Impact of Green Supply Chain Management Practices on Employee Engagement and Organizational Commitment: Mediating Role of Firm Performance

This study extends the knowledge in green supply chain research by investigating the impacts of green supply chain management (GSCM) practices on employee engagement and organizational commitment through firm performance. The 268 respondents included in this study were employees of firms that implemented GSCM in Thailand. Our structural model was analysed using partial least squares structural equation model (PLS-SEM). The results revealed that only social and operating performance mediated the impact of four different GSCM practices on employee engagement and organizational commitment, including environmental education, green marketing and green warehousing and distribution which have positive effects, and green manufacturing which has a negative effect on firm performance. Though these four GSCM practices are reported to have a significant influence on environmental and marketing performance, these two aspects of performance failed to mediate the relationship of these practices with employee engagement and organizational commitment. The results suggest that in order to enhance employee engagement and organizational commitment, firms should invest more in GSCM practice drivers of social and operating performance. These include environmental education, green marketing and green warehousing and distribution. Thus, we explained more clearly the mechanisms under which GSCM practices influence employee engagement and organizational commitment.

METHODICAL TOOLS FOR EVALUATING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF TRANSPORT AND LOGISTICS SERVICES MANAGEMENT OF AN INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISE

The article analyses the factors influencing the efficiency of transport and logistics management of the industrial enterprise, which activates the need to determine the methodological tools for evaluating the effectiveness of transport and logistics services. The purpose of the article is to analytically determine the methodological tools and justify its effectiveness in managing the transport and logistics system of the enterprise that will optimize the costs of transportation, warehousing and distribution in terms of growth of production and sales, optimization of inventories, stimulating and positive financial results of the industrial enterprise. The general theoretical and applied principles of using the tools for evaluating the effectiveness of transport and logistics services that will stimulate competitiveness and provide additional competitive advantages to the industrial enterprise are defined and formulated. Our proposed evaluation method is based on the definition of integral parameters with the calculation of the formula of the geometric mean simple. The integrated indicators obtained as a result of the calculations can be used to identify the logistics potential and assess the effectiveness of management of transport and logistics services of an industrial enterprise.Key words: management, transport and logistics service, industrial enterprise, logistics, service

Cross-Docking: A Systematic Literature Review

This paper identifies the major research concepts, techniques, and models covered in the cross-docking literature. A systematic literature review is conducted using the BibExcel bibliometric analysis and Gephi network analysis tools. A research focus parallelship network (RFPN) analysis and keyword co-occurrence network (KCON) analysis are used to identify the primary research themes. The RFPN results suggest that vehicle routing, inventory control, scheduling, warehousing, and distribution are most studied. Of the optimization and simulation techniques applied in cross-docking, linear and integer programming has received much attention. The paper informs researchers interested in investigating cross-docking through an integrated perspective of the research gaps in this domain. This paper systematically reviews the literature on cross-docking, identifies the major research areas, and provides a survey of the techniques and models adopted by researchers in the areas related to cross-docking.

Decision Support Research in Warehousing and Distribution: A Systematic Literature Review

The increase in e-commerce and omnichannel commerce is having a significant impact on the supply chain sector and its warehouses. Fluctuations in demand and priorities, the requirement for value-added service, government regulations and other factors put pressure on the operational decision makers on the warehouse floor and the systems that support them. The increasing complexity of daily warehouse operations means that decision support systems will need to become more sophisticated and intelligent to assist decision makers in real-time. The aim of this literature review is to investigate how decision support in warehousing and distribution operations is examined in the research literature. The objective of this review is to understand how this decision support research can assist operational decision makers to manage and complete the daily volume of work through the warehouse. Fifty-one articles were obtained by the literature search. Articles were categorized by type of warehouse, decision support target, operational task and problem type, research article methodology, architecture and technology. Decision support is examined in almost all areas of warehousing operations with the use of a variety of methods and technologies within the research literature. Most “daily warehouse operational” decision support deals with expertise transfer and reacting to real-time events. This paper highlights the lack of research into human–machine collaboration in adaptive decision support systems to assist warehouse operational decision makers.

