Extending social responsibility to small and medium-sized suppliers in supply chains: A fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis

Buying firms’ sales and reputation will be greatly damaged by any non-responsible behaviors on the part of suppliers, especially when those suppliers, like small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), have restricted resources and capabilities. To eradicate these risks, a growing number of buying firms have introduced socially responsible supplier development (SRSD). SRSD, including monitoring and evaluating suppliers, can provide them with incentives and assistance. Based on configuration theory and contingency theory, fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) is adopted in this study to examine how SRSD practices adopted by buying firms, supply chain partnership, and market turbulence affect the corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance of their SME suppliers. We find that, as core factors, supplier monitoring, supplier assistance, and supply chain partnership can work together with peripheral conditions to achieve superior CSR performance. In addition, even at different levels of market turbulence, superior CSR performance can be realized through different causal configurations.     

新型冠状病毒疫情对我国电力行业的影响分析

全球经验表明,疫情会对经济社会产生负面影响。此次中国武汉市新型冠状病毒疫情爆发的时间节点、波及的领域范围,以及为应对疫情釆取的相关部署安排,既考验着电力行业保障电力安全可靠供应的能力,也会直接或间接通过电力供求形势变化影响电力企业的生产运行。结合疫情因素和近年来中国经济运行中电力供求变化特点,本文认为疫情将会降低工业和商业用电负荷,医疗机构新增用电和居民生活用电将会显著增长,但鉴于工商业用电比重较高的事实,全社会用电量同期同比增速将明显放缓。考虑到近年来用电增速放缓的经验事实,此次疫情或将放大电力行业积聚的矛盾和困难,因此为发挥市场在电力资源配置中的决定性作用而加快推进电力体制改革和全国统一电力市场建设愈发重要与迫切。     

Do Intermittent Renewables Threaten the Electricity Supply Security?

Around the globe, intermittent renewable energies in the form of wind and solar power are on the rise. Their subsidization can be seen as a market intervention, which may deter optimal investment. Thus, this study tests the effect of renewable energies on investment in conventional electricity generation technologies. We estimate a dynamic investment model for 14 European economies for the period 2004–2016 and find a non-negligible negative impact of intermittent renewables on investment in peak-load capacity (mainly gas), while base-load (particularly coal) plants are unaffected. However, the production flexibility of gas-fired plants represents a particularly vital function to balance the supply intermittency of wind and solar. Thus, dispatchable conventional power plants are still necessary to back the system under scarcity events, such as unfavorable weather conditions during high electricity demand. Policymakers should be aware of the adverse effects of RES on investment in peak-load plants and may consider a redesign of the current system, for example by introducing capacity markets.     

Sustainability impact assessment for local energy supplies' development – The case of the alpine area of Lake Como,Italy

The development of distributed energy systems has important environmental, social and economic implications. Local decision-making processes must be guided by a careful evaluation of the sustainability of production chains and alternative choices. The aim of this study is to explore if and how an integrated assessment can quantify the extent to which bioenergy supply chain development contributes to rural development and energy policy objectives. We applied a Sustainability Impact Assessment (SIA) for local bioenergy development in the alpine area of Lake Como (Italy). We modeled the local bioenergy chain in 2008 and eleven scenarios considering different biomass utilizations, mechanization levels, combustion technologies, and subsidies schemes at 2020. We calculated economic, social and environmental indicators. We interpret and discuss the scenario analysis in order to support the bioenergy planning under the light of its implications for the different policy aims and concerns.     

Heavy rare earths,permanent magnets,and renewable energies: An imminent crisis

This article sounds the alarm that a significant build-out of efficient lighting and renewable energy technologies may be endangered by shortages of rare earths and rare earth permanent magnets. At the moment, China is the predominant supplier of both and its recent rare earth industrial policies combined with its own growing demand for rare earths have caused widespread concern. To diversify supplies, new mining—outside of China—is needed. But what many observers of the “rare earth problem” overlook is that China also dominates in (1) the processing of rare earths, particularly the less abundant heavy rare earths, and (2) the supply chains for permanent magnets. Heavy rare earths and permanent magnets are critical for many renewable energy technologies, and it will require decades to develop new non-Chinese deposits, processing capacity, and supply chains. This article clarifies several misconceptions, evaluates frequently proposed solutions, and urges policy makers outside of China to undertake measures to avert a crisis, such as greater support for research and development and for the cultivation of intellectual capital.     

