Long Supply Chains Research Articles

Breaking bad: how can supply chain management better address illegal supply chains?

PurposeThis pathway paper offers research guidance for investigating illegal supply chains as they increasingly threaten societies, economies and ecosystems. There are implications for policy makers to consider incorporating supply chain expertise.Design/methodology/approachThe authors’ work is informed by the team's previous and ongoing studies, research from fields such as criminology, investigative journalism and legal documents.FindingsIllegality occurs in many supply chains and consists in multiple forms. Certain sectors, supply chain innovations, longer supply chains, and heterogeneous regulations and enforcement exacerbate illegal activities. But illegal activity may be necessary for humanitarian, religious or nationalistic reasons. These areas are under explored by supply chain researchers.Research limitations/implicationsBy encouraging supply chain academics to research in this area as well as form collaborative partnerships outside of the discipline, the authors hope to move the field forward in prevention as well as learning from illegal supply chains.Practical implicationsPractitioners seek to prevent issues like counterfeiting with their products as well as fraud for economic and reputational reasons.Social implicationsGovernments strive to minimise impacts on their economies and people, and both governments and NGOs attempt to minimise the negative social and environmental impacts. Policy makers need supply chain researchers to evaluate new laws to prevent enabling illegality in supply chains.Originality/valueAs an under-explored area, the authors suggest pathways such as partnering with other disciplines, exploring why these supply chains occur, considering other data sources and methodologies to interdict illegality and learning from illegal supply chains to improve legal supply chains.

Stochastic Production Planning with Flexible Manufacturing Systems and Uncertain Demand: A Column Generation-based Approach

The ongoing pandemic, namely COVID-19, has rendered widespread economic disorder. The deficiencies have delayed production at manufacturers in several industries on the supply side. The effects of disruption were more notable for industries with longer supply chains, especially reaching East Asia. Regarding the demand, sectors can be divided into three categories: i) the ones, like e-commerce companies, that experienced augmented demand; ii) the ones with a plunged demand, like what hotels and restaurants experience; iii) the companies experiencing a roller-coaster-ride business. After mitigation efforts, the economy started recovering, resulting in increased demand. However, regardless of their struggles, the companies have not fully returned to their pre-pandemic levels. One of the strategies to gain resilience in its supply chain and manage the disruptions is to employ flexible/hybrid manufacturing systems. This paper considers a flexible/hybrid manufacturing production setting with typically dedicated machinery to satisfy regular demand and a flexible manufacturing system (FMS) to handle surge demand. We model the uncertainty in demand using a scenario-based approach and allow the business to make here-and-now and wait-and-see decisions exploiting the cost-effectiveness of the standard production and responsiveness of the FMS. We propose a column generation-based algorithm as the solution approach. Our computational analysis shows that this hybrid production setting provides highly robust response to the uncertainty in demand, even with high fluctuations.

Dollar and Exports

The strength of the US dollar has attributes of a barometer of dollar credit conditions, whereby a stronger dollar is associated with tighter dollar credit conditions. Using finely disaggregated data on export shipments, we examine how dollar strength impacts exports through the availability of dollar financing for working capital - an issue of importance due to the greater working capital needs for exports arising from longer supply chains and greater delay in receiving payments. We find that exporters who are reliant on dollar-funded bank credit suffer a decline in exports, and that this decline is larger than any decline in domestic sales. Our findings shed light on the broad dollar index as a global financial factor with real effects on the economy.

We are What We Eat: Impact of Food from Short Supply Chain on Metabolic Syndrome.

Food supply in the Mediterranean area has been recently modified by big retail distribution; for instance, industrial retail has favored shipments of groceries from regions that are intensive producers of mass food, generating a long supply chain (LSC) of food that opposes short supply chains (SSCs) that promote local food markets. However, the actual functional role of food retail and distribution in the determination of the risk of developing metabolic syndrome (MetS) has not been studied hitherto. The main aim of this study was to test the effects of food chain length on the prevalence of MetS in a population accustomed to the Mediterranean diet. We conducted an observational study in Southern Italy on individuals adhering to the Mediterranean diet. We examined a total of 407 subjects (41% females) with an average age of 56 ± 14.5 years (as standard deviation) and found that being on the Mediterranean diet with a SSC significantly reduces the prevalence of MetS compared with the LSC (SSC: 19.65%, LSC: 31.46%; p: 0.007). Our data indicate for the first time that the length of food supply chain plays a key role in determining the risk of MetS in a population adhering to the Mediterranean diet.

International trade with sequential production

We develop a tractable general equilibrium model of international trade with firm heterogeneity and sequential production, based on the partial equilibrium model of Antras and Chor (Econometrica 81:2127–2204, 2013). The length of supply chains is endogenous, and in the autarky equilibrium more productive final-good producers are served by longer supply chains. International trade in final goods magnifies the differences in the length of supply chains between firms, with exporting firms being served by longer supply chains, and non-exporting firms being served by shorter supply chains than in autarky. We show that, for given model parameters, the gains from trade are larger than in the canonical Melitz model with Pareto-distributed productivities, since production along a sequential supply chain in the Antras–Chor model is subject to external increasing returns to scale.

Logistics sprawl in the Brussels metropolitan area: Toward a socio-geographic typology

Logistics activities are concentrated around cities, for the purpose of accessing and serving these important markets. However, at a more refined level, because of land prices, availability and modern logistics schemes, suburban locations are preferred. This trend, the so-called logistics sprawl, creates land consumption, longer supply chains and jobs shifts. This article analyses the geography of logistics in the Brussels metropolitan area and highlights this suburbanization, notwithstanding the fact that some particularities appear, due to the Brussels, Belgian and European contexts. In a second step, we construct a spatial typology to understand the fine evolution of the Brussels metropolitan logistics space. These results reinforce our knowledge of logistics geography and add a frequently neglected institutional dimension to the extant literature on the subject – wholesale trade activities.

