Virgilio Cruz-Machado

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.

A decision-making model for Lean, Agile, Resilient and Green supply chain management

In modern business environments, an effective supply chain management (SCM) is crucial to business continuity. Competition between supply chains (SC) has replaced the traditional competition between companies. Lean, Agile, Resilient and Green (LARG) paradigms are advocated as the foundation of a competitive SCM. To make a supply chain more competitive, capable of responding to the demands of customers with agility and capable of responding effectively to unexpected disturbance, in conjugation with environmental responsibilities and the necessity to eliminate processes that add no value, companies must implement a set of LARG SCM practices and key performance indicators (KPI) to measure their influence on the SC performance. However, the selection of the best LARG SCM practices and KPIs is a complex problem, involving dependencies and feedbacks. This paper proposes an integrated LARG analytic network process (ANP) model to support decision-making in choosing the most appropriate practices and KPIs to be implemented by companies in an SC. To validate the model in an exploratory approach, a case study in an automaker supply chain is presented.

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.

Modelling lean and green: a review from business models

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how different business models, embodied in awards, standards and frameworks, can contribute to modelling a lean and green approach for an organization and its supply chain.Design/methodology/approach – In total, 12 business models were studied. A literature review was conducted to provide a comprehensive understanding of each model. After defining lean and green management paradigms, a number of guidelines were developed to connect and integrate lean and green principles.Findings – The study reveals a number of categories that are common in most business models, providing adequate conditions for a lean‐green transformation. The guidelines were developed to model a lean‐green organization by applying specific principles and tools of a lean and green culture.Research limitations/implications – The relationships identified within and between models reflect a partial view of a lean‐green transformation. The approach adopted merges the different principles, and...

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.

A mapping framework for assessing Supply Chain resilience

Supply chains (SCs) may experience instability induced by disturbances such as extreme climate conditions or accidents. These events can cause severe negative effects on SCs, jeopardising the on-time delivery of products and services to customers. This paper proposes a mapping framework to improve SC resilience to such events, avoiding possible failure modes. The proposed mapping framework allows identification of the current SC operation and possible transition states, together with points of vulnerability. An illustrative example of the framework applied to a real-life wine SC is presented.

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...

Integrating Lean, Agile, Resilience and Green Paradigms in Supply Chain Management (LARG_SCM)

1.1 What is the problem? Different management paradigms, such as the lean, agile, resilience and green have been adopted for the management of supply chains. The lean supply chain is a paradigm based on cost reduction and flexibility, focused on processes improvements, through the reduction or elimination of the all “wastes”, i.e., non-value adding operations (Womack et al., 1991). It embraces all the processes through the product life cycle, starting with the product design to the product selling, from the customer order to the delivery (Anand & Kodali, 2008). The agile supply chain paradigm intends to create the ability to respond rapidly and cost effectively to unpredictable changes in markets and increasing levels of environmental turbulence, both in terms of volume and variety (Agarwal et al., 2007). However, when organizations are subject to eventual disruptions, caused by sudden and unforeseen events (like economic and politic crisis or environmental catastrophes), the lean practices may have contributed to rupture conditions (Azevedo et al., 2008). In a global economy, with supply chains crossing several countries and continents, from raw material to final product, those events (even if they happen in a remote place) can create large-scale disruptions (Craighead et al., 2007). These disruptions are propagated throughout the supply chain, causing severe negative effects in supply chains leading to unfulfilled orders. So, it seems that what can be good from the competitive point of view, can cause a disaster on crisis situations; it may be worst if the organizations can not be resilient and robust enough to recover the loosed competitiveness. In actual competitive market, it is necessary that supply chains become more resilient to disruption events (Sheffi & Rice, 2005; Tang, 2006). Other pertinent issue in supply chain management is the environmental sustainability. The green supply chain management is as an important organizational philosophy to achieve corporate profit and market share objectives by reducing environmental risks and impacts while improving ecological efficiency of these organizations and their partners (Rao & Holt, 2005; Zhu et al., 2008). As a synergistic joining of environmental and supply chain management, the competitive and global dimensions of these two topics cannot go unnoticed by organizations.