The impact of the customer order decoupling point on type and level of supply chain integration

Literature suggests that more supply chain (SC) integration increases of SC performance. However, recent research shows that contextual factors affect the effectiveness of SC integration efforts. Specifically, the location of the customer order decoupling point (CODP) might be such a factor, but there is limited empirical evidence. This study explores the impact of the location of the CODP on SC integration. It empirically investigates upstream, internal and downstream SC integration efforts in twelve metal parts producing Dutch companies to offer a comprehensive view of the effects of the location of the CODP on SC integration. Our results show a clear relationship between SC integration and the location of the CODP. Specifically, make-to-order (MTO), assemble-to-order (ATO) and make-to-stock (MTS) companies show relatively high levels in upstream, internal and downstream SC integration, respectively. Moreover, MTO companies mainly share forecast information and engage in joint R&D with their suppliers, ATO companies focus on internal SC integration using information systems and planning, while MTS companies interact with their customers intensively to exchange forecast information. Our study adds to the insight on the application of SC integration in different situations and offers initial evidence for the effects of the location of the CODP on SC integration.     

Traceability as a means to investigate supply chain sustainability: the real case of a leather shoe supply chain

In recent years, the growing attention to environmental challenges has shown that these issues are becoming of more and more interest to both research and industry. Companies are expected to ensure their products are fully traceable and more sustainable, which requires the involvement of all of the actors in the production network. According to this aim, this study proposes a structured approach that uses the traditional traceability concept as a means to identify the main information needed to assess environmental impacts along the whole supply chain (SC). The proposed approach is composed of four main steps: (i) SC modelling to identify all stakeholders and their inter-relations, (ii) data sharing to collect all relevant data, (iii) data elaboration to calculate performance at different levels of detail and (iv) result interpretation to optimise the SC. The distributed implementation of the approach at different SC steps represents a useful means to practically realise a sustainable SC management. A case study involving a leather shoe SC is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach in identifying criticalities, supporting the selection of the most appropriate suppliers and correctly setting a management strategy towards the optimisation of internal and external traceability and environmental sustainability performances.     

Information management strategies and supply chain performance under demand disruptions

The operations management literature presents inadequate comprehensive understanding on information management strategies of mitigating supply chain disruption risks. By using control theory modelling and simulation, this study compares the disruption mitigation effects of three information management strategies. From the aspect of stability, the existing stability boundaries are revised by a new method in a two-echelon case. It shows that supply chains (SC) with popular information management strategies are not evidently more stable than traditional ones. From the aspect of disruption recovery time, an innovative two-echelon swiftest response problem under these information management strategies is formulated and solved. Results show that a collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment (CPFR) SC with complete SC information performs the best. However, in a later operational risk mitigation test, an information sharing (IS) SC with partial information has the smallest bullwhip effect. From the aspect of demand amplification and frequency response, an innovative frequency–response plot of order amplification is proposed in a time-continuous SC with moving average forecasts. It implies the best frequency response for concurrently mitigating both operational and disruption risks coming from a CPFR SC. But for a certain SC structure there is still a balance between mitigating bullwhip effect and quick response. Moreover, it also implies that anti-bullwhip should exist in a certain condition, as realised in our numerical experiments.     

A mathematical programming approach to supply chain models with fuzzy parameters

Supply chain (SC) models play an important role in supply chain management (SCM) for reducing costs and finding better ways to create and deliver value to customers. An approach to deriving the membership function of the fuzzy minimum total cost of the multi-product, multi-echelon, and multi-period SC model with fuzzy parameters is proposed in this article. On the basis of α-cut representation and the extension principle, a pair of mathematical programs are formulated to calculate the lower and upper bounds of the fuzzy minimum total cost at possibility level α. The membership function of the fuzzy minimum total cost is constructed by enumerating different values of α. To demonstrate the validity of the proposed procedure, a four-echelon five-period SC model with fuzzy parameters is solved successfully. Since the objective value is expressed by membership functions rather than by crisp values, they completely conserve the fuzziness of input information when some of the SC data are ambiguous. Thus the proposed approach can represent SCs with fuzzy parameters more accurately, and more information is provided for designing SCs in real-world applications.     

Effects of information transparency and cooperation on supply chain performance: a simulation study

This research explores the effect of information transparency and cooperation among the front nodes of supply chains. Although published works in the supply chain (SC) domain underline the need for information transparency and cooperation for competitiveness of firms, the majority among these are conceptual or empirical. As such, the domain requires fresh effort towards analytical and simulation based research for validation. In the present work, simulation is used as the research methodology. The simulation platform is developed in ARENA®, which is based on simulation language SIMAN. It has the capability to model multi-product, multi-echelon supply chains. Cooperation is depicted in the form of demand pooling and accelerated delivery of consignments from cooperating SC nodes, when stock-out contingency occurs at a particular node. The modelling also explores the effects of full, partial and zero level of information transparency on the SC performance. The simulation results suggest that these initiatives improve SC service time performance. It is also observed that more advantages from cooperation and information transparency are obtainable when the SC is leaner. The studies also highlight that such SC initiative that motivates local optimisation at the nodes is counter-productive to SC wide performance.     