Ethylene and the postharvest performance of cut camellia flowering branches

Camellias are potentially appreciated as cut branches due to their deep and bright green foliage with a high number of flower buds. The present research investigated the role of ethylene in postharvest flower and leaf abscission of seven cultivars of Camellia japonica and evaluated the effect of inhibitors of ethylene action on their vase life. Cut flowering branches were shipped from private companies, mimicking a long and short supply chain. Plant materials were treated with commercial Chrysal, gaseous 1-MCP, and 1-MCP included in β-cyclodextrin-based nanosponges and compared to cut branches exposed to exogenous ethylene (1±0.2 μl l-1) for 24 h and control in tap water. Visual checks for symptoms of variation in senescence, flower opening stage, flower abscission, leaf chlorophyll content (SPAD) and gloss, in addition to ethylene production levels were monitored daily. Cut branches placed in tap water lost ornamental value after ca. 5.5 days of vase life and reached complete senescence after about 10 days in all the studied cultivars, regardless of supply chain, with the exception of ‘Il Tramonto’ with 10 and 20 days, respectively. Exogenous ethylene application reduced camellia cut branch longevity in ‘Debbie’ and ‘R.H. Wheeler’, while the other cultivars lasted as long as the control. Anti-ethylene treatments prolonged the vase life only in ‘Korun Koku’ and ‘Il Tramonto’.

Farm- and product-level biodiversity assessment of conventional and organic dairy production in Austria

The novel method developed for this study evaluates the impact of farming practices on farmland biodiversity, allowing for the assessment of the biodiversity potential of dairy farms at farm and product levels. We linked farming practices as pressure indicators to the species number and abundance of 11 indicator species groups (ISGs), evaluated semi-quantitatively by expert judgements. We calculated biodiversity potential based on food–web relationships between the ISGs, using Monte Carlo simulations for the analysis of uncertainty of expert assessments. We applied the assessment model to 8925 dairy farms from seven different Austrian regions, using official statistical data sets at farm level and interviews with farmers and experts. The results show that the approach can be used to identify differences in the biodiversity potential of farms and milk. Milk from organic farms received 4–79% higher biodiversity scores than milk from conventional farms in all regions. The application showed that in the case of Austrian dairy production, the approach can be used for assessments of both farms and products. However, the approach needs validation and, for product-level assessment, further development to cope with longer supply chains or compound products from different bio-geographic regions.

Urban Freight Consolidation Centers

In recent years, traditional urban distribution systems have undergone major structural changes as a result of the increasing power of customers demanding greater variety of quality products at low cost. These customer demands have increased the competition between businesses, and at the same time more complicated and longer supply chains have emerged as a result of the globalization of many businesses in their search for low-cost production locations and access to new skills. In response, hub-and-spoke systems are increasingly used to deal with product flows from many origins and to many destinations. As a result, a growing number of studies have examined the establishment of various forms of intermodal transshipment centers to minimize the use of roads in city centers and support the frequent and rapid replenishment of goods at retail and catering outlets. This study examined the establishment of a consolidation center servicing nearly 100 businesses that operated in an urban shopping mall in Southampton, United Kingdom. Through the review of numerous existing UK and international consolidation schemes and the examination of their operational characteristics, the study aimed to identify potential strengths, weaknesses, and risks that would impact the operation of the consolidation center. Various operational scenarios considering business take-up combinations, vehicle delivery mixes, fill rates, and back-load practices were examined to elucidate the potential transport and environmental effects of the consolidation scheme. To quantify and to verify these effects accurately, a multistage analysis framework, including data collection, map routing, emissions assessment, and scenario-building activities, was developed.

Scenario Analysis of Global Resource Circulation with Traceability Index Targeting Sustainable Manufacturing

Global, or transboundary, resource circulation involves the movement of recyclable resources from developed to developing countries. Despite concomitant problems such as the dumping of hazardous materials, global resource circulation helps to conserve resources. The risk-based traceability this paper proposes for evaluating global circulation scenarios based on economic and environmental aspects clarifies conditions for sustainable global circulation. The key to its success is traceability, and this paper presents a case study on desktop computers whose simulation results demonstrate that reuse scenarios are economically superior to recycling scenarios, but are less traceable because of their longer supply chains. Implementing anti-risk measures improves traceability and lessens environmental risk.

Two case studies on developing, implementing and evaluating a balanced scorecard in distribution channel dyads

Supply chain management demands the development and implementation of performance measures across organisations. Although this has been discussed a lot, reviewing the literature reveals that only a few cases have been presented, where the development and implementation of performance management systems spanning at least two companies in a supply chain have been presented. This paper discusses the application of the balanced scorecard (BSC) across supply chains and presents two case studies where such inter-organisational BSCs have been developed. This paper is built on case study research in two distribution dyads, one in the automotive and one in the chemical industry. In both cases, the respective companies cooperated in the development and implementation of the joint BSC. Hence, it is outlined how the traditional criteria describing the BSC can be transferred to the dyad level. In each case, a producer and a retailer developed and implemented joint BSCs to manage the distribution function, where a set of indicators across the dimensions of the BSC was implemented. The research offers a starting point for further empirical research on how cross company performance measures are applied. Of course, dyads are only the smallest inter-organisational unit, so further research on longer supply chains is needed. Still, the two cases offer insights towards both the development of such joint performance measurement systems as well as practical guidance on how companies can cooperate using the BSC.