The Role of Institutional Pressures on Green Supply Chain Practices in Building the Organizational Image

Supply chain management has been used by businesses and the companies have attributed their success to effective supply chain management. But in case of healthcare sector, supply chain management is not that prominent since it deals with finished products. Supply Chain Management is a concept, strategy and approach that is proving its worth in hospital management all over the world. The pressures on hospital supply chains are changing. In response to these pressures some hospitals have initiated green supply chain management (GSCM) practices that provide tremendous opportunities to improve supply chain performance. This paper tries to provide empirical results in order to examine the impact of GSCM practices in building the positive image of the Indian hospitals incorporating two moderating variables namely regulatory and competition. In order to gain unique insights of current levels of awareness/adoption of GSCM and the potential impact GSCM could have in building organizational image, a survey was conducted among 53 hospitals from NCR (National Capital Region) India. Moderated hierarchical regression analysis has been used to arrive at the following results: (1) Indian hospitals have experienced increasing environmental pressure to implement GSCM practices; (2) The implementation of GSCM practices have helped in building positive organizational image (3) The existence of competitive and regulatory pressures influence hospitals to implement green supply chain practices that eventually help in building positive organizational image especially when these pressures cause adoption of green purchasing and green hospital services even though organizational image is most influenced by Internal environment management; (4) Hospitals implement green transportation policies under regulatory and competitive pressures. Implications for operations strategists from these relationships are also discussed.

Strategic Development of Responsible Warehousing with Safety Partnership

Occupational safety and health (OSH) issues have become a major concern to many corporations in Malaysia since the enactment of the Occupational Safety and Health Act 1994. While safety management system has been researched, only limited literatures have given attention to warehousing. The development of effective partnerships between customers and vendors to identify opportunities for enhancing safety management system. Employee safety behaviour in the workplace is crucial in approaching towards safety compliance and safety performance indicators. The main objective was to test the safety behaviour of the workers. Data were collected throughout the warehousing processes of a multinational electronics manufacturer in Malaysia. A questionnaire has been filled-up by the warehousing employees. This study proposes the theory of planned behaviour were to explain the linkage between customer - vendor partnership and safety behaviour. Respondents were questioned partnership with its customers to systematically improve safety behaviour. Usually most of the occupational accident or disease took place in the material handling operations and activities with cargo interface. The findings of this study show that customer-vendor partnership has a significant and positive relationship on safety behaviour. This approach to be examined for improved safety ownership and the possibility that enhancements would become an essential part of the vendor's processes, systems, and culture. This customer-vendor partnership approach will develop safety improvements for next heights of success. SPSS was applied for processing the data. It was found that information dissemination and collaboration with the client are important. Employees should participate in the safety program as required by the clients so as to obtain the merits of high performance workforce.

Cold Chain Logistics in India

Cold Chain refers to the transportation of temperature sensitive products like perishable goods from the point of origin to point of consumption in the food supply chain, which keeps it fresh and edible for a much longer period than in normal conditions. Cold Chain helps in transporting seasonal products and also making it available throughout the year. Two main parts of cold chain are transportation and storage systems. The key Indian industries where cold chain logistics play very important role are fruits and vegetables, milk and milk products (ice cream), Poultry and processed meat, marine products, pharmaceutical (mainly vaccines) and chemicals. An efficient cold chain industry ensures availability of food products as well as prevents spoilage of medicines. Country like India, where infrastructure is one of the major challenges, cold chain plays a critical role. Analysis for this study shows that cold supply chain network does not differ significantly from products to products at least in Indian scenario. Some of the challenges to the growth of sector in India are high energy cost, power deficit, rising real estate cost, lack of logistical support and uneven distribution of capacity. All these challenges bring down the operating margin of a company and makes it not so attractive business sector. But during last couple of years there is a positive environment being created for this sector in India. The growth in organized retail, growing interest in horticultural crops, demand for cold chain logistics from Pharmaceutical industry and various initiatives by government are some of the reasons why there is a renewed interest in this sector especially by private sector players. This study, which is focused on Indian cold chain logistics, analyzes the industry on PEST (Political, Economy, Social and Technology) model and presents top 3 factors on each of these 4 parameters.

A New Approach to Supply Chain Performance Measurement

Existing research work has established that many of today's manufacturing organizations have failed to develop a comprehensive supply chain performance measures. In this chapter, the authors intend to empirically assess the effects of supplier buyer relations and human metrics on supply chain performance in the context of Indian manufacturing organizations. After rigorous literature review, total 18 variables have been identified which are later on reduced in number by factor analysis. As a pilot study, primary data is collected from 100 manufacturing organizations by means of a questionnaire and a scale is developed. On a sample size of 100, the proposed hypotheses are tested by applying two-tailed tests. t-test and factor analysis resulted in 5 factors, 2 related to supplier-buyer relations and 3 related to human metrics. The overall reliability of the scale comes out to be 0.697. The research work provides a new approach to the manufacturing organizations to understand the factors affecting supply chain performance. The present study is limited to Indian manufacturing organizations.

Pure Curd Supply Chain

The modern food safety management comprises of ISO 22000:2005. It has modified the hazard analysis critical control point (HACCP) by embedding food safety management. It has created a standardized management system. The objective of current chapter is to endow a systematic approach for the ground level implementation of ISO 22000 in Indian pure curd supply chain management. The chapter is prepared utilizing combination of qualitative research and case study method. A case of Milsh Dairy Ltd. (MDL, organisation's name is disguised) was discussed to shed light on ISO 22000 features, comparative analysis between HACCP and ISO 22000. The research is limited to professional pure curd manufacturing sector. Authors have adopted the research methodology which can be applied to other sectors also.

