Market Orientation and Supply Chain Performance, Mediating Role of Supply Chain Management Strategy

The aim of this study is to examine the supply chain performance of small medium enterprises (SMEs) in Vellore district. This research also determines the connection between market orientation and supply chain performance and the mediating effect of supply chain management strategy on the impact of market orientation on supply chain performance. The survey was administered and collected from employees and sales managers from three small medium enterprises (SMEs) in Vellore district. Correlation, regression, mediation effect using SPSS is performed to test the hypothesis. The findings of the study reveal that there exists a positive relationship between marketing orientation and supply chain performance and the manufacturing organization's supply chain management strategy mediates the connection between marketing orientation and supply chain performance.

Sustainable Supply Chain Management

The integration of sustainable development concepts with the traditional supply chain improves the environmental performance and green image among its stakeholders. During adoption of sustainability concepts in traditional supply chain management, some hurdles can be anticipated. These hurdles are called barriers, and industries must equip themselves to remove them. The difficulties associated with removal of barriers are identification and analysis for selection significant barriers. In this chapter, the significant barriers for incorporating sustainability in supply chain of high volume manufacturing are consolidated from the literature and categorized into seven groups: people, strategic, environmental, economic, societal, regulatory, and functional. The widely used evaluation methods are interpretive structural modeling and DEMATEL for which the procedure and guidance to infer the results are detailed. The chapter is expected to support the practicing engineers involved in implementation of sustainable concepts in supply chain.

Sustainable Supply Chain Development

Sustainability has assumed increased importance in view of the international focus on pollution control and climate change. Specifically, the development of sustainable supply chain can help in important ways to reduce pollution and address environmental concerns. Energy efficiency forms an important aspect of this movement towards sustainable supply chain. Energy efficiency can be achieved through judicious energy management initiatives at the supply chain level. A metrics-based approach provides an effective mechanism to implement energy management programs in supply chain operation. The chapter explores the utility of energy balance sheet as a metric to implement such energy management programs. It further looks at the challenges and opportunities faced by supply chain partners in implementing energy management programs. It uses the case study of Firozabad glass industry to illustrate the implementation of energy management for developing sustainable supply chain.

Building a Sustainable Food Supply Chain and Managing Food Losses

With the unprecedented growth in the world's population, the supply of food has already become a major global challenge. The world food crisis highlights a large quantity of food going waste or lost due to many unsustainable practices in the food supply chain. This chapter provides a conceptual model to build a sustainable food supply chain while minimizing the food waste that occurs at different stages. By incorporating stakeholder management and other behavioral aspects while at the same time following a continuous improvement cycle, the model deviates from other techno-oriented or fragmented guidelines available on the subject. For the purpose of better understanding or providing practical applications, real-life case studies are also presented. Hence, the model provides useful guidelines for business organizations and other actors in the food supply chain to incorporate sustainability while minimizing environmental, social, and economic impacts of food losses/waste.

Strategic Barriers and Operational Risks in Sustainable Supply Chain Management in the Indian Context

Research on sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) has attracted increased attention in the recent years all over the world. Unlike an ordinary supply chain, sustainable supply chains confront two major hurdles in the planning as well as in the operational stage, namely barriers and risks. Barriers are usually associated with technical, economic, and marketing infeasibilities, whereas risks induce disruptions and uncertainties. These factors demotivate the organizations from adopting sustainable practices in supply chain operations. The chapter consolidates the significant barriers and risk factors influential in the current Indian business environment. The analysis is based on the expert survey conducted in the South Indian manufacturing sector. Furthermore, the above barriers are ranked utilizing the grey relational analysis method in an intuitionistic fuzzy setting. Finally, the effects of the risk factors induced by sustainable practices are also discussed to facilitate selection of proactive strategies for the success of sustainable business in India.

