1,720,968 research outputs found
Fashion Supply Chain: a literature review to define the trends of research (2012-2019)
No full textDue to the high challenges to face and the current market evolution towards an ever faster fashion, the fashion supply chain has been the subject of several studies proposed in literature, with different facets and topics treated. In order to identify the main trends and issues of research, since the aspects at stake are several and different, the aim of this study is to present results from a literature review carried out in 118 scientific papers published between 2012 and 2019 resulting from a very simple query with a unique search term: “fashion supply chain”. Descriptive statistics (i.e. year of publication and country of the study) and qualitative aspects (i.e. category of topic and keywords’ analysis) were investigated. Sustainability, as well as the development of models aiming at different optimizations methods and the implementation of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tools turned out to be much debated within the field in question, whilst enabling technologies resulting from the Industry 4.0 paradigm appear as less common, probably due to the time span under investigation
Is it possible to quantify the current resilience level of an agri-food system? A review of the literature
Get PDFNowadays being resilient is a requirement of all companies and more in general supply chains, as a consequence of the frequent disruptions which repeatedly affect systems and challenge markets from different sides. But how to state whether a company and its related supply chain are resilient or not? To address the present issue, a literature review was carried out on documents proposing quantitative tools or metrics for quantifying the resilience level of an agri-food supply chain, which is a specific field subjected to several threats and accordingly deserving attention. Due to the limited number of documents retrieved (i.e., 26 articles), stressing the gap to be filled in literature, mainly bibliometric analyses were performed on the sample, but contents were also deepened, resuming the different tools available at present. Results reflect the call for the development of models aiming at assessing the resilience of these systems before disruptions and non-controlled events occur; moreover, the industrial level turned out to be neglected, given the fact that all the studies deal with the farm stage (and in general agricultural activities)
Sustainable supply chain and innovation: a review of the recent literature
Get PDFIncreasingly, the effects of supply chains on environmental issues have been a focal point in discussions involving stakeholders, authorities and customers. The aim of this paper is to inspect how innovation and sustainability are integrated in the wider context of the supply chains. To this end, a systematic literature review was carried out, with a particular focus on papers published in recent years (2015, 2016, 2017), so as to continue a previous review on the sustainable supply chain innovation topic covering the time span 1996-2014. The descriptive aspects of the published papers are firstly examined i.e. year of publication, journal, research methodology, industry field and country of the study, followed by the thematic ones, i.e. key themes of the innovation process, types of innovation found, their newness, dimensions and main theories emerged. The analysis shows an upward trend of literature in numerical terms and a wider spread of sustainable innovations. Also, the research highlights further areas of research that are deserving attention. These areas include: analyses of specific industrial sectors which have been less covered in the published literature; research activities in the less developed countries; more attention on the social dimension of sustainability; more general contribution from some nations that turned out to be less productive or even inactive on the sustainable supply chain innovation topic. Finally, a framework is developed which could constitute the basis for further developments and research on this issu
EOI or EOQ? A simulation study for the inventory management of a company operating in the railway sector
No full textThe present paper proposes a study carried out in an Italian company operating in the railway industry, whose aim was to
simulate two inventory management policies, namely the Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) and the Economic Order Interval
(EOI) and compare the relating results from a set of simulations with historical data. The simulation was carried out on 53
articles (37 raw materials and 16 work in progress). The two models were developed under Microsoft ExcelTM, and their
effectiveness was assessed in terms of amount of effective stock and the total costs associated; specifically, total costs are
composed of three cost items: (i) order/production, (ii) stock keeping and (iii) stock out. Overall, both models returned better
results in terms of economic saving and amount of stock than the current management policy used by the company; more
specifically, the EOQ policy turned out to be the best, and was then selected for being implemented in the whole warehouse
under investigation. Moreover, from a theoretical perspective, the need for a literature review on inventory management models
emerged
The Role of ICT in Supporting Spent Coffee Grounds Collection and Valorization: A Quantitative Assessment
No full textAs never before, there is nowadays the will to consider alternative energy sources from renewable and waste materials so as to preserve planet and society. One of the possible elements suitable for this purpose is every day in our houses: Coffee. Or rather, spent coffee grounds. Indeed, many studies in recent years have addressed its potential exploitation, especially for biodiesel production; recent works also pointed out its possible thermal valorization for industrial processes. In light of this, this paper proposes a new sustainable use of spent coffee grounds, converted into combustible pellets; this source can then be used not only for industrial heaters, but also for public or private buildings. To this end, a feasibility study of a pellet production plant fed by waste collected by vending companies operating in the North of Italy is developed, including the logistic model supported by an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) system to help gather spent coffee grounds from the different companies and collect them into the pellet production facility
Low-Cost UWB Based Real-Time Locating System: Development, Lab Test, Industrial Implementation and Economic Assessment
Get PDFThis paper presents the technical development and subsequent testing of a Real-Time Locating System based on Ultra-Wideband signals, with the aim to appraise its potential implementation in a real industrial case. The system relies on a commercial Radio Indoor Positioning System, called Qorvo MDEK1001, which makes use of UWB RF technology to determine the position of RF-tags placed on an item of interest, which in turn is located in an area covered by specific fixed antennas (anchors). Testing sessions were carried out both in an Italian laboratory and in a real industrial environment, to determine the best configurations according to some selected performance indicators. The results support the adoption of the proposed solution in industrial environments to track assets and work in progress. Moreover, most importantly, the solution developed is cheap in nature: indeed, normally tracking solutions involve a huge investment, quite often not affordable above all by small-, medium- and micro-sized enterprises. The proposed low-cost solution instead, as demonstrated by the economic assessment completing the work, justifies the feasibility of the investment. Hence, results of this paper ultimately constitute a guidance for those practitioners who intend to adopt a similar system in their business
A survey analysis on sustainable practices in cold supply chains
No full textDue to their peculiarities, certain goods require specific storage and distribution conditions. For instance, fruits and vegetables as well as dairy products, fresh meat, frozen or pharmaceutical products must be stored and transported in controlled temperature conditions. This involves the use of refrigerated facilities and trucks that consume large quantities of energy and are responsible of huge emissions. Consequently, the so-called cold supply chains have drawn attention with regards to their sustainability perspective both during the design and management phases. In line with that, the present work aims at presenting some preliminary results from a survey analysis carried out in Italy on thirteen companies operating in this specific field, investigating their sustainability practices. Among the main findings brought out, for instance, it emerged that investments in recycled building materials (considered of low-quality) are (still?) not considered by companies, as well as the usage of alternative fuels for transports; moreover, the use of intermodal transport is rather lacking. Overall, there is great room for improvement from the sustainability perspective of cold supply chains
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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