A bi-objective integrated procurement,production, and distribution problem of a multi-echelon supply chain network design: A new tuned MOEA

Efficient management of supply chain (SC) requires systematic considerations of miscellaneous issues in its comprehensive version. In this paper, a multi-periodic structure is developed for a supply chain network design (SCND) involving suppliers, factories, distribution centers (DCs), and retailers. The nature of the logistic decisions is tactical that encompasses procurement of raw materials from suppliers, production of finished product at factories, distribution of finished product to retailers via DCs, and the storage of raw materials and end product at factories and DCs. Besides, to make the structure more comprehensive, a flow-shop scheduling model in manufacturing part of the SC is integrated in order to obtain optimal delivery time of the product that consists of the makespan and the ship time of the product to DCs via factories. Moreover, to make the model more realistic, shortage in the form of backorder can occur in each period. The two objectives are minimizing the total SC costs as well as minimizing the average tardiness of product to DCs. The obtained model is a bi-objective mixed-integer non-linear programming (MINLP) model that is shown to belong to NP-Hard class of the optimization problems. Thus, a novel algorithm, called multi-objective biogeography based optimization (MOBBO) with tuned parameters is presented to find a near-optimum solution. As there is no benchmark available in the literature, the parameter-tuned multi-objective simulated annealing algorithm (MOSA) and the popular non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) are developed to validate the results obtained and to evaluate the performance of MOBBO using randomly generated test instances.     

城市轨道交通供电系统新技术研究

供电系统是轨道交通重要的子系统,城市轨道交通对供电系统要求较高。为提高城市轨道交通供电系统的技术水平和运行质量,对智能传感器、大数据、故障预测与健康管理等城市轨道交通供电系统新技术进行了研究。     

亲子乐园空调送风方式的数值模拟研究

大型综合室内亲子乐园属于高大空间,设有游乐设施和游戏的特殊性使得对空间的舒适性要求一致,但是送风气流遇阻严重,室内存在较多气流死角,影响室内空气质量和儿童健康。因此其空调设计不仅需要考虑温度、风速的空间均匀度,还要考虑各点的空气龄和PMV-PPD指标。以天津某亲子乐园为研究对象,利用scSTREAM软件对适用于该房间的辐射供冷加新风、置换通风、混合通风三种空调方式的送风效果进行数值模拟分析,从流场的均匀性、人员的热舒适性等方面对模拟结果进行探讨,研究结果表明辐射供冷加新风方式的空间均匀性和PMV指标最佳,混合通风方式的空气龄最小。     

Optimal configuration of cluster supply chains with augmented Lagrange coordination

Enterprises in an industrial cluster could dynamically alliance in the form of cluster supply chains to share inner-cluster resources and services, and respond to the ever-fluctuating customer demands in a cost-effective way. However, an effective and feasible method enabling such dynamic cluster supply chain configuration (CSCC) lags behind practice due to the conflict of interests. Researchers are designing All-in-One theoretic models to optimize CSCC with the assumed decision details of all enterprises, while in fact clustered enterprises are seeking effective decentralized decision mechanisms which protect their decision autonomy in the frequently re-configured CSC. A newly emerged multi-disciplinary optimization method, Augmented Lagrangian Coordination (ALC), which supports the open-structure collaboration with strict optimization convergence, is thoroughly investigated in this paper and applied to solve the conflict. Through a complete analysis of CSC’s configuration policies in typical stages, a generic CSCC model is proposed and then partitioned into an ALC-based decentralized decision model by the typical decision autonomy distribution in clusters. Clustered enterprises collaborate vertically and laterally along the ALC model through multi-dimensional couplings to achieve the overall consistency and optimality. Results have proved the effectiveness of ALC for CSCC problem. A set of sensitivity analysis is also conducted to find out the condition in which an order has to be fulfilled in a CSC and the most appropriate configuration.     

Theoretical framework for formulating MIP scheduling models with multiple and non-uniform discrete-time grids

We present a framework for the formulation of MIP scheduling models based on multiple and nonuniform discrete time grids. In a previous work we showed that it is possible to use different (possibly non-uniform) time grids for each task, unit, and material. Here, we generalize these ideas to account for general resources, and a range of processing characteristics such as limited intermediate storage and changeovers. Each resource has its own grid based on resource consumption and availability allowing resource constraints to be modeled more accurately without increasing the number of binary variables. We develop algorithms to define the unit-, task-, material-, and resource-specific grids directly from problem data. Importantly, we prove that the multi-grid formulation is able to find a schedule with the same optimal objective as the discrete-time single-grid model with an arbitrarily fine grid. The proposed framework leads to the formulation of models with reduced number of binary variables and constraints, which are able to find good solutions faster than existing models.