Impact evaluation of supply chain initiatives: a system simulation methodology

To maintain enterprise competitiveness, enterprises require appropriate initiatives to efficiently manage the product, information and cash flows among different supply chain (SC) partners. Co-operation, postponement, vendor managed inventory, transhipment, logistic consolidation etc., are some of the typical initiatives for performance improvement in SC. In an industrial scenario, two or more of these SC initiatives are undertaken simultaneously for superior enterprise performance on multiple performance dimensions. These factors render the analytical SC models inapt and simulation modelling becomes a suitable methodology to study SC performance that can accommodate the complexities present. The impact studies of these initiatives are difficult because these require exploitation of flexible and dynamic modelling elements which are analytically complex and mathematically intractable. We address these issues in the present research by developing a simulation platform to undertake studies with an industrial SC scenario. The challenges to explore SC performance under multiple initiatives are the major motivations for the present research. The novelty of this research lies in the development of a multi-product, multi-echelon SC simulation platform for realistic and industrial SC scenario encompassing the capability to accommodate multiple SC initiatives simultaneously. It is based on the building block approach using Arena®. We undertake SC performance studies under the application of several important SC initiatives. The results are encouraging and they underline interesting research areas to explore further.     

Blockchain-oriented dynamic modelling of smart contract design and execution in the supply chain

Recently, the applications of Blockchain technology have begun to revolutionise different aspects of supply chain (SC) management. Among others, Blockchain is a platform to execute the smart contracts in the SC as transactions. We develop and test a new model for smart contract design in the SC with multiple logistics service providers and show that this problem can be presented as a multi-processor flexible flow shop scheduling. A distinctive feature of our approach is that the execution of physical operations is modelled inside the start and completion of cyber information services. We name this modelling concept ‘virtual operation’. The constructed model and the developed experimental environment constitute an event-driven dynamic approach to task and service composition when designing the smart contract. Our approach is also of value when considering the contract execution stage. The use of state control variables in our model allows for operations status updates in the Blockchain that in turn, feeds automated information feedbacks, disruption detection and control of contract execution. The latter launches the re-scheduling procedure, comprehensively combining planning and adaptation decisions within a unified methodological framework of dynamic control theory. The modelling complex developed can be used to design and control smart contracts in the SC.     

Supply chain relationship quality,the competitive environment and performance

In today's competitive environment, it is supply chains (SC) rather than companies that compete. Empirical research in the area of SC relationships have primarily sought to explain the nature of relationship processes rather than their effect on performance. However, the impact of SC relationship quality on SC performance has received less attention in the literature. Furthermore, the nature of the competitive environment can vary greatly across different supply chains. As such it is appropriate to consider whether or not the effect of SC relationship quality on SC performance is monotonic across different competitive environments. Accordingly, this paper investigates if SC relationship quality has an impact on SC performance quality and whether or not the competitive environment moderates this relationship.     

Procurement decisions and information sharing under multi-tier disruption risk in a supply chain

We consider a manufacturer's procurement decision in a three-tier supply chain (SC) under disruption risk. The manufacturer sources components from a single first-tier supplier (FT). The FT, in turn, sources raw materials from a single second-tier supplier (ST). Suppliers in both tiers are unreliable, i.e. prone to disruption risk. Increasing SC visibility through information sharing is a potential disruption management strategy for the manufacturer. While the manufacturer can obtain disruption risk information for the FT, disruption risk information for the ST is not easily accessible to the manufacturer except through the FT, who may not be willing to share ST information. We study different mechanisms under which the manufacturer can obtain ST information, and its impact on manufacturer's and FT's decisions and potential profits. We show that information sharing makes the manufacturer's procurement decisions more conservative, i.e. carrying more inventories, but the FT's procurement decision is contingent on the ST's reliability; more proactive (conservative) when ST is unreliable (reliable), i.e. carrying less (more) inventories. We demonstrate that there are two ways to induce the FT to share its information, and numerically show that their effectiveness is contingent on multiple factors, including FT and ST reliabilities and information sharing costs.     