Significance of Bonded Logistics Parks in China, Enabling Indian Retail Industry for Effective Logistics

Multiple handling and resting of materials at different points in the flow of Supply Chain has come into the limelight in the recent time due to severe cost pressure for the reduction and savings of Logistics costs. The ease of material movement is been on a large focus in-order to achieve cost savings and to have a win-win situation for both the Suppliers and the Customers. With the effect of globalization, the foreign Suppliers are exporting goods to the consignee country by paying customs duty and in-turn the consignee on the receiving end pays import customs duty for the consumption of the goods and on top of it pays an additional storage and handling charges for the Warehousing and Distribution activity in the consignee country. This makes the logistics costs to go up. To tackle this challenge and complexity in the Logistics system, major economies are introducing FTZ - Free Trade Zones or Logistics Parks in major cities. These Free Trade Zones are backed up the concern country’s government and customs authorities. With lot of initiatives coming from the government side but still there is a huge demand gap for these Free Trade Zones or Logistics Parks and many of them are underutilized or rather unoccupied. Still many of the Consumers are relying upon traditional CFA – Custom Freight Agents or other warehouses for getting this service done. But they are missing a big picture of Logistics Cost Savings, Transit time reduction in transferring the goods and the major advantage in tax rebates. At this backdrop, this paper address the major advantage of using the Bonded Logistics Park, developed and promoted by the People’s Republic of China by analyzing the data of an Indian customer who is sourcing more than 70% from China.

A ferrobotic system for automated microfluidic logistics

Automated technologies that can perform massively parallelized and sequential fluidic operations at small length scales can resolve major bottlenecks encountered in various fields, including medical diagnostics, -omics, drug development, and chemical/material synthesis. Inspired by the transformational impact of automated guided vehicle systems on manufacturing, warehousing, and distribution industries, we devised a ferrobotic system that uses a network of individually addressable robots, each performing designated micro-/nanofluid manipulation-based tasks in cooperation with other robots toward a shared objective. The underlying robotic mechanism facilitating fluidic operations was realized by addressable electromagnetic actuation of miniature mobile magnets that exert localized magnetic body forces on aqueous droplets filled with biocompatible magnetic nanoparticles. The contactless and high-strength nature of the actuation mechanism inherently renders it rapid (~10 centimeters/second), repeatable (>10,000 cycles), and robust (>24 hours). The robustness and individual addressability of ferrobots provide a foundation for the deployment of a network of ferrobots to carry out cross-collaborative logistics efficiently. These traits, together with the reconfigurability of the system, were exploited to devise and integrate passive/active advanced functional components (e.g., droplet dispensing, generation, filtering, and merging), enabling versatile system-level functionalities. By applying this ferrobotic system within the framework of a microfluidic architecture, the ferrobots were tasked to work cross-collaboratively toward the quantification of active matrix metallopeptidases (a biomarker for cancer malignancy and inflammation) in human plasma, where various functionalities converged to achieve a fully automated assay.

TCS: ‘Hazir SubKuch’—Making Everything Present

The case describes the journey of TCS as it became Pakistan’s leading logistics service provider. It highlights how and when TCS acquired different logistics and other value-adding capabilities and how these capabilities, in turn, complimented the diverse logistics services that TCS offered to a wide variety of businesses. TCS had been offering a top-notch Express and Logistics service around Pakistan for 30 years. TCS started as a company providing secure distribution of letters and packages. Customers perceived TCS as a shipping solution provider for all their goods transportation needs which included parcels, documents, E-commerce products and even their groceries. Table 1 of the case study highlights that TCS had taken up some unique and new initiatives. TCS handled four main clientele areas: Corporate, Consumer, International and E-commerce. For consumer wing, TCS oversaw bookings of documents and parcels at the express centres, door-to-door containerized shipments, domestic and international air ticketing, visa application drop box facility for various countries and financial services in the form of insurance plans. On the corporate side, TCS provided warehousing and distribution, digital printing and bulk mail solutions. International and e-commerce both catered consumer and corporate segments. Over the last decade, TCS had established a warehousing and distribution wing and a mail management and printing facility. Other ventures and services that TCS offered were Visatronix, Hazir, Home Movers, E-COM, TCS Aviation, Mail Management System, Warehouse and Distribution, Intiana, Sentiments express and Octra. The case focusses on the decision of whether or not to run an ambitious new logistics service, that is, Hazir SubKuch (HSK), meant to deliver anything non-prohibited that a customer wanted, on a crowdsourcing model. In the proposed crowdsourcing model, after training and evaluation, anyone could assume the role of a customer service provider by connecting to the system remotely. Similarly, pickup and delivery jobs could be performed under an Uber-like model by anyone who owned a ride and had smartphone connectivity. The service was a brainchild of the new CEO, hired by the founder and chairman as part of the new management team to bring a fresh dynamism in the company.