Global Supply Chain Performance Research Articles

Port Logistics and Supply Chain Management: An Empirical Review

Ports play a critical role in the global economy, acting as vital links within international transportation networks. Their efficiency and effectiveness directly impact the performance of global supply chains. This paper examines the intersection of port logistics and supply chain management (SCM) through an empirical lens. We review existing research to explore how SCM principles can be applied to enhance port operations and overall supply chain performance. The paper begins by outlining the evolving role of ports in today's globalized trade environment. It then delves into the core concepts of SCM and their relevance to port management. The subsequent sections review empirical studies that investigate the impact of SCM practices on port performance metrics such as cost, efficiency, and service quality. We explore key areas like collaboration, information technology (IT) integration, and infrastructure development, highlighting their contributions to improved supply chain visibility and streamlined logistics processes.The review also identifies critical research gaps and proposes future research directions. We emphasize the need for studies that explore the impact of emerging technologies like block-chain and artificial intelligence (AI) on port logistics and SCM integration. Additionally, the paper underscores the growing importance of sustainability practices within port operations and their role in enhancing overall supply chain resilience.

Analysis and Research on the Impact of Digital Transformation and Upgrading of China’s Manufacturing Industry on Global Supply Chains

Abstract The profound impact of the digital transformation and upgrading of China’s manufacturing industry on the global supply chain forms the core of this analysis. This paper introduces a measurement model for assessing the manufacturing digital transformation and upgrading, which includes constructing an indicator system and calculating the weights of these indicators using the entropy value method. Subsequently, the raw data for each indicator are processed through the maximum-minimum value method. Furthermore, this study advances a global supply chain performance assessment SCOR model tailored to the specifics of manufacturing digital transformation and upgrading. It conducts a quantitative analysis of key indicators, typically challenging to quantify, thus deriving their numerical expressions and examining the effects of performance changes. In 2023, China’s comprehensive index for transformation and upgrading escalated to 83.84%, a significant increase from 6.78% in 1999. In a simulation experiment focusing on the integrated circuit manufacturing industry, the digital transformation and upgrading of China’s manufacturing sector is shown to enhance production inventory levels within the global supply chain and reduce delivery times. The Estimated Lead Time (ELT) service level improved by 5%, reaching 100%. At the same time, revenues and profits saw increments of approximately 44.66 million and 32.11 million US dollars, respectively, relative to scenarios absent of such digital advancements.

The impact of global risks on supply chain performance. An empirical study on construction sector in the COVID-19 pandemic

PurposeThis paper aims to identify and assess global risks in the supply chain performance.Design/methodology/approachFirst, global risks are identified and classified according to three criteria: content, probability and context. A set of supply chain performance indicators are then defined by the theory of resource-based view and balanced scorecard. Structural equation modeling is adopted to access risks in the global supply chain.FindingsThis article contributes to the supply chain risk management literature by providing a detailed operationalization of global supply chain risk constructs, e.g. natural disasters, war and terrorism, fire accidents, economic and political instability, social and cultural grievances, decease. Empirical results reveal that the supply chain is predominantly regarded as being vulnerable as the proposed model of risks can explain up to 12.6% variance of supplier performance, 25.2% innovation and learning, 23% internal business, 40.6% customer service and 32.4% finance.Research limitations/implicationsThese risks are relevant contextual variables in strategic supply chain decisions. Supply chain managers should keep in mind acceptable cost/benefit tradeoffs in their firms' mitigation efforts associated with major contingency risks. This research advocates the allocation of scarce resources to adopt the supply chain strategies of avoidance, speculative and postponement.Originality/valueThe application of the strategic content/process/context to explain global supply chain performance is an interesting approach. Moreover, globalization trends and the COVID-19 perspectives are considered to be the main reasons for increasing such complex factors. Data on validating research models collected during the COVID-19 pandemic reflect the topicality of this study.

A quay crane productivity predictive model for building accurate quay crane schedules

ABSTRACT The efficient management of maritime logistics operations improves the performance of global supply chains. An important issue in container terminal operations is the scheduling of quay cranes (QCs), which is affected by the productivity rate of QCs. This productivity rate depends on the type of tasks to be completed by QCs on any given vessel. In this paper, we propose an artificial neural network (ANN) model with a variable neighbourhood search (VNS) as a training algorithm to build a productivity rate predictive model. This model considers several predictors depending on the type of containers in the vessel and the expected equipment downtime. We also study how QC scheduling is impacted by the productivity rate of QCs. The proposed predictive model and a moving average model are used to estimate the productivity rate, which is then taken as input to the QC scheduling optimisation model. Results show that when the proposed predictive model is used, QC schedules are closer to those generated using real data obtained from our container terminal partner.