基于缩短供应链多阶响应周期的节点间信息处理研究

从处理供应链节点间信息的角度，提出了解决缩短供应链多阶响应周期，降低总周期成本的一种有效方法，并对执行供应链节点间信息处理的方法和步骤进行了研究；最后通过节点企业与其供应商之间的信息分析和处理的原模型及改进模型来说明运用这种方法能解决的问题和可能取得的效果。     

The impact of digital technology and Industry 4.0 on the ripple effect and supply chain risk analytics

The impact of digitalisation and Industry 4.0 on the ripple effect and disruption risk control analytics in the supply chain (SC) is studied. The research framework combines the results from two isolated areas, i.e. the impact of digitalisation on SC management (SCM) and the impact of SCM on the ripple effect control. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that connects business, information, engineering and analytics perspectives on digitalisation and SC risks. This paper does not pretend to be encyclopedic, but rather analyses recent literature and case-studies seeking to bring the discussion further with the help of a conceptual framework for researching the relationships between digitalisation and SC disruptions risks. In addition, it emerges with an SC risk analytics framework. It analyses perspectives and future transformations that can be expected in transition towards cyber-physical SCs. With these two frameworks, this study contributes to the literature by answering the questions of (1) what relations exist between big data analytics, Industry 4.0, additive manufacturing, advanced trace & tracking systems and SC disruption risks; (2) how digitalisation can contribute to enhancing ripple effect control; and (3) what digital technology-based extensions can trigger the developments towards SC risk analytics.     

Agile supply chain strategy and supply chain performance: complementary roles of supply chain practices and information systems capability for agility

The paper examines the mediating effect of supply chain (SC) practices on the relationship between agile supply chain (ASC) strategy and SC performance. It further examines the moderating effect of information systems (IS) capability for agility on this mediated relationship. Using the theoretical lenses of complementarity and the information processing view of the supply chain, we hypothesise that strategic supplier partnership, customer relationship, postponement and lean practices, mediate the relationship between ASC strategy and SC performance. We further hypothesise that IS capability for agility moderates each of these mediated relationships. We empirically test the hypotheses using survey data from members of senior and executive management in the logistics/supply chain functions of 205 firms. The paper contributes to the literature on ASCs by theoretically explaining and empirically demonstrating how SC practices and IS capability for agility act together to effect a positive relationship between ASC strategy and supply chain performance.     

An Ambipolar Superconducting Field‐Effect Transistor Operating above Liquid Helium Temperature

Superconducting (SC) devices are attracting renewed attention as the demands for quantum‐information processing, meteorology, and sensing become advanced. The SC field‐effect transistor (FET) is one of the elements that can control the SC state, but its variety is still limited. Superconductors at the strong‐coupling limit tend to require a higher carrier density when the critical temperature (T_C) becomes higher. Therefore, field‐effect control of superconductivity by a solid gate dielectric has been limited only to low temperatures. However, recent efforts have resulted in achieving n‐type and p‐type SC FETs based on organic superconductors whose T_C exceed liquid He temperature (4.2 K). Here, a novel “ambipolar” SC FET operating at normally OFF mode with T_C of around 6 K is reported. Although this is the second example of an SC FET with such an operation mode, the operation temperature exceeds that of the first example, or magic‐angle twisted‐bilayer graphene that operates at around 1 K. Because the superconductivity in this SC FET is of unconventional type, the performance of the present device will contribute not only to fabricating SC circuits, but also to elucidating phase transitions of strongly correlated electron systems.     

Injuries and Safe Communities Accreditation: Is there a link?

Safe Communities (SC) is a global movement that brings together community stakeholders to collaboratively address injury concerns. SC accreditation is a formal process through which communities are recognized for strengthening local injury prevention capacity. Six million Americans live in 25 SC sites, but no research has been done to understand the model’s potential impact on this population. This study explored the temporal relationship between SC accreditation and injury trends in three SC sites from the state of Illinois—Arlington Heights, Itasca, and New Lenox. Hospitalization data, including patient demographics, exposure information, injury outcomes, and economic variables, were obtained from a statewide hospital discharge database for a 12-year period (1999–2011). Joinpoint regression models were fitted to identify any periods of significant change, examine the direction of the injury trend, and to estimate monthly percent changes in injury counts and rates. Poisson random-intercept regression measured the average total change since the official SC accreditation for the three communities combined and compared them to three matched control sites. In joinpoint regression, one of the SC sites showed a 10-year increase in hospitalization cases and rates followed by a two-year decline, and the trend reversal occurred while the community was pursuing the SC accreditation. Injury hospitalizations decreased after accreditation compared to the pre-accreditation period when SC sites were compared to their control counterparts using Poisson modeling. Our findings suggest that the SC model may be a promising approach to reduce injuries. Further research is warranted to replicate these findings in other communities.     

