Navin K. Dev

Using interpretive structure modeling to analyze the interactions between environmental sustainability boundary enablers

Purpose – The modern business community understands the importance of long-term satisfaction of consumer. Enabling the consumer to return products is a significant part of the equation. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the sustainable boundaries in terms of their relationship toward greening a supply chain. Design/methodology/approach – Using interpretive structural modeling the research presents a hierarchy-based model to realize the driving power and dependence of sustainable boundary enablers. Findings – The research shows that there exists a group of enablers having a high driving power and low dependence requiring maximum attention and of strategic importance while another group consists of those variables which have high dependence and are the resultant actions. Practical implications – This classification provides a useful tool to supply chain managers to differentiate between independent and dependent variables and their mutual relationships which would help them to focus while making strat...

Reconfiguration of supply chain network: an ISM-based roadmap to performance

Purpose: Short product life cycle and/or mass customization necessitate reconfiguration of operational enablers of supply chain (SC) from time to time in order to harness high levels of performance. The purpose of this paper is to identify the key operational enablers under stochastic environment on which practitioner should focus while reconfiguring a SC network. Design/methodology/approach: The paper used interpretive structural modeling (ISM) approach that presents a hierarchy-based model and the mutual relationships among the enablers. The contextual relationship needed for developing structural self-interaction matrix (SSIM) among various enablers is realized by conducting experiments through simulation of a hypothetical SC network. Findings: The research identifies various operational enablers having a high driving power towards assumed performance measures. In this regard, these enablers require maximum attention and of strategic importance while reconfiguring SC. Practical implications: ISM provides a useful tool to the SC managers to strategically adopt and focus on the key enablers which have comparatively greater potential in enhancing the SC performance under given operational settings. Originality/value: The present research realizes the importance of SC flexibility under the premise of reconfiguration of the operational units in order to harness high value of SC performance. Given the resulting digraph through ISM, the decision maker can focus the key enablers for effective reconfiguration. The study is one of the first efforts that develop contextual relations among operational enablers for SSIM matrix through integration of discrete event simulation to ISM.

A case study on redesign of supply chain network of a manufacturing organization

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the case of a manufacturing firm situated in an industrial city of India, focusing on supply chain management issues of the concerned organization from two operational perspectives: supply side (or the procurement side) and the distribution side of the system.Design/methodology/approach – The authors first considered the outsourcing decision‐making problem in a static environment using analytical expression by means of a variable fraction of demand. Next, the authors extended the scope of this problem by considering outsourcing decisions in a dynamic environment, using the sequential decision‐making approach with various operational and inventory factors. Finally, the authors carried out the study of the distribution side of the supply chain of industry using discrete event simulation.Findings – It was observed that, in the case study organization, because of the rather unstructured approach in dealing with the outsourcing perspective, the authors suggeste...

Design of fractal information coordination system in a supply chain network

The rapid advancement in communication technology, coupled with spiralling customer expectations, are increasingly forcing business enterprises to seek inter-organisational coordination for smooth material and informational flow across the total supply chain justifiably. Therefore, given the inherent uncertainties pervading the operational environment within real-world supply chains, it becomes imperative for each partnering echelon to focus on individual information requirements from a viewpoint of global optimisation of overall SC performance. This information could manifest from 1) downstream echelons; 2) upstream partners; 3) a (hybrid) combination of both 1 and 2 above. From the perspective of a specific SC echelon then, we compare the above operating regimes using the performance measures: average inventory levels, average cycle times, average fill rates and average number of times lots are ordered. In this paper, the coordination among supply chain echelons is viewed from fractal factory theory perspective.

A hybrid adaptive decision system for supply chain reconfiguration

Due to short product life cycle, it is expedient to reconfiguration an existing supply chain from time to time. Companies need to impose the standards on operational units for finding the best or the near best alternative configuration. Thus, it becomes imperative to effectively adapt various enablers in a supply chain by understanding the dynamics between them that help to reconfigure a supply chain for high levels of performance. This paper presents an integration of agent-based simulation and decision tree learning as the data mining techniques to determine adaptive decisions of operational units of a mobile phone supply chain. Agent-based simulation output is subjected to data mining analysis to understand system behaviour in terms of interactions and the factors influencing the performance. An entropy-based formulation is proposed as the basis for comparing different operational units in the supply chain. The insights obtained are then encapsulated as operational rules and guidelines supporting better decision-making.