‘Efficiency and Performance of Global Supply Chain: Theory and Evidence’

‘Efficiency and Performance of Global Supply Chain: Theory and Evidence’

CLUSTERING TURKISH CONTAINER PORTS BASED ON PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES AND EFFICIENCY SCORES

Due to the significant impact of port performance on overall performance of global supply chains, enhancing the efficiency of terminal operations is an important task for ports to achieve a competitive edge. By acknowledging the role that efficiency plays in port competition, there are many research in the literature revealing the relative efficiencies of ports that are under investigation and providing managerial implications for the ones that are relatively inefficient. However, in many cases, the results obtained from the efficiency analysis can be misleading on its own as the ports may have different natures in terms of their size, cargo flow potentials or the environment that they are embedded in. Therefore, focusing on Turkish container ports, our study aims to classify the ports by taking both their physical attributes and efficiency scores into consideration. In order to determine the efficiency scores our study applies data envelopment analysis and the classification of the terminals is carried out by the application of cluster analysis. Results of the clustering lead to better assessment of benchmarking options for the ports and provide a general overview of the characteristics of Turkish container port industry.

Benefits of Technology Adoption for Enhanced Integration of Port–Hinterland Operations

Because container shipping is the most important means of transportation for international trade, the integration of port–hinterland operations is critical to improve the performance of global supply chains. Information and communication technology (ICT) can assist port stakeholders in addressing bottlenecks and streamlining processes at the port–hinterland interface. However, ICT adoption is often hindered by uncertainties concerning expected gains. This paper shows that the adoption of well-established technologies for supply chain management—namely barcode and global positioning systems technology—can bring significant performance gains for the port–hinterland interface, as evidenced by increased container cycle time, utilization rates, and total throughput. In addition, results show the presence of diminishing returns when implementing multiple readers in the system. System dynamics and a unique database containing real data from the Hutchinson Terminal at the Port of Veracruz, Mexico—selected because it is one of the most important ports in the Americas—are used to show the benefits that both local (nodes) and global (supply chain) levels can obtain from ICT adoption. The results of this research will help to reduce uncertainty and incentivize ICT adoption by port stakeholders, particularly in developing countries where research is lagging. The model proposed here can be applied to any port to analyze the impact of ICT adoption and provide support for the decision making of port stakeholders.

Assessing sustainability performance of global supply chains: An input-output modeling approach

Measuring the sustainability performance of supply chains is fundamental to sustainable supply chain management. Sustainability performance is usually evaluated from multiple aspects within the triple bottom line framework. With globalization, supply chains have also been characterized by the complex and global natures. Ignoring the multidimensional and transnational features imposes challenges on the performance assessment of global supply chains (GSCs). To resolve this issue, we propose an input-output modeling approach based on the multi-region input-output (MRIO) model and the data envelopment analysis (DEA) technique, which is able to account for the multidimensional characteristic of supply chains in a global context. Two indices are introduced to measure the status and evolvement of environmental sustainability performance of GSCs. We apply the proposed approach to empirically examine the environmental performance of GSCs of the manufacturing sectors in 16 major economies during 2005–2014. The average environmental inefficiency of the economies was considerable, and roughly 40% of the pollution could potentially be reduced along GSCs. Overall the environmental performance of GSCs averagely rose by 20.6% during the study period with fluctuations and regional/sectoral heterogeneities observed.