Fracture analysis of semi-circular and semi-circular-bend geometries

A fracture mechanics analysis of the semi-circular (SC) and semi-circular-bend (SCB) fracture geometries is presented. The weight function method is implemented to obtain wide ranging stress intensity factor (SIF) and crack opening displacement (COD) expressions. This study has as its basis a finite element analysis of the semi-circular disk (SC) subjected to a reference loading case. The latter is required to determine both the associated reference stress intensity factor and the weight function for the base-edge-cracked semi-circular geometry. With this information, SIF and COD expressions for the full range of crack lengths are obtained. The special cases of the SC subject to a concentrated crack mouth loading and the SCB are analyzed in detail. The weight function for the SCB is fully developed, with an accurate expression for the SIF and and a numerical result for the crack mouth opening displacement (CMOD). The latter wide ranging expressions can, in turn, be applied as a reference solution. From this weight function approach, SIF's and COD's for the SC and SCB subject to any other loading can be obtained.     

Development of the step complexity measure for emergency operating procedures using entropy concepts

For a nuclear power plant (NPP), symptom-based emergency operating procedures (EOPs) have been adopted to enhance the safety of NPPs through reduction of operators’ workload under emergency conditions. Symptom-based EOPs, however, could place a workload on operators because they have to not only identify related symptoms, but also understand the context of steps that should be carried out. Therefore, many qualitative checklists are suggested to ensure the appropriateness of steps included in EOPs. However, since these qualitative evaluations have some drawbacks, a quantitative measure that can roughly estimate the complexity of EOP steps is imperative to compensate for them.In this paper, a method to evaluate the complexity of an EOP step is developed based on entropy measures that have been used in software engineering. Based on these, step complexity (SC) measure that can evaluate SC from various viewpoints (such as the amount of information/operators’ actions included in each EOP step, and the logic structure of each EOP step) was developed.To verify the suitableness of the SC measure, estimated SC values are compared with subjective task load scores obtained from the NASA-TLX (task load index) method and step performance time obtained from a full scope simulator. From these comparisons, it was observed that estimated SC values generally agree with the NASA-TLX scores and step performance time data. Thus, it could be concluded that the developed SC measure would be considered for evaluating SC of an EOP step.     

Modelling of degradation and a soft failure moment during the operation of a supercapacitor applying selected diffusion processes

An important requirement imposed on storage batteries nowadays is to have sufficient capacity. At the same time a high level of availability, reliability and safety is required as well. Our intention is to determine a capacity degradation threshold and the moment the soft failure of a graphite supercapacitor (SC) occurs. If we do not take into account the idle state, the functioning of the supercapacitor might be expressed by charging and discharging processes under different operating conditions given by the allowed extent of SC design. When looking for the degradation threshold and the moment of soft failure occurrence we performed the experimental part of measuring in the climatic chamber. We performed and recorded the processes of SC charges and discharges at different temperatures: 40 °C, 25 °C and  −42 °C and at different charging and discharging currents: 2A, 4A, 6A and 8A. The experimental results were used to model mathematically the SC discharge process. Appropriate tools used for SC discharge are diffusion processes. In this case we apply a Wiener process with drift and an Itô process.     

Printable and Rewritable Full Block Copolymer Structural Color

Structural colors (SCs) of photonic crystals (PCs) arise from selective constructive interference of incident light. Here, an ink‐jet printable and rewritable block copolymer (BCP) SC display is demonstrated, which can be quickly written and erased over 50 times with resolution nearly equivalent to that obtained with a commercial office ink‐jet printer. Moreover, the writing process employs an easily modified printer for position‐ and concentration‐controlled deposition of a single, colorless, water‐based ink containing a reversible crosslinking agent, ammonium persulfate. Deposition of the ink onto a self‐assembled BCP PC film comprising a 1D stack of alternating layers enables differential swelling of the written BCP film and produces a full‐colored SC display of characters and images. Furthermore, the information can be readily erased and the system can be reset by application of hydrogen bromide. Subsequently, new information can be rewritten, resulting in a chemically rewritable BCP SC display.     

Influence of acoustic waves on supercontinuum generation in photonic crystal fibers

In this work, the influence of applying acoustic frequencies to photonic crystal fibers (PCF) on the supercontinuum (SC) generation is presented. We will show numerically the strong influence of coupling modes in PCF in the latest stage of SC and simulations of different scenarios of phase math condition between the modes.     

SNR and SINR-based selection combining algorithms in the presence of arbitrarily distributed co-channel interferers

The performance of selection combining (SC) diversity in the presence of additive white Gaussian noise as well as multiple co-channel interfering signals over fading channels is analysed. The analysis considers two SC algorithms, namely, the signal-to-noise ratio-(SNR) based SC algorithm and the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR)-based SC algorithm. Closed-form expressions for the distribution of the resulting SINR and the outage probability performance are derived for both SC algorithms. The derived expressions are valid for arbitrary number of interfering signals, and when the desired signal replicas experience independent Rayleigh fading with generalised statistics. In addition, they are applicable for the general case when the interfering signals are subject to arbitrary fading models, which include the cases of identical, non-identical, correlated and mixed-mode fading scenarios. Numerical results are presented to examine the impact of different fading conditions and system parameters on the outage performance for both SC algorithms under consideration.