Evaluation of Key Metrics for Performance Measurement of a Lean Deployment Effort

To meet customer’s needs for high-quality goods and avoiding risks of product-liability, global firms continually evaluate the performance of their supply chain for optimum design. Lean management is one of the key techniques businesses adopt in redesigning their processes. The technique is a vital strategy to increase productivity and effectiveness with respect to the movement of goods. Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) was utilized to evaluate the performance of work cell, shift, worker’s experience, and kaizen event participation level during a lean enterprise deployment effort at a multinational organization. The significance of the effects of these variables were assessed based on various lean supply chain factors such as First In First Out (FIFO), Setup Wheel System (SWS), Standard Operating Procedures (SOP), Clip System(CS), and Key Performances Indicators (KPI). The results support the criticality of metrics and their impact in implementing a lean manufacturing process in a global supply chain environment.

Negotiation Protocol Based on Budget Approach for Adaptive Manufacturing Scheduling

The research proposed concerns the development of a multi-agent scheduling approach able to support manufacturing systems in different dynamic conditions. The negotiation protocol defined budget approach is based on a financial asset that each part obtains when it is released into the manufacturing system for processing. The part spends the budget to perform the manufacturing operations by the workstations; the virtual market in which part agent and workstation agents coordinate the decentralized system. A fuzzy tool is proposed to assign the budget to each part based on the objectives pursued. A simulation environment based on Rockwell ARENA® platform has been developed in order to test the proposed approach. The simulations are used to compare the proposed approach with classical dynamical scheduling approaches proposed in literature. The results show how the proposed approach leads to better results, and it can be selective among the different priority of the parts.

Radio Frequency Identification in the Smart Supply Chain

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a relatively new technology that has emerged from the works of automated identification. RFID is based on the exchange of information between a device called a tag and a device called a reader after the reader queries the tag. The tags can be attached to specific items, boxes of these items, pallets of these boxes, or a combination of the previous, thus enabling the transmission of their contents. Once this information is detected and processed, it can be used as needed by the specific application. Among the different uses of RFID in the supply chain, this chapter focuses on those related to inventory control and the detection of counterfeited products.

Supply Chain Management and the Other Half

Supply Chain Management operations have traditionally been a gendered career. The role of a diverse workforce, particularly women, is reexamined from the perspective of maximizing the bottom-line and profit sharing in the logistics industry. The unique and problematic diversity issues that underlie both practices and policy in the industry are discussed. These include the more obvious inequities in salaries, to the more insidious and often invisible assumptions that may underlie policy. The net result is detrimental for both business and the basic ethical imperative of equity. The narrative places the discussion of logistics business operations and decision-making in the context of the current research on gender differences, and examines possible ways to create more equitable enterprises, while maintaining and improving the bottom-line.

Identifying the Determinants of Customer Retention in a Developing Country Context

This chapter investigates how image, perceived service quality, and satisfaction determine customer retention in the retail banking industry in Malaysia. Data was obtained using a self-administered survey involving a convenience sample of 134 retail banking customers in Malaysia. The results show that image is both directly and indirectly related to retention through satisfaction, while perceived service quality is indirectly related to retention through satisfaction. The chapter concludes that satisfaction is not the sole determinant of retention in retail banking. Some managerial implications of this research find that the interrelationships between the determinants (image, quality, and satisfaction) allow bank managers to better understand the dynamics of customer retention formation.

Engineer-to-Order

General Engineer-to-Order (ETO) design of product capacity projects among many others, includes design for large electric machine, huge centrifugal pumps, diesel/natural fuel power plant engines, steam turbine, boiler, ship power, et cetera. ETO is basically a product development process, which starts with a product specification and finishes with an engineering design as its deliverable. It rarely includes manufacturing processes. The main drawback is with issues concerning its long lead-time. Research shows that an excessive lead-time is more often than not caused directly or indirectly by factors related to the design phase. This chapter thus, endeavours to introduce a best practice concurrent approach for reducing the lead-time at an engineer-to-order product design/development stage by seeking to integrate business information technology systems in the design and operational phases. It also introduces a new concurrent best practice approach by way of seeking to integrate other related business systems, e.g., (Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)) such as (Enterprise Service Architecture (ESA) application processes with Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)) as a platform for applications and processes for effective communication. Furthermore, the chapter presents and discusses a model of classical concurrent engineering (CE) ETO operational process. ETO key elements, ETO success factors, and series of state of the art ETO classical ERP engineering design tools, as well as the “best practice” product life cycle are all discussed.

Coopetition in Supply Chains

Supply chain management has been increasingly seen as a strategic tool to improve the competitiveness of companies. Coopetition, the mingling of competitive and cooperative relationships, has been utilised by New Zealand companies in the horticulture industry to help break into and develop new markets. Using a case study various elements of the supply chain are examined from both strategic and operational perspectives for this group of companies and their customers and suppliers. The connections to the customer are shown to be enhanced through careful implementation, as the group of companies act to adjust their entire supply chains to make them increasingly customer-orientated. Significant benefits that are shown to accrue include improved information flow, increased ability to supply, and flexibility to meet customer requirements.

Supplier-Oriented Purchasing Behaviors in Projects

This chapter introduces project manager’s perceptions of the importance of developing relationships with preferred suppliers as this has the potential to impact elements of cost, planning, time management, quality management, technical expertise, and product availability. This study identified key characteristics and attributes of supplier-oriented purchasing behaviors in project-oriented environments. The review of recent literature indicated that very little research exists that examines project procurement experts’ perceptions of key aspects of supplier-oriented purchasing behavior. This research utilized a two round, modified Delphi methodology to capture the perceptions of 19 experienced project management procurement specialists. Results showed that the most strongly valued attributes could be clustered under the headings of quality, communications, attentiveness, and professionalism. Even though projects were typically characterized as short term endeavors, the characteristics found most important to project procurement managers were similar to those previously reported by procurement professionals in long-term functional environments.

Towards Patient-Driven Agile Supply Chains in Healthcare

Healthcare organizations in many countries are compelled to pursue drastic supply cost reductions, while continuing to improve patient health outcomes, as they must meet ever increasing economic and performance pressures brought on by changes in national health policies. As demonstrated in many other industries, these improvements require more integrated Supply Chain Management (SCM) practices, processes, and systems. The author develops a strategic framework for Customer-Oriented or Patient-Driven SCM, integrating the evolving economics of the healthcare industry and the emerging dynamics of global supply chains. The chapter focuses on modern SCM approaches such as agile and lean supply chains, in order to efficiently realign hospitals and their Material Management Systems (MMS) on patient health outcomes.

Inventory Cost Share for Supply Chain Coordination by Means of Contracts

This chapter highlights the importance of contracts for coordination between companies in a supply chain. It considers a dyadic situation, with a supplier and a retailer. Coordination is achieved by two types of decisions: economic (concerning prices established and stated over a contract), and physical exchange of products (concerning the inventory that is going to be held by the retailer). First one contract with a simple pricing scheme is considered, and then two contracts with inventory holding cost shared among the companies of the supply chain. The former is presented to explain the general situation and the two last ones to explain different schemes of inventory cost share. A numerical example is also shown. The objective is to illustrate that a supply chain may be efficiently coordinated if the companies establish contracts with inventory holding cost share.