Supply Chain Network System Research Articles

Impacts of Radio Frequency Identification technology on logistics performance in agile supply chain

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a latest breakthrough technology that can be applied to significantly enhance Supply Chain Management. Seeking to maximise its potential applicability, this paper examines in detail the implementation of RFID in intra-organisational logistics operations and how the formation of 'RFID islands' can facilitate the incorporations of this new technology into a supply chain network system. This paper first examines how an automated RFID system allows firms to achieve high level of inventory visibility and information transparency which leads to system responsiveness and agility. Logistics efficiencies improved by RFID technology and necessary costs are then critically assessed. The research proceeds to develop a method to operationalise RFID's Return on Investment (ROI), and then incorporates the ROI calculation into a RFID roadmap toward a large scale, Business-to-Business implementation. It concludes that substantial efficiencies, strong scale economies and strategic planning for the RFID systems can help firms to harvest competitiveness in innovative supply chain operations and logistics performance enhancement.

CAS-based social network analysis for collaborative management in the green supply chain network system

The objective of this paper is to unify collaborative management ideas and the Complex Adaptive System (CAS) theory into a Social Network Analysis (SNA) of Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM) for the sake of sustainable development. Based on GSCM, the idea of the Green Supply Chain Network System (GSCNS) was to put forward a holistic solution for the coevolution of enterprises, society and environment. Based on an analysis of the characteristics of CAS, the common mechanisms shared by GSCNS and CAS were discovered; therefore, relative researches revealed the intrinsic similarities. By the application of the CAS theory, entities in GSCNS were considered as agents in being adaptive to, and evolving with, their living environment. Furthermore, a collaborative management architecture for GSCNS was raised. Considering the attributes of GSCNS, the Swarm simulation platform was introduced for modelling and simulation, and the characteristics and advantages of Swarm simulation for GSCNS were analysed and discussed.

A combined optimization and agent-based approach to supply chain modelling and performance assessment

The main objective of this paper is to give an example of how expert systems techniques for distributed decision-making can be combined with contemporary numerical optimization techniques for the purposes of supply chain optimization and to describe the resulting software implementation. In this paper, multi-agent modelling techniques are applied to simulate and control a simple demand-driven supply chain network system, with the manufacturing component being optimized through mathematical programming. The system measures supply chain performance and the effect of different parameters in the replenishment control system, and can be used to simulate the behaviour of a system that uses optimization for part of its decision-making. The objective of this supply chain network system is to reduce operating cost, while maintaining a high level of customer order fulfilment.