Social media in operations and supply chain management: State-of-the-Art and research directions

Recently, industrial and academic communities in the operations and supply chain management (OSCM) field are paying increasing attention to social media. However, the value of social media in OSCM is quite unclear, and more investigations are still needed. To pave the way for directed future research, this paper systematically reviewed and synthesised 152 peer-review journal papers to identify research focus and gaps in this area, supported by an appropriate conceptual framework. The result reveals that the research interests in this area have increased dramatically within the last decade across various industries and regions. Different companies’ OSCM activities, such as sourcing and delivery, can benefit from employment of social media. This paper also indicates that future research can explore the value of social media in sourcing, delivery, product return and reverse logistics, forecasting and inventory management, and product development and production.     

Shapley values for assessing research production and impact of schools and scholars

Performance measures of individual scholars tend to ignore the context. I introduce contextualised metrics: cardinal and ordinal pseudo-Shapley values that measure a scholar’s contribution to (perhaps power over) her own school and her market value to other schools should she change job. I illustrate the proposed measures with business scholars and business schools in Ireland. Although conceptually superior, the power indicators imply a ranking of scholars within a school that is identical to the corresponding conventional performance measures. The market value indicators imply an identical ranking within schools and a very similar ranking between schools. The ordinal indices further contextualise performance measures and thus deviate further from the corresponding conventional indicators. As the ordinal measures are discontinuous by construction, a natural classification of scholars emerges. Averaged over schools, the market values offer little extra information over the corresponding production and impact measures. The ordinal power measure indicates the robustness or fragility of an institution’s place in the rank order. It is only weakly correlated with the concentration of publications and citations.     

Application of systems theory and operations research to river quality management

The mathematical tools applicable in the field of river quality management are reviewed in the order in which they are used in the actual process of building and applying river quality models. The types of models and their properties are discussed, and the important problem of parameter estimation is examined. The use of the models in steady-state and real-time optimal control studies is investigated. Finally, the embedding of river quality control problems into problems of wider scope is discussed. The methodologies are illustrated by applications to the Rhine river.

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Zusammenfassung Die mathematischen Methoden, die man in der Wassergüterwirtschaft anwenden kann, werden diskutiert, und zwar in der Reihenfolge, in der sie bei der aktuellen Problemlösung benutzt werden: Zunächst werden die Typen mathematischer Gewässergütemodelle und ihre Eigenschaften erörtert, danach wird auf das Problem der Parameterschätzung eingegangen. Dann wird die Benutzung der Gütemodelle zur Lösung von Problemen der optimalen Steuerung erläutert, wobei unterschieden wird zwischen stationären und instationären Problemen. Abschließend wird diskutiert, wie die klar definierten Probleme der optimalen Steuerung in den weiteren Kontext der Wassergütewirtschaft einzubetten sind. Die verschiedenen Methoden werden illustriert durch Anwendungsbeispiele, die sich alle auf den Rhein beziehen.

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Revised version of a paper read at the Annual Meeting of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Operations Research, Regensburg, Germany, September 19–21, 1979     

Application of genetic algorithms in production and operations management: a review

Over the last decade, there has been a rapid growth of the use of genetic algorithms in the various areas of production and operations management. This paper provides a review of genetic algorithms research published in twenty-one major production and operations management journals from 1990–2001. More specifically, it identifies research trends and publication outlets of genetic algorithms applications. Our findings show that there are only a handful of production and operations management areas to which genetic algorithms have been applied as the solution approach. Furthermore, we recognize and discuss potential research areas and outlets in which researchers may target their work as well as the need for top ranked POM journals to consider publishing genetic algorithms related papers.     

Using altmetrics for assessing research impact in the humanities

The prospects of altmetrics are especially encouraging for research fields in the humanities that currently are difficult to study using established bibliometric methods. Yet, little is known about the altmetric impact of research fields in the humanities. Consequently, this paper analyses the altmetric coverage and impact of humanities-oriented articles and books published by Swedish universities during 2012. Some of the most common altmetric sources are examined using a sample of 310 journal articles and 54 books. Mendeley has the highest coverage of journal articles (61 %) followed by Twitter (21 %) while very few of the publications are mentioned in blogs or on Facebook. Books, on the other hand, are quite often tweeted while both Mendeley’s and the novel data source Library Thing’s coverage is low. Many of the problems of applying bibliometrics to the humanities are also relevant for altmetric approaches; the importance of non-journal publications, the reliance on print as well the limited coverage of non-English language publications. However, the continuing development and diversification of methods suggests that altmetrics could evolve into a valuable tool for assessing research in the humanities.     