Organizational Performance through Dairy Supply Chain Management Practices

Organizational implementing supply chain management (SCM) has obtained improved performance. Cost savings, increased revenues and the reduction of defects in products are some of the main advantages of introducing dairy supply chain management. These are also mentioned as long-term goals of the supply chain. Business profitability is closely associated with market and business shares. Based on the long-term goals of the SCM, the organizational performance measures are identified as financial and market performance and customer satisfaction. In the context of SCM, the financial and market performance factor is operational zed in terms of market share, return of total assets, annuals sales growth (Tan et al, 1999).The research paper attempts to find out the relationship between the dairy supply chain management (DSCM) practices and organizational performance. Various practices of DSCM through extensive literature review is taken into account i.e. Information and Communication Technology Practices, Supplier Relationship Practices, Supply Chain Manufacturing Practices, Inventory management system, Warehousing Management System, Transportation Management System, Customer Relationship Management for establishing the relationship with organizational performance. The aim of this study is to recommend these findings to companies which are still at the infancy stage when it comes to dairy supply chain management and integration with customers and suppliers.

Supply Chain Management

Majority of research conducted in Supply Chain Management worldwide relates to areas of supply chain like, definitions, its frameworks and strategies, supply chain design, achievement of competitive advantage through its successful implementation etc. But, vast part of this research is limited to only large scale enterprises and very limited research is done in supply chain related to SMEs sector. Also, the strategies and frameworks of SCM that are developed for these large enterprises are found to be not suitable and implementable in small scale enterprises. This lack of research with special focus on SCM is more pertinent to Indian SMEs and its much more less in small enterprises belonging to manufacturing sector. It is found that most of the strategies of SCM applicable and implementable in large enterprises are either difficult to implement or SMEs do not view those strategies seriously due to lack of understanding, implementation feasibility and awareness. Thus, there are many differences in the way the SCM is viewed and understood in SMEs when compared to that of large enterprises. This paper focuses on these differences of SCM with reference to challenges and difficulties in implementations when compared with large enterprises with the help of literature review. It is found that there exists a huge gap in understanding, appreciating and utilizing the practices of SCM in SME sector. The research is limited only to the secondary data available in published national / international journals. It is identified that SCM can be a potential tool for competitive advantage, cost minimization and optimal decision-making, risk-sharing in SMEs also. The paper identified the gaps, challenges and opportunities for SMEs in the implementation of SCM.

System Dynamics Simulation of a Supply Chain Intelligence Model

Supply chains today are, primarily, measured by Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as order-fulfillment, availability to the consumer (percent in-stock) and cost reduction, as well as financial KPIs such as return on investment (ROI), return on brand equity and inventory. These KPIs measure the performance of supply chain as a whole. A supply chain is a network of nodes. The performances of individual nodes are measured with KPIs such as production rate, shipment rate, inventory and the like. These metrics may indicate the performance but may not indicate the cause of such performance. For example, a node whose production rate is below the desired level may be because of poor supply of inputs of production by its supplier node.Thus mere identification of KPIs and their evaluation will not enable to identify the root cause of a problem in a supply chain. Therefore, we need a business intelligence framework that will satisfy the objectives, namely, identification of outcome of each node of the supply chain and its cause. The existing Supply Chain Intelligence (SCI) frameworks aims at identifying metrics that reflect the performance of individual nodes and the total supply chain, but fail to identify the cause of such outcomes. It implies that the linkages or association between the KPIs of individual nodes are required to be identified and defined. In this paper, contingency and systems approach has been used to identify the dimensions of the firm, its internal environment, the complement and the external environment. A system dynamics based approach has been used to identify the causality and resulting behavior of the supply chain. The paper proposes a SCI framework and a System dynamics Model that help in identifying the reasons for supply chin performance and lead to the actions required to be taken for improvement in performance of the supply chain.

Innovative Solutions for Implementing Global Supply Chains in Emerging Markets

In a supply chain network, facilities are the primary components where a product is manufactured or stored. During the phase of design of a supply chain network, a company decides how to configure the supply chain over the next several years. Key driver of supply chain performance in terms of responsiveness and efficiency will be taken into consideration in the decision process and the decisions include the role assigned to each facility, its capacity to perform the assigned role, the number and location of the facilities. Since supply chain design decisions pertaining to facilities are typically made for the long term and are very expensive to alter on short notice, the decisions must take into account uncertainty in anticipated market conditions over the next few years. Decisions regarding facilities are therefore a crucial part of supply chain design. This chapter explains the practical application of theories, concepts and frameworks in the area of Supply Chain Design, Risk Mitigation and Social Networks. The practical application is based on a case study of ABC, one of the world's leading agribusiness companies with global operations that made a successful foray in emerging markets facilitated by sound decisions pertaining to the design of its global supply chain network. Certain names and other identifying information were disguised to protect confidentiality.

Performance Measurement

The purpose of this chapter is to study what supply chain managers of a retail supply chain measure. In other words aim here to identify the key indicators for measuring retail supply chain performance. A qualitative approach is adopted. Published literature from refereed journals on supply chain performance measurement has been considered. Besides the need for organizations to adopt a holistic approach, firms remain focused on traditional financial measures (gross profit margin, Interest coverage, and debt and equity ratios). The chapter identifies key indicators for performance measurement and classifies them into four major categories: transport optimization, information technology optimization, inventory optimization and resource optimization. These key indicators are arranged precisely for retail industry. From a supply chain perspective, the non financial measures such as on-time delivery, training of employees, warehouse layout, etc. are also important aspects of measuring supply chain performance. Further research can be carried out to validate the relevance and applicability of identified indicators. The study can be further conducted to measure the interrelationships between the KPIs and their impact on financial performance of the firm. In this chapter the author attempts to identify the performance indicators specifically for retail supply chain. The identified measures are further categorized based on its operations.