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Reducing Work-In-Process (WIP) in manufacturing systems is associated with advantages such as predictable throughput times and increased manageability. To achieve this, an abundance of WIP control methods have been developed, such as CONWIP1 and Kanban for repetitive manufacturing, and LUMS COR2 and POLCA3 for high-variety manufacturing. These methods take three types of control decisions, viz., release (entry to the manufacturing system), authorization (entry to a work centre) and dispatching (order selection at a work centre). All existing WIP control methods are hierarchical by first deciding on release and authorization before making dispatching decisions, thereby letting the decision whether to produce precede over which order to produce. This hierarchy is traditionally motivated by uncertainty in information between organizational levels, but this is questionable given the advent of Industry 4.0 technologies. We develop a non-hierarchical method – termed DRACO4 – that simultaneously considers release, authorization and dispatching when deciding. The simulation results show that DRACO significantly outperforms LUMS COR and POLCA on mean WIP and delivery performance measures. Additional analysis also indicates that overall manageability is improved by the non-hierarchical method DRACO.

Food banks redistribute food donations that would otherwise be lost for consumption by humans to people in need. As such, food banks play an important role both in addressing food insecurity for people at risk of poverty or social exclusion and in the prevention of food waste and its related environmental impacts. The efficient and effective management of food bank supply chains is a key part of reaching these important societal goals. In practice, however, the typical characteristics of food bank supply chains provide many challenges for supply chain management. In this paper, we present an overview of the key supply chain challenges in food bank supply chains based on experiences from various actors in these supply chains. Also, we review what the operations and supply chain management literature has contributed so far to addressing these challenges. Based on these challenges and the literature review, we will discuss the implications for future research. We found that important challenges related to dealing with voluntary labour, managing highly perishable products, and limited IT infrastructures have not received much attention in the literature. Furthermore, interdependencies between challenges related to supply, demand, and the matching of supply and demand require more interaction with different research disciplines.

Predictions that 3D Printing will lead to an Additive Manufacturing revolution have been made for at least three decades. Although adoption of these technologies continues to increase, there is a disparity between companies and industries achieving success and those becoming disillusioned when the technologies fail to achieve unrealistic expectations. The articles in this Special Issue provide empirical evidence and contribute to theory, to help rethink assumptions about Operations and Supply Chain Management and take account of the opportunities that Additive Manufacturing offers. This introduction to the Special Issue proposes a model to explain the contribution of Additive Manufacturing to business and society, which may range from none at all to a systemic societal impact. The model identifies factors on three levels, i.e., operational, strategic and contextual, which should be aligned with an organisation's adoption of Additive Manufacturing, in order to reap the benefits of these technologies. We show how the studies reported in the Special Issue align with the proposed adoption model.

Joint purchasing (JP) agreements are negotiated amongst competing OEMs to enable them to obtain rebates from their supplier(s). The iterative interactions involved in reaching such JP agreements result in disclosure of private information that the OEMs might prefer to keep private by procuring individually rather than jointly. This paper investigates how the information sharing dimension affects (1) OEMs’ motivations towards joint purchasing agreements, and (2) consumer surplus, specifically in industries characterized by market demand and technology level uncertainties. Past literature has looked at competitors’ incentives in sharing information, however, there is a fine line between sharing information and collusion/anti-competitive practices. Thus it is important to understand when information sharing, which is inevitable in joint purchasing agreements, will be beneficial to both the OEMs and consumers (and hence likely to be acceptable to regulators). To answer these questions we investigate a multi-period duopoly model with Cournot competition in which OEMs decide on purchasing jointly (or not) in the first stage, and decide on their production quantity in the second stage, under uncertainty and information asymmetry on demand and product technology. We find that a joint purchasing agreement tends to be preferred by OEMs and is also beneficial to consumers when either the substitutability between the two OEMs products is sufficiently low; or when technology level uncertainty is in the intermediate range for a high level of product substitutability; or when the procurement cost saving through JP agreement is high enough. Otherwise, a JP agreement may harm either the OEMs or the consumers. For OEMs bringing periodical updates to the market we provide a framework to analyze how their product level technology uncertainty (i.e., the potential for the product be a “breakthrough”) can affect their strategic decision on purchasing jointly with a competitor.

