Felix T. S. Chan

State of the art literature review on performance measurement

The performance measurement revolution started in the late 1970s with the dissatisfaction of traditional backward looking accounting systems. Since then the literature in this field is emerging. Most of the focus was on designing performance measurement system (PMS), with few studies illustrating the issues in implementing and using PMS. Although Management Information Systems (MIS) and change management are important enablers of PMS, their role is not very well understood. Hence the objective of this paper is to review literature on the role of MIS and change management throughout the lifecycle of performance measurement, i.e. design, implementation and use stages. This paper not only discusses the role of MIS and change management throughout PMS lifecycle but also discusses PMS in the context of emerging business environment such as globalization, servitization, and networking in the context of multi-cultural environment. Finally it identifies research challenges for PMS in the emerging business environment.

Predicting consumer decisions to adopt mobile commerce

Advancements in wireless communications have increased the number of people using mobile devices, and have accelerated the growth of mobile commerce (m-commerce). This study aims to investigate the factors that predict consumer intention to adopt m-commerce in Malaysia and China. The work extends the traditional technology acceptance model (TAM) and diffusion of innovation (DOI) model, and includes additional variables such as trust, cost, social influence, variety of services, and control variables such as age, educational level, and gender of consumers. By comparing consumers from both Malaysia and China, this research is able to form a prediction model based on two different cultural settings. Data was collected from 172 Malaysian consumers and 222 Chinese consumers, and hierarchical regression analysis was employed to test the research model. The results showed that age, trust, cost, social influence, and variety of services are able to predict Malaysian consumer decisions to adopt m-commerce. Trust, cost, and social influence can be used to predict Chinese consumer decisions to adopt m-commerce. This research confirms the need to extend the traditional TAM and DOI models when studying technology such as m-commerce. The results from this study will be useful for telecommunication and m-commerce companies in formulating marketing strategies. Highlights? This research compares the m-commerce adoption decisions in China and Malaysia. ? TAM was extended by incorporating trust, cost, social influence and variety of services. ? Hierarchical regression analyses were performed to examine the conceptual model. ? Traditional TAM variables are unable to predict m-commerce adoption. ? Cultural factors played an important role in predicting m-commerce adoptions.

A new fuzzy dempster MCDM method and its application in supplier selection

Supplier selection is a multi-criterion decision making problem under uncertain environments. Hence, it is reasonable to hand the problem in fuzzy sets theory (FST) and Dempster Shafer theory of evidence (DST). In this paper, a new MCDM methodology, using FST and DST, based on the main idea of the technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (TOPSIS), is developed to deal with supplier selection problem. The basic probability assignments (BPA) can be determined by the distance to the ideal solution and the distance to the negative ideal solution. Dempster combination rule is used to combine all the criterion data to get the final scores of the alternatives in the systems. The final decision results can be drawn through the pignistic probability transformation. In traditional fuzzy TOPSIS method, the quantitative performance of criterion, such as crisp numbers, should be transformed into fuzzy numbers. The proposed method is more flexible due to the reason that the BPA can be determined without the transformation step in traditional fuzzy TOPSIS method. The performance of criterion can be represented as crisp number or fuzzy number according to the real situation in our proposed method. The numerical example about supplier selection is used to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed method.

Feasibility of performance measurement system for supply chain: a process‐based approach and measures

Nowadays more than ever, supply chain management has gained a tremendous amount of attention from both the academic and practitioner communities. It provides a revolutionary management philosophy to cope with the increasing business competition and economy globalization. However, there exist many puzzles, especially in structure mapping and analysis, and performance measurement. The objective of this paper is to propose a process‐based approach to mapping and analyzing the practically complex supply chain network. Via this approach, a process‐based performance measurement system is proposed, in which a method called performance of activity is used to identify the performance measures and metrics.

A heuristic methodology for order distribution in a demand driven collaborative supply chain

This paper studies vertical and horizontal supply chain collaboration, and proposes a demand sharing methodology based on a set of predefined collaboration rules. Supply chain collaboration is prevalent, and has been recognized to be one of the important issues in improving competition strength. However, implementation of supply chain collaboration encounters many barriers, such as type, scope and security of information sharing, equity in benefits sharing, joint decision making, coordination tasks etc. For these reasons this paper proposes a framework of a central coordination system, which is equipped with a multi-criteria genetic optimization feature. The optimization methodology combines an analytic hierarchy process with genetic algorithms. It deploys an analytic hierarchy process to model the collaboration rules, govern the demand allocations, and evaluate the fitness values of chromosomes. The implementation of the proposed central coordination system is demonstrated by a hypothetical three-echelons supply chain network.