Impact of Information Sharing in Alternative Supply Chain Network Structures

Given the inherent uncertainties pervading the operational environment within real-world supply chains, it becomes imperative for each partnering echelon to focus on individual information requirements from the viewpoint of global optimization of overall supply chain SC performance. With this in perspective, it is expedient to explicitly model the SC network to synchronize activities across the cooperating partners. This research is concerned with the performance behaviour of two different SC network structures given different design and control parameters adopted by the partnering echelons within the assumed SC configurations. Accordingly, the authors developed discrete event simulation models of two hypothetical supply chain structures and exploit the Taguchi experimental design procedure as a vehicle for conducting the simulation experiments and analyzing its outcome. The results highlight the relative effects of the assumed design and controlling factors on system-wide SC performance and identify appropriate combinations of these factors for optimal performance concerned. For the average inventory level performance measure, key results reveal that sharing of demand information between partnering echelons should not automatically be taken for granted as a direction for performance enhancement.

A discrete dynamic programming approach towards optimal outsourcing policy in supply chain management

Purpose – As global markets become more customer oriented, rapid response rates are now often among the most important metrics in business. To achieve the required agility, many companies are forced to take decisions of whether to vertically integrate a value chain or to outsource some of its operations. The purpose of this paper is to develop a sequential decision modeling process to enable determination of optimal outsourcing policy decisions with respect to the variables such as warehouse inventory, in‐house manufacturing capacity and the ordering cost to the outsource supplier.Design/methodology/approach – In this paper, a discrete dynamic programming‐based modeling framework is developed for analyzing outsourcing policies for supply chain management problems. Specifically, the assumed situation entails a dynamic decision between in‐house production vis‐a‐vis outsourcing, which is contingent upon several factors such as demand during the period under consideration, available inventory, available produ...

Strategic positioning of inventory review policies in alternative supply chain networks: an information-sharing paradigm perspective

One of the key issues in the current research on supply chain (SC) networks is the need for planning the nature of the inventory policy at each echelon of the SC network structure. Given the inherent uncertainties pervading the operational environment within real-world SC networks, it becomes imperative therefore, for each partnering echelon to focus on its individual inventory review policy from the viewpoint of global optimisation of the overall SC performance. Two key factors contributing to the aforementioned uncertainty are the lead time and their standard deviations, and the extant literature has often advocated the adoption of demand information-sharing between the partnering echelons to mitigate the deleterious impact of these factors on system performance. In this paper, we explicitly focus attention on these factors through their manifestation within two different hypothetical SC networks, and study their impact on the average fill rate performance of the assumed systems with and without demand information-sharing. Towards this end, we develop discrete event simulation models of the hypothetical SC structures and exploit the Taguchi experimental design procedure as a vehicle for conducting the simulation experiments and analysing its outcome. While simulation results highlight the impact of the assumed factors on system-wide performance, the Taguchi paradigm further helps identify appropriate combinations of these factors for optimal fill rate performance. Key results reveal that sharing of demand information between partnering echelons should not automatically be taken for granted as a direction for performance enhancement.

A modelling approach for outsourcing decisions in Supply Chain Management

The rapidly changing global market scenario is increasingly forcing manufacturing firms to pursue outsourcing as an important option. From a research viewpoint, one issue that has remained relatively unexplored is the effect that capacity expansion with availability of overtime option and upstream supplier cost structure has on outsourcing decisions. There is scant research exploring the circumstances in which mixed models (fraction of demand) might be appropriate (Harland et al., 2005). The suggested model explicitly considers pricing and outsourcing simultaneously by operationalising the outsourcing decision through a variable that captures the fraction of demand met by in-house manufacturing through overtime.

Holonic supply chain

We analyze the impact of inventory system on family dispatching rule.Appropriate family dispatching rule have mitigation effect on demand amplification.The information is conceptualized under the paradigm of Koestlers holonic theory.For an industrial case, analysis of dispatching rules is performed from total supply chain perspective.Family dispatching rules are compared for Average Flow Time performance. In the contemporary business environment, to adhere to the need of the customers, caused the shift from mass production to mass-customization. This necessitates the supply chain (SC) to be effective flexible. The purpose of this paper is to seek flexibility through adoption of family-based dispatching rules under the influence of inventory system implemented at downstream echelons of an industrial supply chain network. We compared the family-based dispatching rules in existing literature under the purview of inventory system and information sharing within a supply chain network. The dispatching rules are compared for Average Flow Time performance, which is averaged over the three product families. The performance is measured using extensive discrete event simulation process. Given the various inventory related operational factors at downstream echelons, the present paper highlights the importance of strategically adopting appropriate family-based dispatching rule at the manufacturing end. In the environment of mass customization, it becomes imperative to adopt the family-based dispatching rule from the system wide SC perspective. This warrants the application of intra as well as inter-echelon information coordination. The holonic paradigm emerges in this research stream, amidst the holistic approach and the vital systemic approach. The present research shows its novelty in triplet. Firstly, it provides leverage to manager to strategically adopting a dispatching rule from the inventory system perspective. Secondly, the findings provide direction for the attenuation of adverse impact accruing from demand amplification (bullwhip effect) in the form of inventory levels by appropriately adopting family-based dispatching rule. Thirdly, the information environment is conceptualized under the paradigm of Koestlers holonic theory.