Multi-Criterion Decision-Making Analysis for Sustainable Bio-Fuel Supply Chain

Present estimates indicate India's bio-fuel demand as 0.5 billion gallons in 2012 which will grow to 6.8 billion gallons by 2022. While fossil fuel science and technology is well established, the scientific understanding and technological implications of biofuels are not clearly laid out. In recent years, a large number of assessments have been conducted to assess the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of biofuels. However, contradicting results were noted in the published articles. The current chapter attempts to understand the importance of triple bottom line (TBL) aspects for the life cycle sustainability analysis (LCSA) over the conventional life cycle analysis (LCA) of biofuels-based supply chain. Along with energy and environmental indicators, LCSA also evaluates the economic and social factors. Hence, a statistical assessment with multi-criterion decision-making (MCDM) analysis has been implemented to highlight and achieve coherence in conducting the sustainability analysis of biofuels supply chain.

Risk Mapping Analysis With Geographic Information Systems for Landslides Using Supply Chain

Among the various natural disasters, landslides are considered to be one of the serious geological hazards that are triggered due to intensive rainfall, earthquakes, deforestation, mining, floods, etc. Landslides result in devastating impacts causes thousands of deaths and injuries, damage to properties. The changing pattern of landslide hazard zones every year forces the need to safeguard people and properties in the respective areas. Weighted linear combination (WLC) is used to prepare the landslide hazard zonation map in the Nilgiris district of Tamil Nadu, India. Nine layers, namely slope, aspect, lineament density, rainfall, distance of roads, elevation, distance from rivers, landuse/landcover, geology, are used in overlay analysis. Supply chain facilities are widely used in the field of transportation of goods to the consumers with the reduction of transportation costs. The implementation of supply chain mechanism along with GIS in disaster management could help to save numerous lives during disaster events.

Collaboration for Sustainability

The road to sustainable supply chain (SSC) is passing from suppliers which are the critical elements of supply chain. It is very important to have supply chain collaboration (SCC) with major suppliers to maintain a long-term stable relationship with them. The aim of this chapter is to find the relationship between trust and SCC established with major suppliers. An empirical research is conducted to measure the relationship between trust and SCC with major suppliers. Positive relationships between trust and supply chain collaboration is hypothesized. It is empirically proved that there is a strong positive relation between two constructs. This research will provide theoretical and practical contributions to both academicians and practitioners working in supply chains.

Auditing for Evaluating the Degree of Agile Practices Implementation

The purpose of the study reported in the chapter is to conduct agile audit comprehensively to inculcate agile culture in the organizations. A survey was conducted among 25 automotive component manufacturing organizations located in Tamil Nadu, India. The audit system consists of 149 agile indices grouped among five clusters. The focus of agile audit was to examine whether an organization had adopted agile principles and to construe the phase of agile journey the organization had reached. The audit also specifically gauges whether an organization has really implemented agile principles and the relative position of an organizations compared with other organizations.

A Big Data Framework for Decision Making in Supply Chain

The advent of information and communication technologies (ICT) ushers a cost-effective prospect to take care of large volumes of complex data, commonly known as “big data” in the supply chain operational environment. Big data is being generated today by web applications, social media, intelligent machines, sensors, mobile phones, and other smart handheld devices. Big data is characterized in terms of the velocity, volume, and variety with which it produces along the supply chain. This is due to recent advances in telecommunication networks along with centralized and decentralized data storage systems, which are processed thanks to modern digital computational capabilities. There is a growing interest in the use of this large volume of data and advanced analytics for diverse types of business problems in supply chain management (SCM). Such decision-support software applications employ pure mathematical techniques, artificial intelligence techniques, and sometimes uses both techniques to perform analytical operations that undercover relationships and patterns within supply chain generated big data. This chapter proposes a framework for the utilization of big data in SCM decision making. The framework is based on the SCOR (supply chain operations reference) model, which is endorsed by Supply Chain Council (SCC). The proposed framework is influenced by the enterprise potential of augmented reality and virtual reality in supply chain applications, and it identifies key categories of big data analytics applications for the key businesses of SCOR model. Finally, the chapter highlights research issues to extract insight from big data sources for enterprise decision making.