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In the epoch of open economy and with the emergence of availability of individualised products over the Internet, Indian manufacturing industries are facing an enormous pressure to become more flexible and responsive, to accomplish customer’s varied and increasing demands. Mass customisation (MC) is about developing a customised product on demand for a particular customer after reception of a real order and producing it with the similar operational efficiency as one would anticipate from a mass-produced product. MC takes into account the merits of both the earlier systems of production, i.e. mass production and craft production. The craft production satisfies the personalised demands of customers and the mass production produces a limited variety of products at lower cost. Industries in developing countries such as India confront pressure from several perspectives to adopt MC. This study has been presented in the context of Indian manufacturing industries, and particularly for footwear industries ...

An integrated supply chain has an advantage on the competitiveness of the individual companies. This article compares supply chains of three Indian passenger car manufacturing industries using Fuzzy AHP and extent analysis technique. Different factors pertaining to supply chain competitiveness have been identified. These factors are further grouped under three main factors, namely, assets, processes, and performance. Finally, the most competitive supply chain among the available alternatives is determined.

In the era of globalisation, requirements of customer are changing very fast. Product life cycle is shortening. Organisations are under pressure to reduce cost, delivery time, improve reliability of product by changing their process continuously. Supply chain management has become integral part of strategy for most of the organisations in meeting these challenges. Success of supply chain depends on effective strategy for improving coordination among the members to make it more responsive for market needs by optimising available resources. In this context, supply chain needs to be flexible. Based on the literature, it is observed that overall flexibility of supply chain depends upon suppliers’ flexibility, manufacturing flexibility and customers’ flexibility. Other sub-factors affecting flexibility may be product and process design, capacity planning, logistic management, suppliers’ capabilities and nature of customers. This study has tried to prioritise flexibility alternatives by analytical network proce...

The performance measurement problem has gained great attention in business and operations management literature. The first objective of this study is to determine the required performance measures and to develop a model for performance evaluation, based on these selected measures using analytical hierarchy process (AHP) methodology. The second objective is to explain how an integrated AHP-PGP (pre-emptive goal programming) model can be used in performance measurement while optimising the overall performance. An integration of AHP and multi-objective PGP is used to consider both quantitative and qualitative performance measures in optimising the overall performance of the system. The integrated model is presented with a real-world application using source data provided by a survey conducted in India. Findings demonstrate that the integrated AHP-PGP model can be useful to all supply chain industries in their day-to-day performance measurement decisions.

In today's era of globalisation, managing information systems (IS) for operations management has become one of the key strategic issues for increasing organisational effectiveness and optimal achievement of goals. The globalised competition and business supply chain management has forced many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in India to adopt IS practices to manage their day-to-day business operations. Most of the SMEs realised the need of an efficient and effective IS as a strategic weapon for competing in the globalised market. One of the important issues for SMEs is to follow the proficient practices for business operations and management of IS that can provide an efficient and effective IS performance. This article presents the findings of a survey study of leading SMEs operational in the three states of the western part of India. The survey focused on the prevalent practices for management of IS and their relationship with IS performance measurement. The study reduced these routine IS management p...

Production Planning & Control would like to welcome Toshiya Kaihara, Milind Kumar Sharma and Manoj Kumar Tiwari to the Editorial Board.