Revenue management in remanufacturing: perspectives,review of current literature and research directions

The pace of development in the world has increased over the years and with it, the use of hi-tech gadgets, consumer durables, automobiles, etc. has also gone up. In this context, as resources become more and more scarce, there are multiple challenges that emerge both from a sustainable development perspective, and from the perspective of meeting profitability objectives of a firm. Remanufacturing has come up in a big way as an answer to these challenges, but firms are struggling with respect to revenue management of this nascent area. We assess the current literature and distil the key factors that firms need to consider as they assimilate remanufacturing in their operations and revenue management strategy. We provide an assessment of white spaces in research in this area and also outline the directions for future research.     

The role of social media data in operations and production management

Social media data contain rich information in posts or comments written by customers. If those data can be extracted and analysed properly, companies can fully utilise this rich source of information. They can then convert the data to useful information or knowledge, which can help to formulate their business strategy. This cannot only facilitate marketing research in view of customer behaviour, but can also aid other management disciplines. Operations management (OM) research and practice with the objective to make decisions on product and process design is a fine example. Nevertheless, this line of thought is under-researched. In this connection, this paper explores the role of social media data in OM research. A structured approach is proposed, which involves the analysis of social media comments and a statistical cluster analysis to identify the interrelationships amongst important factors. A real-life example is employed to demonstrate the concept.     

Path dependent constraints on innovation programmes in production and operations management

Innovation has been categorised into levels, ranging from incremental to radical, each of which has the potential to impact on the workforce and the organisation of a company, influenced by contextual factors. This paper investigates the barriers to innovation diffusion in companies working at these two ends of the innovation scale, in order to identify similarities and differences in how levels of innovation affect an organisation and how culture affects success. It also considers these factors in light of the path dependency concept. Investigations were conducted on a case study basis, using semi-structured interviews. This led to the creation of force field analysis diagrams to portray the findings, which show the radical innovation implementation has experienced greater resistance than the incremental programme. Conclusions show that there were many similarities between the radical and incremental innovation projects. Differences were primarily based on project specific forces and those that occur as a result of path dependant forces that have shaped the current working environment. Organisational culture was found to be a significant influence, as all innovation programmes require the involvement of people. Findings of this study will contribute to theory on the differential and similar forces which shape incremental and radical innovations.     

Location and sequencing of imperfect inspection operations in serial multi-stage production systems

An integrated approach to the problem of allocation of inspection effort in multistage production systems is presented. The problem addresses multiple inspection operations, different disposition policies and inspection, production and repair errors. Quality and cost transfer functions are developed to model production operations and different types of inspection operations in a unified manner and to facilitate the recursive computations required to evaluate alternative system configurations. We formulate the combined inspection location and sequencing problem as a nonlinear mathematical programming problem and solve it with a branch and bound technique, using a heuristic to generate a feasible solution and upper bound. These developments are illustrated with a numerical example.     

A tool for the conceptual design of production and operations systems

This paper proposes a conceptual design tool, based upon inferential design theory. It has been specifically developed for the design of production and operations systems, but its use can be extended to other engineering areas, such as mechanical and structural systems. Inferential design theory and its foundation in the inferential theory of learning are briefly outlined. Both theories are based on the idea of using specialised knowledge operators in learning and design, termed knowledge transmutations and design knowledge transmutations respectively. The 24 transmutations existing in the two theories are outlined, and a further 12 design-specific transmutations are proposed. These have been developed as a result of our research. A conceptual design process is proposed, in which design knowledge transmutations are used. A software tool for design, CREDO, is also described and an example of its use in the generation of design concepts for an after-sales service facility is presented. The conclusions discuss the initial methodological experience of using CREDO to generate design concepts. They are based on the introductory use of CREDO at Technion in Israel for teaching purposes. Directions for further research are also provided.     