Can Malaysian firms improve organizational/innovation performance via SCM?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to empirically test a framework which identifies the relationships between supply chain management (SCM) practices, operational performance and innovation performance of Malaysian manufacturing and service firms.Design/methodology/approach – Data for the study were collected from a sample of 163 Malaysian manufacturing and service firms. The research model was tested using structural equation modeling.Findings – The results show that SCM practices in both the upstream and downstream supply chain have a direct and significant impact on organizational and innovation performance of Malaysian firms. Innovation improvement caused by SCM also results in better organizational performance. The findings also reveal that manufacturing and service firms in Malaysia do not have a significant difference in their SCM practices.Research limitations/implications – The time sequence of the association between the variables could not be concluded given that cross‐sectional data were u...

Quantifying risks in a supply chain through integration of fuzzy AHP and fuzzy TOPSIS

Risk is inherent in almost every activity of supply chain management. With the ever-increasing push for efficiency, supply chains today are getting more and more risky. Adding to the difficulty of dealing with these risks is the amount of subjectivity and uncertainty involved. This makes analytical examination of the situation very difficult, especially as the amount of information available at a particular time is not sufficient for such an analysis. Thus a supply chain risk index, which captures the level of risk faced by a supply chain in a given situation, is the need of the hour. This study is an effort towards quantifying the risks in a supply chain and then consolidating the values into a comprehensive risk index. An integrated approach, with a fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and a fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to the ideal solution (TOPSIS) as its important elements, has been used for this purpose. Fuzzy values in this study help in capturing the subjectivity of the situation with a final conversion to a crisp value which is much more comprehensible. A case study is used to illustrate the proposed methodology.

Comparative study of adaptability and flexibility in distributed manufacturing supply chains

Supply chains need to be flexible and adaptive because their operations are always subject to a variety of uncertainties like customer demand and supplier capacity, particularly for Make-to-Order (MTO) supply chains since their flow of materials is only triggered by customer orders. The main objective of this paper is to study how flexibility and adaptability in delivery quantity and due date can improve the performance in a network of two-level multi-product MTO supply chains. Effect of uncertain customer demand and also supplier capacity, and suppliers capacity utilization are studied. Flexibility and adaptability are realized based on two proposed coordination mechanisms. Agent-based simulation is employed in this study to model the operations of supply chains. Performance of the system is measured in terms of a number of cost items and customer demand fill rate. Simulation results indicate that introduction of such flexibility and adaptability can improve the aforementioned performance. However, there is a trade-off in selecting the coordination mechanism between adaptability and flexibility subject to capacity utilization. Details and concluding remarks are discussed in this paper.

Improving the productivity of order picking of a manual-pick and multi-level rack distribution warehouse through the implementation of class-based storage

Determining the proper storage locations for potentially thousands of products is one major task that faces the warehouse manager during the design of a new warehouse or the refurbishment of existing facility. There are many factors affects the storage assignment. For example, order picking method, size and layout of the storage system, material handling system, product characteristics, demand trends, turnover rates and space requirements. Selecting appropriate storage assignment policies (i.e. random, dedicated or class-based) and routing methods (i.e. transversal, return or combined) with regards to above factors is a possible solution to tackle this problem. However, the efficiency of these policies is interdependent. This paper aims to present a simulation study of a real case regarding storage assignment problem of a manual-pick and multi-level rack warehouse. Performance of the case is measured in terms of travel distance and order retrieval time. The results of the study indicate that the key to effective implementation of a storage assignment system is to match the types of warehouse storage system and the variety of items in the customer order. Also, the use of key performance indicator should clearly reflect the needs of the warehouse.

IFSJSP: A novel methodology for the Job-Shop Scheduling Problem based on intuitionistic fuzzy sets

The Job-Shop Scheduling Problem (JSP) is an important concern in advanced manufacturing systems. In real applications, uncertainties exist practically everywhere in the JSP, ranging from engineering design to product manufacturing, product operating conditions and maintenance. A variety of approaches have been proposed to handle the uncertain information. Among them, the Intuitionistic Fuzzy Sets (IFS) is a novel tool with the ability to handle vague information and is widely used in many fields. This paper develops a method to address the JSP under an uncertain environment based on IFSs. Another contribution of this paper is to put forward a generalised (or extended) IFS to process the additive operation and to compare the operation between two IFSs. The methodology is illustrated using a three-step procedure. First, a transformation is constructed to convert the uncertain information in the JSP into the corresponding IFS. Secondly, a novel addition operation between two IFSs is proposed that is suitable for the JSP. Then a novel comparison operation on two IFSs is presented. Finally, a procedure is constructed using the chromosome of an operation-based representation and a genetic algorithm. Two examples are used to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method. In addition, a comparison between the results of the proposed IFSJSP and other existing approaches demonstrates that IFSJSP significantly outperforms other existing methods.