This paper describes the challenges of the maritime supply chain compared to land transport and discusses the new digital initiatives to simplify the processes and enable a better plan for the entire supply chain. First, the background is outlined with an example of the extensive admin processes in maritime transport compared to road transport, followed by a case example presenting the processes of a booking. The case study concludes that the lack of integration is costly in terms of both admin resources, as well as lost capacity on some ships and missing capacity on others. Finally, the evolution of new digital initiatives are discussed, both in general and in terms of competing “alliances” as seen in the airline industry. The paper concludes that the information exchange in the maritime industry has moved drastically in the last 3 years and that one initiative, TradeLens, seems to have gained a position as maritime standard despite a problematic start with many competing initiatives.
Sustainable biofuel supply chain is a key to sustainable manufacturing and the future of production. Greener production is now becoming an order qualifier for the global competition. Modeling biofuel supply chains that achieve economic, social, and environmental feasibility is a challenge. This article develops biofuel platform planning and optimization that unifies biofuel product, production process and networks design into an umbrella of sustainable supply chain planning. A design of biofuel supply chain networks under various production paths is considered. The modeling results show that an optimum region of composition ratio between rice straws and waste cooking oils can be set within the range from 0% to 50%. Bio-diesel is favored over ethanol by occupying over 40% of the total biofuel outputs. However, ethanol yield is 99.1% and therefore it is sufficient to be directly mixed with gasoline at final depots. In terms of social contribution, it is estimated that the supply chain contribution to the case country GDP is about 0.17%. Looking at the above statistics, future research on global economic impacts and competitiveness of biofuel production is suggested.
This article analyses contractual governance practices within the value chains of large companies based in the USA and Europe between 2012 and 2017 with focus on human and labour rights. In line with the existing scholarship, we find that the use of contractual governance for safeguarding human and labour rights is best practice among large American and European businesses. The results show that value chain contractual governance should be studied in an interdisciplinary environment taking both legal and non-legal aspects into consideration. Moreover, we detect a general positive impact of the business and human rights regulatory wave of 2010–2011 on sustainable contractual governance practices.
As policy makers acknowledge the high degree of supply chain vulnerability and the impact of maritime emissions on coastal population health, there has been a consistent effort to strengthen maritime security and environmental regulations. In recent years, overdependence on deeper and wider multinational supply and production chains and lean-optimization has led to tightly integrated systems with little “slack” and high sensitivity to disruptions.
This study considers the impact of Emission Control Areas and establishes a link between environmental and network resilience performance for maritime supply chains using operational cost and SOx emissions cost metrics. The proposed methodological framework analyzes various abatement options, disruption intensities, fuel pricing instances and regulatory strategies. The methodology utilizes a minimum cost flow assignment and an arc velocity optimization model for vessel speed to establish the payoff for various network states. Additionally, an attacker defender game is set up to identify optimal regulatory strategies under various disruption scenarios. The results are complemented by a sensitivity analysis on SOx emissions pricing, to better equip policy makers to manage environmental and resilience legislation. The methodology and findings provide a comprehensive analytic approach to optimize maritime supply chain performance beyond minimisation of operational costs, to also minimize exposure to costly supply chain disruptions.
Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to identify the multiple types of data that can be collected and analyzed by practitioners across the cold chain, the ICT infrastructure required to enable data capture and how to utilize the data for decision making in cold chain logistics. Design/methodology/approach: Content analysis based literature review of 38 selected research articles, published between 2000 and 2016, was used to create an overview of data capture, technologies used for collection and sharing of data, and decision making that can be supported by the data, across the cold chain and for different types of perishable food products. Findings: There is a need to understand how continuous monitoring of conditions such as temperature, humidity, and vibration can be translated to support real-time assessment of quality, determination of actual remaining shelf life of products and use of those for decision making in cold chains. Firms across the cold chain need to adopt appropriate technologies suited to the specific contexts to capture data across the cold chain. Analysis of such data over longer periods can also unearth patterns of product deterioration under different transportation conditions, which can lead to redesigning the transportation network to minimize quality loss or to take precautions to avoid the adverse transportation conditions. Research limitations/implications: The findings need to be validated through further empirical research and modeling. There are opportunities to identify all relevant parameters to capture product condition as well as transaction data across the cold chain processes for fish, meat and dairy products. Such data can then be used for supply chain (SC) planning and pricing products in the retail stores based on product conditions and traceability information. Addressing some of the above research gaps will call for multi-disciplinary research involving food science and engineering, information technologies, computer science and logistics and SC management scholars. Practical implications: The findings of this research can be beneficial for multiple players involved in the cold chain like food processing companies, logistics service providers, ports and wholesalers and retailers to understand how data can be effectively used for better decision making in cold chain and to invest in the specific technologies, which will suit the purpose. To ensure adoption of data analytics across the cold chain, it is also important to identify the player in the cold chain, which will drive and coordinate the effort. Originality/value: This paper is one of the earliest to recognize the need for a comprehensive assessment for adoption and application of data analytics in cold chain management and provides directions for future research.
While systematic literature reviews (SLRs) have contributed substantially to developing knowledge in fields such as medicine, they have made limited contributions to developing knowledge in the supply chain management domain. This is due to the ontological and epistemological idiosyncrasies of research in supply chain management, which need to be accounted for when retrieving, selecting, and synthesizing studies in an SLR. Therefore, we propose a new paradigm for SLRs in the supply chain domain that is based on both best practice and the unique attributes of doing supply chain management research. This approach involves exploring existing studies with attention to theoretical boundaries, units of analysis, sources of data, study contexts, definitions and the operationalization of constructs, as well as research methods, with the goal of refining or revising existing theory. This new paradigm will push supply chain management research to the frontier of current methodological standards and build a foundation for improving the contribution of future SLRs in the supply chain and adjacent management disciplines.
What Is the Issue?
Sustaining long-term growth requires marine suppliers to define their pricing strategies in a holistic fashion. However, pricing is an under-managed activity in many companies. Especially when moving towards servitization, services or integrated solutions are frequently underpriced or promised at performance levels that cannot be delivered profitably.
Why Is It Important?
Pricing is one of the most important elements for all business and everything in the business works to justify the input value for a price and turn it into a profit. It therefore has a dramatic but frequently underappreciated effort on achieving profitability and keeping business thriving.
What Can Be Done?
The marine supplies industry needs radical change in pricing by thinking about customer’s needs and aligning the incentives between suppliers and customers for long-term relationship. Value-based pricing is the way forward. An intensive discussion has been made with regard to the key challenges of applying value-based pricing in the marine supplies industry. Understanding these challenges is crucial for a move towards value-based pricing and will shed light on how to tackle these challenges.
Supply chain researchers are confronted with a dizzying array of research questions, many of which are not mutually independent. This research was motivated by the need to map the landscape of research themes, identify potential overlapping areas and interactions, and provide guidelines on areas of focus for researchers to pursue. We conducted a three-phase research study, beginning with an open-ended collection of opinions on research themes collected from 102 supply chain management (SCM) researchers, followed by an evaluation of a consolidated list of themes by 141 SCM researchers. These results were then reviewed by 10 SCM scholars. Potential interactions and areas of overlap were identified, classified, and integrated into a compelling set of ideas for future research in the field of SCM. We believe these ideas provide a forward-looking view on those themes that will become important, as well as those that researchers believe should be focused on. While areas of research deemed to become most important include big data and analytics, the most under-researched areas include efforts that target the “people dimension” of SCM, ethical issues and internal integration. The themes are discussed in the context of current developments that the authors believe will provide a valuable foundation for future research.