Use of genetic algorithms to solve production and operations management problems: A review

Operations managers and scholars in their search for fast and good solutions to real-world problems have applied genetic algorithms to many problems. While genetic algorithms are promising tools for problem solving, future research will benefit from a review of the problems that have been solved and the designs of the genetic algorithms used to solve them. This paper provides a review of the use of genetic algorithms to solve operations problems. Reviewed papers are classified according to the problems they solve. The basic design of each genetic algorithm is described, the shortcomings of the current research are discussed and directions for future research are suggested.     

Revenue management in single-stage CONWIP production systems

We study a joint admission/inventory control problem for a manufacturing system producing one product to meet random demand. The system employs a constant work- in-process policy (CONWIP) whereby the total inventory of raw material and finished items is kept constant, and accepts orders only as long as the backlog is below a certain level. The objective is to determine the CONWIP and backlog levels that maximize the mean profit rate of the system. The system is modelled as a single server with a finite queue. It turns out that the mean profit rate is either concave or decreasing in one control parameter and also decreasing for large values of the other control parameter. A simple algorithm is developed which tracks down the globally optimum design in finite time. Numerical results show that the joint admission/inventory control policy achieves higher profit than other production control policies that have been examined in the literature.     

Expert systems and design

The use of expert systems in design involves certain difficulties. Not least of these is eliciting information from the expert. Computational issues concern logic and the understanding of concepts by the machine. There are also problems in accepting the information from the machine.     

Supply chain risk management and artificial intelligence: state of the art and future research directions

Supply chain risk management (SCRM) encompasses a wide variety of strategies aiming to identify, assess, mitigate and monitor unexpected events or conditions which might have an impact, mostly adverse, on any part of a supply chain. SCRM strategies often depend on rapid and adaptive decision-making based on potentially large, multidimensional data sources. These characteristics make SCRM a suitable application area for artificial intelligence (AI) techniques. The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of supply chain literature that addresses problems relevant to SCRM using approaches that fall within the AI spectrum. To that end, an investigation is conducted on the various definitions and classifications of supply chain risk and related notions such as uncertainty. Then, a mapping study is performed to categorise existing literature according to the AI methodology used, ranging from mathematical programming to Machine Learning and Big Data Analytics, and the specific SCRM task they address (identification, assessment or response). Finally, a comprehensive analysis of each category is provided to identify missing aspects and unexplored areas and propose directions for future research at the confluence of SCRM and AI.     

Expert systems: A short introduction

Expert systems are rapidly growing in diversity of application and usage worldwide. Even though expert system development has been slow in applying expert systems to the specific field of structures, expert system technology has been pervasive in other areas of engineering and manufacturing. This paper provides a short introduction on expert systems, looking at their development, application and future trends.     

Expert systems in industrial engineering

An expert system can be denned as ‘a tool which has the capability to understand problem specific knowledge and use the domain knowledge intelligently to suggest alternate paths of action’. This paper presents a structured framework for the development of an expert system. The five major aspects of expert system development are: Problem definition; knowledge acquisition, representation and coordination; inference mechanism; implementation; and learning. These aspects are illustrated through the help pf a modular robot configuration prototype expert system. Several industrial engineering applications in the areas of process planning, facilities planning, and maintenance and fault diagnosis are discussed and a comparative analysis of the different systems is presented.     

全方位的质量管理分工和职责

一、问题的提出我公司是一个有 6 0年历史的老厂 ,解放后质量管理工作经历了三个阶段 :一是层层把关和单纯的产品符合性检验阶段 ,主要是按照原苏联提供的一套企业管理模式进行组织和控制产品质量 ;二是以预防为主的统计质量控制阶段 ;三是以不断改进为目的的全面质量管理 (简称ＴＱＭ )阶段。通过上述三个阶段 ,从管理机构和管理方式上逐步形成一个包括质量立法、质量控制、质量检验、质量监督的质量保证体系。但与ＩＳＯ 90 0 2∶1994国际标准相对照 ,感到原先的质量管理模式仍存在许多需要解决的矛盾和问题。质量管理职责细则涉及面较窄 …