Transparency Issues Within a Transport Buyer and Provider Relationship

Transport is an important function in the supply chain. This chapter focuses on how to buy a transport service, how to form a transport contract, and how a transparent relationship will influence the risk and the relationship between transport provider and buyer. By developing a decision support tool (DST-model) and calculating the cost and the time parameters, the right price and the cost drivers will appear. The cases described in this chapter are a large Norwegian wholesaler for food, distribution to the retailer, and two Norwegian municipalities collecting household waste. In these cases, the buyer and the provider are acting blind in setting the transport price. This means that there is a huge risk for either a bankruptcy by the transport provider or an overpriced transport for the buyer.

Supply Chain Leadership in Emerging Markets

The massive growth of emerging economies in last two decades has attracted many global companies to expand their physical presence in these countries. But the ability to take advantage of those opportunities is only available to companies that appreciate the environmental challenges and complexity of the region. The lexicon of extant literature focuses on enhancing supply chain leadership and development of efficient and effective strategies in developed economies, yet the corresponding literature in emerging economies is very fragmented. The aim of this chapter is to synthesize the current literature to understand the phenomenon including its definitions, dimensions, and constructs and to propose a conceptual model for successful supply chain leadership in emerging markets. The study tries to understand and establish the impact of various factors of supply chain leadership, which leads to sustainable supply chain performance. Collaboration and information management emerge as the major drivers for supply chain leadership in emerging markets and identifies trust as a mediating factor.

Managing Biomass Supply Chains

This chapter explores the feasibility and advantages of integrated biomass logistics centres (IBLCs). These are centres aiming to collect residues from farming activities and transform these into new intermediate bio-products. Operations in these IBLCs aim to achieve economies of scale through integration of resources and business lines, while creating technical and environmental advantages for firms and societies. The experience from one agro-industry case study in Spain (fodder production) highlights the importance of leadership roles to manage the newly created supply chains, through the identification of strategic objectives and the coordination of operational activities. Hence, the scope of this chapter is to review the concept of IBLCs under the lens of supply chain management leadership. Thereafter, it will discuss the potential to transfer the IBLC concept to emerging markets, with examples for African agricultural crops.

Challenges and Perspectives of Supply Chain Management in Emerging Markets

Supply chain management (SCM) as a concept first originated in the manufacturing industry from logistics and just-in-time production. Used to successfully utilize SCM elements and diminish lingering issues in construction, its importance lies in the focus that it gives to plan different features of the supply chain by also involving other parties of the chain in the process. SCM in construction supports firms by aiding in the improvement of competitiveness between firms and the increase of the company's profits and control over projects. Although generic supply chains should be simple and linear, the construction sector is much more complex. These problems are present in different parts of SCM due to interdependence in the organization and supply chain. Through a case study analysis and semi-structured interviews, this chapter aims to identify and better understand the role of SCM, challenges and complications in different levels of the supply chain, and how firms utilize it to create greater value in construction operations, and specifically in Albania.

Bullwhip Effect Performance of Supply Chains Under Statistical Process Control-Based Policy

This chapter discusses the bullwhip effect performance of serial and divergent supply chains under statistical process control (SPC)-based and order-up-to (OUT) policies. The performance of the supply chains is evaluated in terms of order rate variance ratio and bullwhip slope under four realistic customer demand models such normal, normal with a sudden change in mean, normal with seasonality, and normal with seasonality and a sudden change in mean. The impact of sharing of customer demand among the other members of the supply chain and the introduction of order smoothing parameter on both policies are also studied. The results show that under non-stationary customer demand models the difference in the performance of serial and divergent supply chains is noticeable. The bullwhip slope under OUT policy is significantly differing from the bullwhip slope under the SPC-based policy. OUT policy with order smoothing performs better than the SPC-based policy with order smoothing. This finding provides proper guidelines for a supply chain manager to make a decision in a practical scenario.

Leadership Strategies for Global Supply Chain Management

This chapter explores the leadership strategies for global supply chain management in the construction sector. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) construction sector, which played a pivotal role in transforming UAE to a modern economy from a nomadic one is used as an exemplary case in this study to understand the leadership strategies required for developing ‘globalness' in their construction supply chain. Using secondary research and interviews with stakeholders in the construction supply chain, the study proposes leadership strategies in four key areas: 1) policymaking, 2) technology and innovation, 3) environmental supply chain management, and 4) international collaboration/partnerships. The findings are useful for practitioners and policymakers in improving the global competitiveness of their construction sector and its supply chain.

Returns Management

The e-retail sector of the Indian e-commerce industry being a price-sensitive market has witnessed an increase in customer interest and flexibility to compare a product while making a purchase decision through e-commerce platforms. The increase in internet penetration and users in India has been facilitated by a boost of the telecom industry and data penetration from 34% in 2017 to 60% in 2022. While some players like Flipkart and Amazon have disrupted the sector with their customer acquisition ratio in the market, other new players, Jio Mart and Paytm Mall, are merely surviving or gearing up to the competition. The cost factors like marketing, forward logistics, inventory, and reverse logistics are associated with customer acquisition, which the organizations are not able to recover because of low average gross merchandise value (GMV) and high logistics cost to serve the customer. This chapter depicts the returns management process, which, while integrating the forward and the reverse logistics in a supply chain, is productive financially and logistically.

Key Success Factors Facilitating SME E-Commerce in Developing Countries

This chapter presents a systematic literature review and research agenda regarding key success factors (KSFs) facilitating SME e-commerce in developing countries. Previous studies had mainly pre-adoption when the internet and e-commerce were new. However, SMEs have largely been ignored, and now that attention has turned to post-adoption issues research, which is required in SME and developing country contexts due to the worldwide growth of e-commerce. This chapter comprises a structured literature review using Denyer and Tranfield's context, intervention, mechanisms, and outcome (CIMO) criteria for critical analysis to enable the development of future empirical research areas. The KSFs are considered significant and of concern to stakeholders, including inter alia SMEs and governments to encourage SME growth in e-commerce and positively influence SME and overall business performance to meet customer demand.

Supply Chain Manufacturing Practices (SCMP)

The chapter attempts to find out the relationship between the supply chain manufacturing practices (SCMP) and organizational performance, which are identified as financial and market performance. In the context of SCM, the financial and market performance factor is operationalized in terms of market share, return of total assets to firms, profit margin annuals sales growth, frequency of stock out, backorder rate, etc. Multiple regression analysis statistical technique has been used for the analysis of the adoption continuum questions in order to find the predictor variables for various performance measuring variables. The findings suggest that of supply chain manufacturing practices (SCMP) play a crucial role in enhancing the performance of the dairies companies in the form of increase in performance matrix indicators (i.e., level of supplier's defect-free deliveries, inventory turnover, frequency of stock out, backorder rate, sales growth, profit margin, return on investment, return on assets to firm).

Leadership Model for Supply Chain Management in Business Schools

Supply chain management has brought sweeping changes in the way organizations achieve profit and competitive advantage in the recent past. But the rapid changes occurring in the business environment due to globalization and emergence of new markets have created many new opportunities as well as challenges for organizations in supply chain. Effectiveness of management institutions can be improved if they focus on changing needs of SCM and provide dynamic leadership in line with the changing needs of students and other stakeholders. This created the need for acquiring a completely different kind of supply chain skill sets and competencies among the leaders of these institutions, which they were hitherto unfamiliar with. This chapter attempts to develop a supply chain leadership model for business schools and management institutions to align themselves with the changing needs of the emerging markets of management education. It will enable the management institutes to redesign their strategies to suit the required changes.