Development of a model of barriers to environmentally conscious manufacturing implementation

Manufacturing firms consume energy and natural resources in highly unsustainable manner and release large amounts of green house gases leading to many economic, environmental and social problems from climate change to local waste disposal. Consciousness about these issues has led to a new manufacturing paradigm of environmentally conscious manufacturing (ECM). However, there are various barriers to the implementation of ECM. A proper understanding and analysis of these barriers will allow the management of the company and government to prioritise their focus to mitigate root barriers for effective implementation of ECM. This paper aims at identifying the barriers to ECM, developing a model of these barriers using statistical analysis and testing the model using structural equation modelling technique. The results provide three types of barriers – internal, policy and economic. The results show that internal barriers are the root barriers and cause policy and economic barriers. It reflects that the barriers which are internal to the organisation should be mitigated first for effective implementation of ECM.     

Management of sustainable manufacturing systems-a review on mathematical problems

The ever-growing awareness of environmental protection has significantly influenced the method of manufacturing products. Due to the introduction of new processes, the management of sustainable manufacturing shows different characteristics to those of traditional systems. Sustainable manufacturing systems have attracted a great deal of attention in the past 20 years as an emerging manufacturing approach. Particularly in the last 10 years, the number of papers focusing on the topic of sustainable manufacturing systems’ management has increased rapidly. More and more practical factors have been considered and integrated into this area which makes it more complex, but closer to reality. This paper aims to classify the mathematical problems dealing with the management of sustainable manufacturing systems. More than 100 related papers mainly from 1994 to 2015 have been selected and reviewed and divided into three categories according to the main elements in a manufacturing system: production planning and control, inventory management and control and manufacturing network design. The development of each category is summarised and the corresponding mathematical problems are discussed to provide a general overview of the relevant research fields and identify future research directions.     

Dynamic pricing for remanufacturing within socially environmental incentives

We study a dual-product dynamic pricing problem for a remanufacturing system in which a manufacturer makes new and remanufactured products competing for a certain market share. The socially environmental incentives, consisting of consumers' environmentally conscious demand and governments' subsidy on remanufactured products, are considered in this study, which encourage the manufacturer to exert production effort toward environmentally friendly remanufacturing. Three models, namely, two-period, multi-period, and infinite-period scenarios, are formulated to investigate the dynamic pricing problem. Analytical results show that the government's subsidy policies, which provide subsidies to consumers or firms, have equivalent effects for the manufacturer in terms of production and profit. Consumers' environmental consciousness and government subsidy are effective incentives to induce the manufacturer to make more remanufactured products. Some threshold policies are proposed to provide decision supports for manufacturers to formulate pricing and production strategies. By comparing the pricing and production strategies of the three models, we find it interesting that the pricing and production strategies of the multi-period model can be ideally characterised by those of the two-period and infinite-period models. This managerial concept is valuable for manufacturers in formulating pricing and production strategies when the precise production planning horizon is unknown.     

对生产运作考评体系指标设计的思考

企业战略与企业日常运作脱节的现象经常发生,其中重要的原因就是用以进行绩效考核的指标体系,不能与企业战略紧密联系。因而,设计一个能够反映战略要求的绩效考核指标体系就成了解决问题的关系。本文对生产运作系统的根本目标进行深入反思,认为生产运作系统应建立基于“运作系统整体生产率”的考评指标体系,并以此为指引,探讨生产运作系统考评指标设计。     

Developing sustainability in the Italian meat supply chain: an empirical investigation

Although sustainable supply chain (SC) management has been widely investigated in recent years, the focus has mainly been on the practices adopted by a single company, so missing the big picture at SC level. This study of the Italian meat industry considers the SC as a whole, identifying the critical points for each stage in terms of economic, environmental and social sustainability. To this end, a first set of case studies was conducted of companies at different stages of the SC before turning to focus on the meat processing stage, which was identified as critical and highly relevant. A second set of case studies analysed how these companies leverage SC management practices to develop sustainable SCs. In so doing, specific attention was paid to drivers and contingent variables that foster the adoption of sustainable practices. The results of the two steps were then merged to illuminate how practices adopted by the meat processors can impact on the whole chain, confirming their pivotal role in driving sustainability. These results provide a holistic view of the phenomenon, encompassing the entire chain from end to end and highlighting the interdependences across various stages of the meat SC.     

Understanding the market for remanufactured products: what can we learn from online trading and Web search sites?

Notwithstanding the interest it elicits from academics and practitioners, relatively little is known about the market for remanufactured products. Research, still in its infancy, has focused almost entirely on what affects willingness to pay, and our understanding of other key marketing questions, such as what drives search intensity for remanufactured products and the number of remanufactured products on offer, is limited. This paper fills this knowledge gap. Focusing on the online market for remanufactured electrical and electronic products, we empirically test whether product-specific and market-specific determinants affect search intensity and number of remanufactured products on offer, that is number of listings. We use as inputs online search traffic, product-specific data collected from various other online sources and relevant eBay listing data. Our analysis supports the hypotheses that search intensity for remanufactured products is associated with search intensity for price and elapsed time since the launch of new counterpart products. Number of remanufactured products listed is associated with number of listings for new counterparts and two product-specific characteristics: presence of moving parts and whether the product is used for personal hygiene. We discuss several implications of our findings for remanufacturers and policy-makers as well as directions for future research.     

A green productivity based process planning system for a machining process

In the metal cutting industry, manufacturers have strived to increase energy efficiency and to reduce environmental burdens through the use of dust collectors and waste disposers. It is more beneficial and efficient to apply the front-of-pipe technology that prevents the sources of pollutants and minimises energy use through the redesign of products and the change of process planning and machining operations. In particular, process planning for the environment, called eco-process planning, is central to increasing energy efficiency and reducing environmental burdens because process planning decisions greatly influence machining performance. At present, greenability, a term used to indicate environmental friendliness, has been little considered as a major concern in the process planning stage because process planning decisions have focused on improving productivity aspects that include speed, cost and quality. Thus, it is essential to develop an eco-process planning approach that enables the harmonisation and enhancement of greenability performance while improving productivity performance, termed green productivity (GP). This paper presents the development of a GP-based process planning algorithm that enables the derivation of process parameters for improving GP in machining operations. The core mechanism of the algorithm is the realisation of the process improvement cycle that measures GP performance by the collection of machining data, quantifies this performance by categorical representation and predicts the performance through prediction models. To show the feasibility and applicability of the proposed algorithm, we have conducted an experiment and implemented a prototype system for a turning machining process.