A new method for analyzing sustainability performance of global supply chains and its application to material resources

Supply chains become increasingly globalized. Multi-regional input-output databases contain all the information to assess impacts along the value chain, but standard calculation routines to track the impacts of any sector along the global upstream and downstream value chain are missing. Mapping the impacts of materials has been a particular challenge owing to difficulties with double-counting. This is attributed to the strong intertwining of the material supply chain meaning that different materials occur in the supply chains of other materials. Here, we present a new method which can be applied to any MRIO system to track the impacts of any sector or region without double-counting upstream and downstream the global value chain. We apply this approach to EXIOBASE3 and implement a cutting-edge set of regionalized environmental impact categories and socio-economic indicators. Applied to global material production, our method shows that the issue of double-counting (prevented in this study) would overestimate global impacts of materials by up to 30%. In contrast, assessing only the direct impacts would lead to an underestimation by ~20%. Our evaluation further reveals that 25–35% of global material-related impacts are embodied in trade among ten world regions. Thereby, we identify the major international trade relations of key materials and found a clear trend of industrialized nations causing impacts in less developed economies. It was further revealed that during 1995–2011, the share of materials in total global climate change impacts has remained almost constant at ~50%, but total impacts have significantly increased for minerals and fossils. Our results demonstrate the importance for improved environmental policy strategies that target several stages of the global value chain. The methodology is provided as Matlab tool and can be applied to any material, industrial sector and region to track the related impacts upstream and downstream the global value chain.

Critical success factors of supply chain integration in container shipping: an application of resource-based view theory

ABSTRACT The container shipping industry is receiving growing attention in driving the performance of global supply chains. This phenomenon has accelerated supply chain integration (SCI) within the industry. Although SCI could offer numerous benefits, it is often quoted to be implemented easier in theory than in practice. The high failure rate that is associated with SCI is often not addressed in the literature. Grounded on resource-based view (RBV) theory, this paper is aimed at identifying the critical success factors (CSFs) and examining their influence on SCI and supply chain performance (SCP). Survey questionnaires were administered on 164 container shipping firms. The constructs were validated empirically using confirmatory factor analysis and were subsequently analysed using structural equation modelling. The proposed CSFs in this study are found to be positively corelated with SCI, which, in turn, is positively correlated with SCP. This paper has contributed to both theory and practice by applying RBV theory to identify the key resources and capabilities that are necessary for SCI in the container shipping industry.

Business environment-supply chain framework and benchmarking supply chain structures

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to develop a supply chain management framework covering different business environment levels, that is, macro, micro and supply chain levels, and also to evaluate Haiti vs China as apparel-sourcing partners by assessing macro-level, supply-chain-level and micro-level environments from the US apparel buyers’ perspective.Design/methodology/approachIn order to achieve this, first, a framework covering these business environment levels was developed and tested through path analysis. Prior to path analysis exploratory factor analysis was conducted to verify proposed factor structures. Data were collected using face-to-face interviews with a sample of 41 apparel companies that operate in the USA and source from China and Haiti.FindingsThis study found that both supply-chain-level and micro-level environments positively impact global supply chain performance. Supply-chain-level also has a direct effect on micro-level environment and macro-level environment has only a direct effect on supply-chain-level environment. Interviews and discussions based on this framework indicate that Haiti’s proximity to the USA, price, low-wage rates, small-order sourcing opportunities and good basic sewing skills are among Haiti’s strengths.Originality/valueThis study is unique in developing a multi-level environment framework for supply chain management and in comparing Haiti and China in terms of their supply chains to evaluate the potential competitiveness of Haitian apparel supply chain.

The Influence of Corruption on the Effect of Regulatory Friction on Supply Chain Performance

Institutional environments situated at the interfaces of global trade can be complex and nebulous involving multitudinous nation states, trading organizations and supply chains, often for shipments of a single product. Such environments involve significant regulatory constraints that give rise to regulatory friction in global trade. This frequently results in corruption employed to reduce such regulatory frictions. The literature espouses two opposing views of how corruption affects regulatory friction to either reduce or increase overall economic productivity: (1) the greasing the wheels hypothesis where corruption is seen as a means to overcome regulatory friction, and (2) the sand in the wheels hypothesis where corruption is seen as exacerbating the effects of regulatory friction. We explore corruption’s effect on the performance of organizations’ global supply chains that encounter regulatory friction at the country level interfaces of international trade. Country level secondary data measuring experts’ perceptions of country level supply chain performance, corruption and regulatory burdens allow us to explore the effects of corruption and regulatory friction on global supply chain performance. Our results present a more nuanced view of the two hypotheses as dependent upon factors in the institutional environment such as the regulatory climate and the effectiveness of the legal system.