Today’s economy is innovation driven. Besides the launch of new innovative products, this implies that established products have a finite lifetime. This paper investigates its implications for optimal firm investments while explicitly taking into account that an investment decision is not only about timing, but also involves choosing the investment size. Moreover, we also consider strategic implications by implementing the finite product-life assumption in a duopoly framework. We find that in the duopoly setting, the project life being finite reduces the incentive to preempt the investment of the opponent. Furthermore, we obtain that considerable value losses will be achieved when the project life being finite is mistakenly not taken into account when making the investment decision.

Funding Information: The authors acknowledge the financial support of Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (Research Project PID2019-106577 GB-I00 by MCIN / AEI / 10.13039/501100011033 ), UJA- FEDER Andalusian Operational Program (Research Project 1261128 ), Andalusian Plan for Research, Development and Innovation - PAIDI 2020 (Research Project P20-00794 ), and Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT - MCTES) for its financial support via the project UIDB/00667/2020 (UNIDEMI). Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Authors The adoption of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies in recent years has generated conditions for substantial changes in supply chain management. However, research is still ongoing on how I4.0 technologies can be integrated into current supply chain models to improve supply chain capabilities and performance. This work aims to contribute to understanding the relationships between Industry 4.0 technologies and lean and agile supply chain strategies, and identifying the implications for the focal firm's operational performance. In this study, we focus on a specific group of emerging I4.0 technologies known as I4.0 base technologies (i.e., cloud computing, Internet of Things, and Big Data analytics), whose complementary features can enhance the data collection, storage, and sharing, as well as the analysis processes. Drawing on the Dynamic Capabilities Theory, a structural equation model is used to analyze data collected from 256 Spanish focal manufacturing firms. Results indicate that I4.0 base technologies do not have the same effects on lean and agile supply chain strategies. While I4.0 base technologies can make supply chains leaner, they have been found to have no significant direct effect on agile supply chain implementation. Further, findings indicate a direct relationship between the lean and agile approaches and that the latter generates mediation effects between lean and operational performance. publishersversion published

Distant upstream tiers in supply chains are hotspots for sustainability issues that expose focal firms to growing reputational, financial, operational and legal risks – yet sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) practice and research still focus on dyadic buyer-supplier relationships due to poor upstream transparency. Recently, however, focal firms have started adopting satellite technology as a tool for gaining systematic, continuous and direct oversight of issues like deforestation occurring far upstream to complement standards and certifications. This could transform multi-tier SSCM dynamics but, being a novel phenomenon, it remains unclear which organizational capabilities and collaborations focal firms apply to leverage remote sensing's potential. Combining dynamic capabilities theory and a multi-tier SSCM framework, our paper analyzes the current use of satellite technology in forest-risk commodity supply chains. Triangulating insights from interviews, documents and observations in a qualitative content analysis, the study finds that effective multi-tier SSCM relies on (a) internal resources providing four functions (traceability; monitoring; follow-up; stakeholder accountability), (b) complemented with external resources accessed through strategically selected collaborations that (c) take the form of working along supply chains, across supply chains and across sectors. The results show that technology-driven multi-tier SSCM can hold strategic benefits beyond risk reduction. Further research is needed to assess these relations.

The apparel industry is a substantial contributor to global environmental pollution at any stage of the supply chain. Clothing production and transportation generate a large volume of waste and high greenhouse gas emissions, often exploiting cheap labour in developing countries. Consequently, stakeholders are becoming more aware of the environmental and human rights implications of the apparel industry. This paper aims to investigate how fashion companies are redesigning their value chain to meet growing stakeholder demands for sustainability and circular economy. Using purposeful sampling, a qualitative multiple case study design involving 21 Italian apparel companies adopting circular business models was conducted. Data were collected through remote semistructured interviews, supplemented by secondary data to provide a richer context for our investigation. The research findings are interpreted through the theoretical lens of Institutional theory, showing the primary factors leading to the transition from fast to slow fashion business models. Notably, customer demand for supply chain transparency and the selection of certified suppliers strongly influence the development of apparel firms' business models, pushing companies to a radical change in their value proposition, creation, and delivery. This study guides practitioners, highlighting circular business model innovations and emerging digital technologies enabling apparel businesses to manage stakeholder engagement and promote sustainable development strategically.