3 research outputs found
Optimising human-robot collaboration for efficiency in retail warehousing
No full textThis study investigates the performance of Autonomous Mobile Robot (AMR)–human collaboration in hybrid warehouse order-picking operations. It aims to identify optimal resource allocation strategies and assess the role of warehouse layout design, particularly cross-aisles, in enhancing operational efficiency in high-velocity retail and e-commerce environments
Crisis Management Practices and Approaches: Insights from Major Supply Chain Crises
No full textAbstractRecent market trends, such as outsourcing and globalization, have made supply chains more exposed to disruptive external incidents, such as catastrophic man made events and natural disasters. Globalization favors the expansion of the supply chain across national borders; a fact that can transform even much smaller incidents to organizational crises (Manuj & Mentzer, 2008). More and more, stakeholders are being implicated in contemporary supply chains and when a crisis occurs it has to be faced timely, otherwise the consequences can get out of proportions (Randall & Farris, 2009). Lately, organizations try to make proactive planning to enhance decision making in the time of a crisis, but still no specific guidelines, either from literature or practitioners, exist about supply chain crisis management (Hittle & Leonard, 2011). In this paper, we try to identify specific processes and practices that make enterprises successfully confront supply chain crises or drive them to failure by studying major crises incidents as reported in the literature. In doing so, indicative case studies are studied and the business practices are examined, analyzed and discussed
Conceptualising Supply Chain Management: An Objective-Oriented Approach
No full textPoster presented at the Cranfield Doctoral Network Annual Event 2018.Although it has been more than three decades since the concept of Supply Chain Management (SCM) was first introduced, there are still significant attempts at, and a call for conceptualising, defining, remodelling and identifying the theory(s) behind it. There is no consensus in the literature on a concise and precise definition of SCM nor its underpinning theory(s). A rigorous theoretical framework has not yet been developed; the existing models like Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) and the Global Supply Chain Forum (GSCF) models lack the details called for in a holistic model that encompasses the essence of SCM and integrates the best features of the existing models and covers their shortcomings.The argument in the literature is that: “research and practice would be improved if a single definition were adopted” (Mentzer et al., 2001); “closing the gap between SCM theory and actual practice would be the development of a single, unifying SCM framework that both incorporates the best aspects of the existing, widely used frameworks and addresses their current limitations” (Moberg et al., 2008). However, in this research, the author argues that a consensus on a unified conceptual/theoretical framework of SCM will contribute to solving those theoretical issues.The literature has shown that most of the research approaches which were used to solve those theoretical issues were process-oriented or business functions-oriented, that is, the focus was on what firms and organisations are doing, where they do it, or how they do it. However, the main gap the researcher has identified through the study and the analysis of the literature is that an Objective-Oriented approach has not been investigated in resolving those theoretical issues. Also, the researcher found that the objectives of SCM and supply management as a whole were scattered in the literature. In this study, the researcher objective is to investigate the viability of using this approach in solving those theoretical issues.The researcher found that an appropriate research methodology to investigate the viability of an Objective-Oriented approach would be to apply the Grounded Theory research methodology, which is a well known qualitative research methodology that is used in developing theories or theoretical frameworks from data (grounded) through line-by-line coding and categorising process. Recent work reported by Randall and Mello, (2012) recommended the use of the Grounded Theory research methodology as they established that grounded theory “can be an appropriate tool for creating theory in supply chain research”. This methodology has also been recommended by Denk, Kaufmann and Carter, (2012) and Manuj and Pohlen, (2012)Therefore, this research focuses on the implementation of the Grounded Theory research methodology through an Objective-Oriented coding system that will analyse multiple data resources including the literature, websites, recorded lectures and recorded interviews. Through this approach, the researcher was able to: conceptualise SCM, identify the theory behind it, define the concept precisely and concisely and develop a unified model that visualises SCM.</p