Measuring the environmental sustainability performance of global supply chains: A multi-regional input-output analysis for carbon, sulphur oxide and water footprints

Measuring the performance of environmentally sustainable supply chains instead of chain constitute has become a challenge despite the convergence of the underlining principles of sustainable supply chain management. This challenge is exacerbated by the fact that supply chains are inherently dynamic and complex and also because multiple measures can be used to characterize performances.By identifying some of the critical issues in the literature regarding performance measurements, this paper contributes to the existing body of literature by adopting an environmental performance measurement approach for economic sectors. It uses economic sectors and evaluates them on a sectoral level in specific countries as well as part of the Global Value Chain based on the established multi-regional input-output (MRIO) modeling framework. The MRIO model has been used to calculate direct and indirect (that is supply chain or upstream) environmental effects such as CO2, SO2, biodiversity, water consumption and pollution to name just a few of the applications. In this paper we use MRIO analysis to calculate emissions and resource consumption intensities and footprints, direct and indirect impacts, and net emission flows between countries. These are exemplified by using carbon emissions, sulphur oxide emissions and water use in two highly polluting industries; Electricity production and Chemical industry in 33 countries, including the EU-27, Brazil, India and China, the USA, Canada and Japan from 1995 to 2009. Some of the highlights include: On average, direct carbon emissions in the electricity sector across all 27 member states of the EU was estimated to be 1368 million tons and indirect carbon emissions to be 470.7 million tons per year representing 25.6% of the EU-27 total carbon emissions related to this sector. It was also observed that from 2004, sulphur oxide emissions intensities in electricity production in India and China have remained relatively constant at about 62.8 gSOx/, respectively, $ and 84.4 gSOx/$ although being higher than in other countries. In terms of water use, the high water use intensity in China (1040.27 L/$) and India (961.63 L/$), which are among the highest in the sector in the electricity sector is exacerbated by both countries being ranked as High Water Stress Risk countries.The paper also highlights many advantages of the MRIO approach including: a 15-year time series study (which provides a measurement of environmental performance of key industries and an opportunity to assess technical and technological change during the investigated time period), a supply chain approach that provides a consistent methodological framework and accounts for all upstream supply chain environmental impacts throughout entire global supply chains.The paper also discusses the implications of the study to environmental sustainability performance measurement in terms of the level of analysis from a value chain hierarchy perspective, methodological issues, performance indicators, environmental exchanges and policy relevance.

An Instrumental Perspective of Value Creation through Multi-stakeholder Initiatives

Multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) are an important instrument to improve the social and environmental performance of global supply chains. However, they are often ineffective due to a lack of co...

Buy-back and Revenue-Sharing Contracts in Global Supply Chain

Purpose: The main propose of this study is to investigate how exchange rate risk affects the buy-back and revenue-sharing contracts in the global supply chain, hence to improve the performance of global supply chain. Design/methodology/approach: Based on a two-echelon global supply chain, with the model equilibrium, this paper studies the difference between the buy-back contract and the revenue-sharing contract. By the transmitting of the exchange rate risk, it discusses the node-enterprises’ optimal strategies. Findings: The result shows that: (1) Both these two contracts can diminish the inefficiency caused by demand risk, but none of them can manage the exchange rate risk. (2) No matter which currency is used to settle the payment, both these two contracts will lead to the transmitting of exchange rate risk from one node-enterprise to another. (3) When the currency of the supplier’s country in the relatively appreciating, it is better to use the buy-back contract; when the currency of the supplier’s country in the relatively depreciating, the revenue-sharing contract will lead to a better result. Research limitations/implications: Though this study analyzes how the exchange rate risk affects these two contracts, it based on the assumption that node-enterprises’ goal is maximizing theirs expected profit. In fact, many firms not only focus on maximizing theirs expected profit; the risk-taking is also an important concern. For future researches, how firms’ risk-preferences affects theirs decisions in the global supply chain will be an interesting question. Also, will there be any difference if consider the node-enterprises’ utility functions instead of the expected profit. Originality/value: Existing literature about the global supply chain mainly focus on the exchange rate risk management, few of them considers the double marginalization effect caused by the demand risk. Therefore, with the exchange rate fluctuation, we discuss the difference between the buy-back contract and the revenue-sharing contract.

