure oriented production scheduling.Fuzzy integer programming model incorporates uncertainty in activity durations and lead times.Result suggest stage budgets be determined by uncertainty model instead of treating them as given.Sensitivity analyses are used to identify the most critical stage of project and its budget range. Material procurement is a vital activity for manufacturing complex products like ships and aircrafts with long manufacturing cycle times. The project activities are interlinked through numerous precedence and succession rules. Given these interdependencies, it is difficult to ascertain the durations of the activities precisely at planning stage and creates uncertainty in the requirement dates of the items. The lead times of items are also not known accurately and result in uncertainty in the availability dates. Consequently, inventory holding and shortage costs incurred cannot be crisply defined. The objective of this paper is to develop a procurement scheduling model considering the above uncertainties.We have developed a method to calculate fuzzy holding and shortage costs and used those as fuzzy cost coefficients in the procurement scheduling model. It minimizes the sum of the above costs under budget constraints and generates optimal ordering schedule. It is applied for procurement scheduling of a real ship building project. Two types of sensitivity analyses were performed: first to understand the effect of variation of degree of uncertainty on total cost and on stage budget requirements and second to study the effect of changes in allocated stage budget parameters on total cost. The results indicate that total cost can be reduced significantly if stage wise budgets are determined considering the uncertainties rather than allocating budget upfront and treating them as constraints. The sensitivity analyses performed, helps in identifying the most sensitive stage of the project and determine the ranges in which stage-wise budgets can be varied.

Risk propagation and its impact on performance in food processing supply chain: A fuzzy interpretive structural modeling based approach

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify various risk drivers which affect a food processing supply chain and to create a map of how those risk drivers propagate risks through the supply chain and impact important performance measures. Design/methodology/approach This study involves experts from food processing companies to elucidate the contextual relationships among the risk drivers and between risk drivers and performance measures. This is used to quantify the relationships and to determine the indirect and overall relationships applying Fuzzy Interpretive Structural Modeling. Findings Three categories of risk drivers which Indian food processing companies need to pay maximum attention to minimize risks are identified. These are supplier dependency and contracting, supplier variability, visibility and traceability and manufacturing disruptions. Analysis shows that collaborating with suppliers and logistics service providers, developing mutually beneficial contracts with them while ensuring that adequate technology investments are made can significantly mitigate risks and consequently improve margins and lead to revenue growth. Research limitations/implications This study has been carried out with experts from large food processing companies in India, and hence, the results cannot be generalized across other types of food processing companies. Practical implications The proposed methodology can help understand the interrelationships between supply chain risks and between those risks and performance measures. Thus, it can help a food processing company to create business cases for specific supply chain risk mitigation projects. Originality/value This study is one of the earliest to create a comprehensive risk propagation map for food processing companies which helps in quantifying the impact the risk drivers have on each other and on performance measures.

Simultaneous Improvement in Development Time, Cost and Quality: A Practical Framework for Generic Pharmaceuticals Industry

Generic pharmaceutical companies strive to develop generic versions of drugs to obtain marketing rights after those drugs go off patent. Being a highly competitive industry, these companies have to work towards simultaneously reducing the development time and costs while meeting all the quality standards. While the literature has discussed the multiple trade‐offs in product development, there is limited research on how the companies can break these trade‐offs and simultaneously improve performance on multiple objectives and particularly in the context of the generic pharmaceutical industry. In this research, we try to bridge this gap and develop an improvement framework for simultaneously achieving the objectives in terms of development time, cost and quality. We apply the framework in a generic pharmaceutical company by redesigning its new product development process following Six Sigma methodologies and demonstrate the benefits through pilot projects with varying levels of complexity. The results show that a well‐designed process which facilitates process standardization, optimization and collaboration can help in simultaneously achieving improvements in development time, cost and quality.

Mass personalization in healthcare: insights and future research directions

Purpose - Purpose of this paper is to identify capabilities required for healthcare service providers to provide mass personalized services and to provide directions to conduct empirical studies to understand the phenomenon of mass personalization in Indian healthcare industry. Methodology/approach - The research is conducted by undertaking a literature review followed by field visits and interviews conducted at a leading healthcare service provider in India. Findings - There is limited empirical research on understanding the mass personalization capabilities in healthcare setting and empirical validation of the sand cone model and theory of competitive progression in the context of healthcare. Our interviews and field visits to Narayana Hrudayalaya (NH) indicate that it is attempting to provide personalized services to a large number and variety of patients. By doing so, it is expected to improve on both resource and flow efficiencies at the same time and hence break the trade-offs between those. Literature review coupled with field visits and interviews help us in identifying key research questions related to mass personalization of healthcare in Indian healthcare industry. Originality/value - This study is one of the first attempts to understand this trade-off between resource and flow efficiency in the context of the Indian healthcare industry and to identify areas for future research. The unique characteristics of the Indian healthcare industry provide the ideal research setting to study this phenomenon. Literature review and our exploratory study have helped us in providing directions for future research in this unexplored area.