Management of Risk and Resilience within Collaborative Business Network

Global business communities are facing tremendous challenges from market places with respect to reduce cost and offer true customized products or services to the end customers. To cope such challenges companies are nowadays considering forming a business network with the objective to achieve several business benefits. However, to execute such business network is not risks free but always facing some problems for its continuation successfully. In such situation, it is necessary to formulate risk mitigation plan and strengthen the resilience within business network. The objective of this article is therefore to identifying and sharing risks within the collaborative business network and proposing necessary mitigating plan and resilience for it. In this research, a framework is also highlighted that provides a structural approach for identifying and assessing potential risks and resilience in business networks and their possible impacts on different levels of collaboration. The study is concluded with future research directions.

Improving Construction Supply Chains through Collaborative Modelling, a case of South Africa

This chapter report on some of the challenges faced and successes achieved during the construction of the recently completed Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) headquarters in South Africa. Qualitative interviews where conducts with five (5) professionals which were part of the construction supply chain team that completed the DEA project in South Africa. Findings summary were that the South African construction industry exists in a very dynamic and volatile environment with common challenges as evident in other countries. This challenge, necessitates the use of collaborative means of managing the various phases of the supply chain. It was also found that the use of collaborative models such as Public Private Partnership (PPP) can prove rewarding when stakeholders involved in a project have an understanding of the model and its dynamics. This chapter contributes to the use of PPP collaborative models in construction project delivery in South Africa.

Engineer-To-Order Product Development

Industrial manufacturers' complex product-development activities have seen various advancement and improvement approaches over the past decades. In order to enable the implementation of efficient and effective product-development support processes in the quest of achieving shorter product development lead-times and higher return on investments (ROIs). Engineer-To-Order (ETO) product capacity projects, including large electric machine, huge centrifugal pumps, Diesel/Natural fuel power plant engines, steam turbine, boiler, ship, etc., have challenges concerning their long product-development lead-times. The challenges confronting these enterprises industrial Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) are enormous with one of the major ones being the effective and efficient network or flow of technical communication among the main stakeholders for complex / new product-development. Moreover, with all the industrial manufacturing complex product-development process improvements, in terms of complex engineering design and delivery, there are still a lot more variances to be addressed on the ‘better, faster and cheaper' paradigm. Furthermore, attention is needed on efficient information exchange systems as well as effective operational communication in their complex product-development processes for a sustainable competitive advantage. Therefore, this paper presents a proposed optimum conceptual information technology systems' architecture towards enhancing an industrial sustainable competitive advantage: By employing social network theory (SNT) analysis to advise on a strategic and effective communication network for industrial supply-chain (SC) sustainable competitive advantage.

Hybrid Supply Chain Strategies in Wind Business

The present chapter aims to increase the understanding of possible supply chain models and their fit and most effective configuration in a typically engineer-to-order sector, namely the wind business. Our findings argue the pertinence of a Hybrid Supply Chain model combining elements of the Lean, Agile and Leagile paradigms upstream and the Project Management paradigm downstream in the case of a Wind Turbine Manufacturer. We also find that, depending on the complexity of the market and supply diversity, multiple decoupling points emerge. Through the present Wind Energy Supply Chain case, we find that for effective management of a global supply chain characterized by a high number of references and multiple technologies, it is necessary to mix different manufacturing paradigms in order to provide a quick, agile and competitive response to the customer.

The Production Capacity Planning and Scheduling Models in Term of Supply Chain Management

Each company is original from the point of production processes. Application of standard enterprise information system (SAP, proAlpha, Baan, etc.) need difficult adaptation, especially for conditions of small or medium enterprises (SMEs) and the price of that system is relatively high. Therefore, the proposed capacity planning model is much more suitable for the conditions, requires and demands of SMEs. Specifics of production processes of RS Ltd. are: - combinations of discrete and continuous processes, - this small company is connected to a supply chain (KANBAN) with its mother company, which defines the level of some chosen products in the expedition warehouse by the end of a month. For the above mentioned reason it had to be designed the new original production logistic system.

Information Systems as the Key Enabler in Engineer-to-Order Supply Chain Management

Engineer-to-Order (ETO) environments are gaining more and more popularity these days with customers demanding custom-designed products to meet their specific needs. ETO enterprises are often having to rely on the combined design capabilities of the entire value chain in order to satisfy customer requirements. Due to the increased level of interaction with customers and between partners in the value chain, it becomes imperative to have an effective means of communication and data storage. Information systems can be leveraged to streamline the communication process and improve data exchange between the members of the value chain. This chapter will examine how information systems can be the key enabler in ETO supply chain management and identify some of the issues involved. The chapter will conclude with suggestions on future direction for research in this area.