Robust closed-loop global supply chain network design under uncertainty: the case of the medical device industry

Improving performance of global supply chains requires careful consideration of various factors including distance from markets, access to resources, exchange and tax rates, import tariffs, and trade regulations. In this paper, a comprehensive optimization model is proposed to maximise the after-tax profit of a closed-loop global supply chain for medical devices under uncertainty. The uncertainty of the decision-making environment is modelled using the budget of uncertainty concept in interval robust optimization. International financial issues due to the Economic Cooperation Organisation Trade Agreement as well as national regulations including transfer pricing limitations, exchange rates, tax rates, and import tariffs are considered. The proposed model considers various realistic assumptions pertaining to medical device supply chains such as multiple products, multiple periods, multiple echelons, and limited warehousing lifetime. In addition, reverse flows of perished and defective products are considered to address environmental concerns and customers’ requirements as well as to gain economic advantages. To tackle this problem, an efficient memetic algorithm is developed that incorporates adaptive variable neighbourhood search as its local search heuristic. Computational results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed model in dealing with uncertainty in an agile manufacturing context. In addition, several managerial insights are discussed based on the results.

Effectiveness of knowledge-based multinational management on global supply chain excellence

In current business management, knowledge is considered to be a strategic resource that can strengthen an organization’s competitiveness. Today, under the process of continuous globalization, almost all companies are rapidly exposed to global competition regardless of their scale or type of business. However, multinational management is very complicated and uncertain and it is hard for multinationals to effectively coordinate and manage their global value chains. In light of this, the utility of multinational management based on knowledge is increased. The present study examines multinational firms’ knowledge management systems, knowledge creation processes and global supply chain performance and attempts to reveal any significant linkages between these latent variables. For this research interest, we proposed 18 items to measure four types of knowledge creation processes (SECI) designed by Nonaka (1994) and revised by authors considering the global business environment, in particular involving the global supply chain management concept. Utilizing the confirmed SECI model, 128 sample companies were classified into four groups according to the levels of their knowledge creation processes. The empirical results of this study reveal important linkages between a multinational firm’s knowledge management system and knowledge creation process, as well as between its knowledge creation process and global supply chain management performance. In particular, the current work suggests that the creation and conversion of tacit knowledge as well as explicit knowledge can be effectively supported by information and communication technology.

Effectiveness of knowledge-based multinational management on global supply chain excellence

In current business management, knowledge is considered to be a strategic resource that can strengthen an organization’s competitiveness. Today, under the process of continuous globalization, almost all companies are rapidly exposed to global competition regardless of their scale or type of business. However, multinational management is very complicated and uncertain and it is hard for multinationals to effectively coordinate and manage their global value chains. In light of this, the utility of multinational management based on knowledge is increased. The present study examines multinational firms’ knowledge management systems, knowledge creation processes and global supply chain performance and attempts to reveal any significant linkages between these latent variables. For this research interest, we proposed 18 items to measure four types of knowledge creation processes (SECI) designed by Nonaka (1994) and revised by authors considering the global business environment, in particular involving the global supply chain management concept. Utilizing the confirmed SECI model, 128 sample companies were classified into four groups according to the levels of their knowledge creation processes. The empirical results of this study reveal important linkages between a multinational firm’s knowledge management system and knowledge creation process, as well as between its knowledge creation process and global supply chain management performance. In particular, the current work suggests that the creation and conversion of tacit knowledge as well as explicit knowledge can be effectively supported by information and communication technology.

The Critical Role of Ocean Container Transport in Global Supply Chain Performance

With supply chains distributed across global markets, ocean container transport now is a critical element of any such supply chain. We identify key characteristics of ocean container transport from a supply chain perspective. We find that unlike continental (road) transport, service offerings tend to be consolidated in few service providers, and a strong focus exists on maximization of capital intensive resources. Based on the characteristics of ocean container transport as part of global supply chains, we list a number of relevant and challenging research areas and associated questions.

Assessing global supply chains: perspectives on performance measures across leading countries

Contingency theory suggests that each performance measure carries different emphases and is subject to contextual factors. Although useful, comparative measures of firm performance are fraught with difficulties in comparison mainly for two reasons: different measures carry dissimilar emphasis, and disparate national financial and business practices can exert innate bearings in the measures. Finding a context-invariant performance measure serves as a platform to conduct global supply chain performance comparison studies. Basing on longitudinal 2,400 international observations, this study explores if there exists significant difference among commonly employed performance measures across major countries and proposes context-invariant measures. While the results confirm the previous studies that accounting- and market-based performance indicators show different emphases among countries and country groups, this study finds sustained growth rate, growth rate in sales, and composite performance scores invariant of locus.