Chuda Basnet

In this paper, we discuss the “batch processing” problem, where there are multiple jobs to be processed in flow shops. These jobs can however be formed into batches and the number of jobs in a batch is limited by the capacity of the...

This paper presents a review of the research literature on supply chain strategies linked to product demand. Fisher (1997), in his seminal article, has argued that efficient supply chain (SC) strategies are appropriate for functional products and responsive strategies are needed for innovative products. The purpose of this article is to review articles which have been published after Fisher (1997), and which relate market demand for a product to the respective supply chain design, in an effort to synthesise these articles and suggest future research directions. A literature review is carried out using content analysis, following the qualitative research paradigm. Both deductive and inductive coding has been carried out, followed by a descriptive analysis and a synthesis of the literature. The contribution of the article is a critical review, a synthesis of the literature, and directions for future research.

Purpose: Internal supply chain refers to the chain of activities within a company that concludes with providing a product to the customer. This process involves multiple functions within companies such as sales, production, and distribution. It is obvious that a company's performance would be enhanced by the integration of these functions. However, there is no consensus yet on how integration is to be defined and measured. The purpose of this paper is to present research that was conducted with the goal of developing an instrument for the measurement of internal supply chain integration.Design/methodology/approach: Scale items were identified from current literature and the resulting survey instrument was sent out to a sample of New Zealand manufacturers. Statistical analysis was conducted to purify and validate the instrument.Findings: In total, three dimensions of integration were identified, labelled coordination, communication, and affective relationship. This paper makes a contribution towards developing a consensus in the understanding and measurement of the integration construct.Research limitations/implications: The selection and exclusion of measurement items for the survey have followed established principles of survey research, but may have been affected by the personal bias of the author. While every attempt has been made to comprehensively capture the state of the research up to the time of the study, there may be some omissions. The sample for the survey was drawn from a database of New Zealand businesses, thus the results are generalizable only to the extent that these businesses represent the population of all businesses. Another limitation is that no prior survey/case studies were carried out to collect practitioner's definitions/measures for integration.Practical implications: The authors hope to have made a contribution here towards building a consensus among practitioners and researchers in defining and measuring internal supply chain integration. For practitioners, the measurement instrument offers a self‐assessment tool for internal supply chain integration. This should help them in identifying areas for improvement.Originality/value: The contribution of this paper consists of: development of an instrument for the measurement of integration, validating the instrument against a criterion, and the identification of three dimensions of integration – communication, coordination, and affective relationship. The unique contributions of this paper are the validation of the instrument against a criterion and the identification of “affective relationship” as a dimension of internal supply chain integration.

One of the operating decisions involved in the scheduling of flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) is that of loading the FMS. Given a pool of jobs, which can be processed on alternate machines and alternate tools, the scheduler has to decide on the allocation of tools and machines to the different jobs. Various versions of this problem have appeared in the literature. We consider the version where jobs are selected for processing in a FMS in a planning horizon, operations for these jobs are assigned to machines, and corresponding tools are allocated to the slots in the machines. The objective is to minimise system unbalance. A hybrid genetic algorithm is presented that addresses this problem. Computational comparison between the genetic algorithm and previous algorithms is presented.

This paper identifies some barriers inhibiting the adoption of Supply Chain Management (SCM) practices in New Zealand (NZ). A two-step methodology was used. Initially two organisations were studied in depth, which led to the identification of a shortlist of barriers to SCM. The second step of the methodology involved verifying this shortlist via interviews with a larger set of organisations. The interrelationships between the barriers were brainstormed, leading to the identification of a number of root causes of indifferent SCM practices. The findings highlight a number of New Zealand-specific issues such as geographical isolation and an independent managerial mindset.

The harvesting of renewable resources from an operations scheduling viewpoint is introduced, and a harvesting scenario arising in the agricultural context involving a commercial contracting enterprise that travels from farm‐to‐farm harvesting crops is discussed. This paper is an extension of previous work by two of the authors from the one‐farm to the multi‐farm case. In both cases, the duration of each operation is dependent upon the combination of constrained resources allocated to it, equipment and worker allocation is restricted, and minimum or maximum time lags on the start and completion of operations may be imposed. The present case incorporates harvesting at more than one farm and thus the sequence in which the farms are visited and the inter‐farm travel times must be taken into account. We report on a harvesting scheduling model and solution procedures designed specifically for large‐scale versions of the multi‐farm case. The computational times experienced in solving general instances of the model of small‐to‐medium practical size by a commercial integer programming package are encouraging. Greedy and tabu search heuristics, which are capable of solving problems of relatively large dimensions in reasonable computational time are also included. The authors believe that the model and the solution techniques developed represent a useful addition to the farm crop contractor's tool kit.

This paper reports on an exploratory study of supply chain management practices in New Zealand. The results from our survey of New Zealand manufacturers indicate that there has been a significant increase in the general awareness of lean manufacturing, supplier integration and quality improvement strategies. However, practice is still lagging behind. We present these results and discuss challenges that are currently being faced by New Zealand organisations seeking to sustain and improve their supply chain management processes. Certain facets of supply chain management that require special emphasis in the New Zealand scene are discussed and some examples of companies overcoming their supply chain management challenges are presented. Finally, we summarise our conclusions and indicate directions for further research.