Supply Chain Design Approaches for Dual Demand Management Strategies

Supply chain management involves efficiently integrating suppliers, manufacturers, warehouses, stores, and customers. To survive in a highly competitive business environment, manufacturing, resource planning and scheduling and distribution operations are the significant drivers that need to be optimized within supply chain management. In this chapter, we design the supply chain system considering dual demand management strategies simultaneously for the same company, both engineer-to-order (ETO) and make-to-order (MTO). This research has been inspired from the window manufacturer which manufactures and distributes vinyl windows to meet new construction and replacement/remodeling sector demand in the State of Ohio. The company manufacturers windows based on make-to-order strategy for new construction projects and at the same time builds replacement windows to individual customer specifications in very small quantities to be used for replacement in homes. In this study, a total of 174 individual customers and six big contractors are considered throughout the State of Ohio. This paper proposes to separate products based on demand management strategy and develop different supply chain networks for each group. The idea is to design bigger facilities for high volume (make-to-order products) as transportation cost per unit is reduced due to economies of scale whereas to place smaller and more facilities for low volume engineer-to-order products to be closer to the clients where it may not feasible to carry a only few products over long distances. All in all, this study provides nested models to integrate both design and operational aspects of supply chain system in the presence high-volume and low-volume of window products. Moreover, all location, design and manufacturing operations are performed by considering new mathematical models (mixed-integer and integer mathematical models) and heuristics in engineer-to-order demand management environment. Normally-distributed, probabilistic demand environment is considered in our design and operational phase of the study. Preliminary results show that, each design has its own strategic advantage and outcome and the ultimate objective has been accomplished in our design in this study. Briefly, four manufacturing facilities are established to meet the demand of replacement/remodeling sector and two manufacturing facilities are situated to meet the demand of new construction sector. The results revealed that, 29 layered-cells and a total of 200 machines are opened and utilized for replacement/remodeling sector. Additionally, 15 layered-cells and a total of 104 machines are needed to cover the entire demand of new construction sector. Also for the new construction sector, three distribution centers are needed to facilitate the products over the region. In terms of daily cell loading and scheduling phase, the results are almost doubled in replacement/remodeling sector demand compared to new construction sector demand volume due to having more cells and machines in the new construction design strategy. The supply chain work involves location and number of manufacturing facilities, number and location of distribution centers, detailed design of manufacturing systems and performing scheduling to confirm the validity of the manufacturing system design.

Modeling and Synthesis of Supply Chain Networks Using High-Level Petri Nets

This chapter presents a systematic methodology for modeling and control of supply chain networks, especially focusing on formal representation and control synthesis aspects. A supply chain is represented as a discrete event dynamic system. The use of high-level Petri nets is proposed to formulate event related rules commonly seen in supply chains and analyze cause-effect relationships between events. Petri nets have been successfully introduced as an effective tool for describing control specifications and realizing the control in automated supply chain processes. The extended net representation of the productive task flows can provide more synthetic specifications for consistent management and control of supply chain systems by a top-down refinement methodology. Software implementation is described to simulate and control real supply chain processes.

Innovation Diffusion in the European Ceramic Tile Industry Supply Chain

Following Nelson's primary typology of enterprises based on a characterization of their technical change process (bulk commodities; complex systems producers; and chemical products producers) this chapter presents a case study on the innovation diffusion in the European tile industry based on the analysis of its manufacturing process and supply chain. The producers of ceramic tiles, the machinery producers and the frits and glazes producers fit each of Nelson's categories. Further, the European ceramic tile industry is clustered in two southern European regions: Emilia Romagna (Sassuolo – Italy) and Valencia Region (Castelló de la Plana – Spain) with a different configuration of the type of predominant companies within the cluster but also regarding surrounding clusters. This relative specialization, the interactions between surrounding clusters, and the strong interlink supplier-producer between both ceramic tile clusters make the study of the innovation diffusion in the European ceramic tile industry supply chain an interesting case.

Improving Communication with Internal Public and Customers of an Industrial Company

The present chapter deals with an important topic, namely communication with its internal public and its customers by improving internal processes like recruitment, selection, motivation and development of an industrial company along supply chain management. We analyse this relationship taking into account that having talented employees the company will be able to attract new customers, maintain the old ones and satisfy their needs, that organizations must face the continual changes from the external environment, and that factors like globalization, liberalization, new technologies, and market opening have a major impact on organizational performance, on the human factor and on customers. As astrategic performance-generating factor in obtaining competitive advantage along supply chain, human factor is analysed describing issues like: communication, recruiting, attracting, retaining, motivating, developing employees under the impact of new technologies in order to obtain performance along supply chain.