Core Business Operations Research Articles

A multi-criteria decision making methodology for the selection of reverse logistics operating modes

Logistics plays an important role in business today. It is not possible to succeed in marketing, manufacturing or project execution without the logistics support. Customers expect logisticians to provide better transportation service, on time delivery, operational flexibility and reduced damage-in-transit. Manufacturing companies are under a great pressure to find the right solution to tackle these challenges. Reverse logistics (RL) is one type of logistics which plays an important part of supply chain management because of environmental legislation and increasing awareness among the customer. In order to concentrate on their core business operations and to achieve cost-efficiency and improve delivery performance, the companies have to choose appropriate operating modes for reverse logistics operations. There are three basic operating modes of reverse logistics for enterprise: self-support, joint venture and outsourcing. The objective of this paper is to efficiently assist the decision makers in determining the 'most appropriate' reverse logistics operating modes using multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) model. For this purpose analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is used as a MCDM methodology. Finally, an example has been illustrated to highlight the procedural implementation of the proposed model.

Business Process Impact Visualization and Anomaly Detection

Business operations involve many factors and relationships and are modeled as complex business process workflows. The execution of these business processes generates vast volumes of complex data. The operational data are instances of the process flow, taking different paths through the process. The goal is to use the complex information to analyze and improve operations and to optimize the process flow. In this paper, we introduce a new visualization technique, called VisImpact that turns raw operational business data into valuable information. VisImpact reduces data complexity by analyzing operational data and abstracting the most critical factors, called impact factors, which influence business operations. The analysis may identify single nodes of the business flow graph as important factors but it may also determine aggregations of nodes to be important. Moreover, the analysis may find that single nodes have certain data values associated with them which have an influence on some business metrics or resource usage parameters. The impact factors are presented as nodes in a symmetric circular graph, providing insight into core business operations and relationships. A cause-effect mechanism is built in to determine ‘good’ and ‘bad’ operational behavior and to take action accordingly. We have applied VisImpact to real-world applications, fraud analysis and service contract analysis, to show the power of VisImpact for finding relationships among the most important impact factors and for immediate identification of anomalies. The VisImpact system provides a highly interactive interface including drilldown capabilities down to transaction levels to allow multilevel views of business dynamics.

Service supply chain management in e-government operations

This paper describes a case study looking at community care operations, as the first tier of a services supply chain in the government, provided by a private company. The research will focus on the application of internet technologies to enable a more effective use of the operational resources of the private care service provider. This paper also describes the benefits of using a web-enabled prototype in terms of achieving the transparency of information relating to care worker availability thus achieving a fast acceptance of the referred clients. A description of the redesigned business processes of the company to enable inclusive of working with the local authorities is also included here. This is essential to maximise value for money, improve competitiveness as well as client care quality. The core business operations supported by the solution are scheduling of care workers, automatic generation of care worker schedules, payment of care workers and the invoicing of the local authority process.

Managing ethical standards: When rhetoric meets reality

In the last two decades, the private sector has been placed under intensifying pressure to ensure it operates in an environmentally and socially responsible manner. Companies have moved through various phases of response, starting with a ‘deny and defend’ position, moving to ‘paying penance’ through donations and philanthropy, and currently settling on risk management through mitigating the negative impacts of their business operations. Drawing on research undertaken by Oxfam International mainly in the retail sector, as well as in the coffee and pharmaceutical sector, this article argues that the current approach is, as yet, inadequate. Simply mitigating negative impacts through castigating intermediaries or suppliers does not contribute to sustainable solutions. For the private sector to meet corporate social responsibility pledges, companies need to pursue alternative business models that forge connectivity, coherence, and interdependence between their core business operations and their ethical and environmental commitments.

Pro-poor strategies for urban water supply and sanitation services delivery in Africa

Water utilities in Africa find it increasingly difficult to provide adequate services to the needy areas: their core business operations are often stagnant, compounded by a dramatic rise in peri-urban and poor settlements. To address these challenges, the Water and Sanitation Program Africa has designed a work program to disseminate the best practice in pro-poor service development and to help utilities and municipal authorities to develop roadmaps to the MDGs for their service areas. Activities will primarily be directed at: (i) helping utilities and municipal authorities to include pro-poor objectives in their reform; and, (ii) working jointly with local partners, CBOs and NGOs, and SSPs to develop strategies and actions specifically targeting informal settlements. WSP-AF will focus on utilities that are engaged in reform or planning to do so. This program builds on support developed for Water Utility Partnership (WUP#5). Key entry points for pro-poor strategies: (i) pro-poor tariffs and financing mechanisms for service improvement, (ii) institutional arrangements to improve services to the urban poor, (iii) pro-poor transaction design (including regulation and monitoring), (iv) advocacy and communications regarding the urban poor, and (v) consumer voice and civil society engagement.

Disaster business continuity: promoting staff capability

The object of business continuity planning is minimising loss after a disaster. Achieving this goal requires that management and information systems are available to facilitate the recovery of core business operations as soon as possible. While safeguarding systems and/or arranging for substitutes is vital, it is equally important to ensure the availability of staff capable of operating these system under adverse disaster conditions. Adopting a human resource perspective, this paper discusses the implications of staff vulnerability, hazard and risk assessment, organisational systems, training and recovery management for disaster business continuity.