State of the Art and Future Directions of Digital Twins for Production Logistics: A Systematic Literature Review

Digital Twins (DTs) are widely discussed in the context of the Industry 4.0 paradigm as one of the main opportunities to strengthen the overall competitiveness of manufacturing enterprises. Despite a substantial scientific discussion, there is still no unified understanding regarding the constitution and subsequent usage of DTs within production logistics systems. Therefore, this paper focuses on the application of DTs in production logistics. The authors discuss common definitions, characteristics, and functionalities of DTs and outline current developments and implications from state-of-the-art implementation approaches, by using a systematic literature review. Moreover, based on the research findings, the authors evaluate a set of DT case studies, identify current research gaps, and present potential directions for future research initiatives regarding the field of production logistics in manufacturing enterprises.

How to Enhance the Green Innovation of Sports Goods? Micro- and Macro-Level Evidence From China’s Manufacturing Enterprises

This study aims to explore the driving factors of green innovation, and uses the micro- and macro-data from China’s sports goods manufacturing industries. In particularly, sports goods manufacturing enterprises are identified by the textual analysis of information disclosure, and the competitive environment faced by each enterprise is built through their unique closest rivals. Empirically, this study finds that competition and policy can promote green innovation in sports goods manufacturing industries, and industrial policy can moderate the role of product market competition in promoting green innovation. Considering the characteristics of the Chinese market, more industrial policies may intensify the competition among manufacturing enterprises, forcing such enterprises to obtain competitive advantages through innovation outcomes. It is worth noting that the association between product market competition and green innovation changes as financial constraints increase, and this may be caused by the impact of industrial policy on the interactions among enterprises. After implementing the strict environmental policy, product market competition and industrial policy can both promote green innovation. In high-polluting industries, sports goods manufacturing enterprises get more social attention and suffer from higher penalties for environmental violations, so that such enterprises will get more motivations from industrial policies to support green innovation. In addition, we also find that there is a significant inverted-U shape relationship between industrial policy and green innovation in sports goods manufacturing industries. As financial constraints increase, the non-linear relationship between product market competition and green innovation converts from a U shape relationship to an inverted-U shape relationship. Our findings can provide a better understanding of the investment of sports goods manufacturing enterprises in green innovation.

Supplier change, market competition and enterprise innovation

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to study enterprise innovation in the perspective of external supplier relationship. On this purpose, this paper examines the impact of supplier change on enterprise innovation with the moderating role of market competition.Design/methodology/approachUsing 2012–2020 empirical data of Chinese listed manufacturing enterprises, this paper investigates the relationship among supplier change, market competition and enterprise innovation through a two-way interaction model.FindingsThe results show that supplier change has a negative impact on enterprise innovation. And market competition intensifies the negative relationship between supplier change and enterprise innovation. Additional analyses indicate that the main effect and the moderating effect are more significant when the enterprise is non-state-owned or has lower ownership concentration.Originality/valueThis paper studies enterprise innovation from the perspective of external stakeholders. It focuses on supplier relationship in a dynamic variation view, instead of the traditional static ones. Moreover, this paper explores the contingency effect of market competition and gives practical implications for managers to adjust innovation strategy flexibly.

Factors affecting SMEs’ development in Vietnam

The enterprise's system, along with households and the government are the main factors in the production and consumption of the economy, which plays an extremely important role in the development of any country. Besides the large enterprises, which are often considered as the locomotives of the economy’s development, people are increasingly interested in a significant number of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) whose position and role has been confirmed through the actual economic development of many countries and economies. In Vietnam, the development of SMEs has been creating a driving force for economic growth and has become an important strategic direction in the country’s socio-economic development strategy. The article focuses on determining the factors affecting the development of small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises in Vietnam. At the same time, the current paper evaluates factors affecting the development of these enterprises. The main factors expected to be focused on in the research include the level of production technology, government policies, raw materials, labor, management capacity, corporate social responsibility, green growth orientation, and global epidemics.

INNOVATION PERFORMANCE OF CZECH AND FINNISH MANUFACTURING ENTERPRISES AND THEIR POSITION IN THE EU

The aim of this article is to assess the innovation performance of innovative small, medium-sized, and large enterprises operating in the manufacturing industry in two European countries – the Czech Republic (CR) and Finland, and to determine their position within the EU based on a comparison with average values of created Fictitious EU Country (FEUC). The FEUC includes the indicators and population of the EU member countries whose data were available. The performed analysis is based on the use of selected key performance indicators (related mainly to inputs that are expected to contribute to innovations) evaluating the enterprises´ innovation performance. The conducted research tries to identify the most significant drivers of innovation performance with regard to the size group of enterprises. Moreover, the achieved results are further compared within the innovation environment of the CR and Finland as well as the EU as a whole. It is worth highlighting the innovation resources of Finnish mainly small but partly also medium-sized enterprises, which in some monitored indicators occupy a much more significant share than in the case of the CR. This fact can indicate a particular signal, which size group of enterprises should become a target group of public support aiming to boost innovation performance.

Application of Blockchain Technology in Value Chain of Procurement in Manufacturing Enterprises

Blockchain technology, as a database which combines encryption algorithm, smart contract, consensus mechanism, time stamp, and other technologies, has received wide attention from all walks of life and can be used to solve such problems as asymmetric, incomplete, and untimely information in both interenterprise transactions and enterprise internal control management as a good solution owing to its characteristics of decentralization, traceability, and tamper-proofness. Consequently, it is worthy of studying how to apply blockchain technology to daily business activities of enterprises. In this paper, some problems existing in the value chain activities of the enterprise internal procurement are analyzed by designing the solutions to requisition, warehousing, and payment based on blockchain technology, in which the Hyperledger Fabric platform is selected as an implementation tool to simulate some purchasing data for testing procedures. After the successful test, the research conclusions and research prospects of this paper are thus proposed, proving the feasibility of applying the blockchain technology to the internal value chain management of the enterprise, which provides reference for the construction of the internal value chain management of the enterprise by the blockchain.

Urban employment in post-transition economies: skill mismatch in the local labor market

The paper explores the mismatch between the skills and qualifications required by the labour market and those acquired through education and on-the-job learning. The skill mismatch in transition economies tends to be even more pronounced as the labour markets in these countries are characterized by structural unemployment, affecting both older workers with obsolete skills and the young ones. Employers face poor incentives for investing in workforce skill development, due to the inadequate investment climate and volatile business environment. Transition countries face increasing outward mobility of an educated workforce, loss of human capital, and shortage of workforce in the fields such as ICT, medicine, science and research. The research is based on empirical data generated in a survey on ICT and manufacturing enterprises in the City of Niš, Serbia. The research methodology combines workers' self-assessment method for the skill gap measurement and the competence approach combined with the statistical methods. The findings indicate the presence of a qualification mismatch, in the form of the over-qualification as a dominant irregularity in the analysed labour market. The results of the study are expected to contribute to creating a network of policy instrumentaria that tend to be effective on a sub-national level in addressing the mismatch.