Susana Garrido Azevedo

Supply chain redesign for resilience using simulation

Supply chains are facing numerous changes that are contributing to increasing their complexity and vulnerability to disturbances, therefore, to survive, supply chains must be resilient. The paper presents a supply chain simulation study for a real case concerned with the Portuguese automotive supply chain. The subset automotive supply chain involved in the case study is a three-echelon supply chain, composed by one automaker, two 1st-tier suppliers, two 2nd-tier suppliers, and one outsource entity. The purpose of the study is to evaluate alternative supply chain scenarios for improving supply chain resilience to a disturbance and understanding how mitigation strategies affect each supply chain entity performance. Two strategies widely used to mitigate disturbance negative effects on supply chains were considered and six scenarios were designed. The scenarios differ in terms of presence or absence of a disturbance in one hand and presence or absence of a mitigation strategy in other hand. To evaluate the scenarios designed, two performance measures were defined per supply chain entity, Lead Time Ratio and Total Cost.

Influence of Green and Lean Upstream Supply Chain Management Practices on Business Sustainability

Green and lean paradigms have been adopted by companies in order to manage their relationships with suppliers in a supply chain management context, but nearly always separately and with little understanding of their influence on company performance. This paper proposes a theoretical framework for the analysis of the influence of green and lean upstream supply chain management practices on the sustainable development of businesses. To attend this objective, a set of performance measures covering economic (operational cost, environmental cost, and inventory cost), environmental (business wastage, green image, and CO2 emission), and social (corruption risk, supplier screening and local supplier) perspectives is proposed. An explanatory case study was conducted at a Portuguese automaker to test qualitatively the validity of the proposed theoretical framework. From the case study, a model is suggested, which encompasses the relationships between green and lean upstream supply chain practices and sustainable business development.

Lean, green and resilient practices influence on supply chain performance: interpretive structural modeling approach

Abstract Nowadays, companies are struggling to find an appropriate supply chain strategy to achieve competitiveness. Among the available strategies lean, green and resilient are considered as a new management strategies for the supply chain management to achieve competitiveness. The major issues with theses strategies are the integration and identification of critical issues related to the strategies. This paper aims to identify the critical lean, green and resilient practices on which top management should focus in order to improve the performance of automotive supply chains. The systematic analysis of the lean, green and resilient practices is expected to be of great value for their effective implementation by the automotive companies. The interpretive structural modeling approach is used as a useful methodology to identify inter-relationships among lean, green and resilient practices and supply chain performance and to classify them according to their driving or dependence power. According to this research, the practices with the main driving power are just-in-time (lean practice), flexible transportation (resilient practice) and environmentally friendly packaging (green practice). Customer satisfaction is the performance measure with strong dependence and weak driving power; that is, it is strongly influenced by the other researched variables but does not affect them.

Agile and resilient approaches to supply chain management: influence on performance and competitiveness

Supply chain management must adopt different and more innovative strategies that support a better response to customer needs in an uncertain environment. Supply chains must be more agile and be more capable of coping with disturbances, meaning that supply chains must be more resilient. The simultaneous deployment of agile and resilient approaches will enhance supply chain performance and competitiveness. Accordingly, the main objective of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework for the analysis of relationships between agile and resilient approaches, supply chain competitiveness and performance. Operational and economic performance measures are proposed to facilitate the monitoring of the influence of these practices on supply chain performance. The influence of the proposed agile and resilient practices on supply chain competitiveness is also examined in terms of time to market, product quality and customer service.

Supply chain performance management: lean and green paradigms

Supply chain management (SCM) is crucial for increasing organisational effectiveness, enhancing competitiveness, customer service and profitability. Actually, the lean and green philosophies have been adopted in the SCM context, but nearly always separately and with little understanding of their influence on supply chain performance. Accordingly, this paper intends to propose a conceptual model that explores the relationships between lean and green practices and supply chain performance. A set of lean and green SCM practices and a performance measurement system are suggested. The proposed performance measures intend to evaluate the practices influence on operational, economic and environmental supply chains performance.

Contribution of RFID technology to better management of fashion supply chains

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the deployment of RFID technology in fashion supply chain management (FSCM). It highlights the contribution of RFID to FSCM, supporting faster logistics activities, with greater products quality, cheaper and with more responsiveness, improving customer satisfaction.Design/methodology/approach – An inductive theory building approach is used to develop a conceptual model for RFID deployment in the FSCM context. Secondary data analysis from a sample of six companies supports the identification and discussion of the real advantages, disadvantages and barriers felt by companies in a fashion supply chain when RFID technology is introduced.Findings – The logistics activities in the fashion supply chain where RFID technology is most widely deployed are: shipping operations, tracking of raw materials, semi‐finished components and finished garments, collecting finished goods, handling processes, tracking containers, tracking products from factory to store, receiving...

Using interpretive structural modelling to identify and rank performance measures

Purpose – The main purpose of this paper is to identify and rank a set of performance measures using the approach of interpretive structural modelling (ISM) to support the evaluation of automotive supply chain performance.Design/methodology/approach – The paper develops a framework to analyze the interactions among a suggested set of performance measures using the ISM approach. To identify the contextual relationships among the suggested measures, five experts from the automotive industry were consulted.Findings – Using the ISM approach the performance measures were clustered according to their driving power and dependence power. Inventory level and lead time are the two performance measures at the bottom level of the hierarchy, implying higher driving power. Operational costs, business wastage, environmental costs, delivery time and customer satisfaction are identified as autonomous measures. This means that they are relatively disconnected from the other suggested performance measures. It is also observ...

A proposal of LARG Supply Chain Management Practices and a Performance Measurement System

Supply chains (SC) in an attempt to be more competitive, are adopting new management paradigm. Among these paradigms there are four that deserve particular mention because of their importance to better SC performance: lean, agile, resilient and green. The main objective of this paper is to propose a conceptual model for a lean, agile, resilience and green SC, with the purpose of improving their operational, economic and environmental performance. In this attempt a set of SC management practices, which were named LARG practices, and several performance measures are suggested. This model is based in the literature review about the four SC management paradigms and also SC performance measurement. Among the suggested LARG practices the ones influencing more the SC performance are the just in time and also the supplier relationships. Also the SC performance measures with more LARG practices influencing them are the inventory levels and the time, that is, the SCs operational performance is the most affected.

Radio frequency identification: a case study of healthcare organisations

RFID technology is actually considered a hot topic in all scientific areas and has been described as a major enabling technology for the automation of many processes. Although it is not a new technology it has only recently come to the awareness of the public and is widely used in many sectors and particularly in healthcare. This paper aims to illustrate the utilisation of the RFID technology in healthcare, more precisely in infant security systems within the hospitals. To achieve this objective a case study about the experience of Portuguese hospitals in this system is presented and highlighted the main advantages reached with its utilisation.

A comparative benchmarking analysis of main Iberian container terminals: a DEA approach

Benchmarking is an important tool to organisations to improve their productivity, product quality, process efficiency or services. From Benchmarking the organisations could compare their performance with competitors and identify their strengths and weaknesses. This study intends to do a benchmarking analysis on the main Iberian Sea ports with a special focus on their container terminals efficiency. To attain this, the DEA (data envelopment analysis) is used since it is considered by several researchers as the most effective method to quantify a set of key performance indicators. In order to reach a more reliable diagnosis tool the DEA is used together with the data mining in comparing the sea ports operational data of container terminals during 2007. Taking into account that sea ports are global logistics networks the performance evaluation is essential to an effective decision making in order to improve their efficiency and, therefore, their competitiveness.