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The Internet of Things has received enormous attention. Despite the lucrative potential, this study tries to look beyond the hype to understand how IoT impacts firm performance. Based on the information processing theory, we intend to explore how IoT influences the financial performance of firms. Firms, which realise the urgent need to adopt IoT might encounter a diverse set of challenges, like whether adoption will be profitable, the level of commitment they should devote, and whether to adopt as a first or second-mover. We want to comprehend such adoption challenges on the Indian manufacturing firm's financial performance. This study uses panel data from BSE 500 listed manufacturing firms and conducts multivariate analysis to understand the relationship between the IoT implementation proxies: IoT adoption, first-mover advantage, and firm performance in the light of IoT commitment and experts. The result indicates that IoT implementation has an insignificant effect on manufacturing firm performance. Meanwhile, the consideration of IoT commitment and experts jointly can enable a manufacturing firm to reap significantly positive financial outcomes. In other words, the IoT commitment and expertise positively moderate the relationship. The finding is useful to the decision-makers to address the firm-level adjustment before the mere introduction of IoT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Road freight transportation sustainability is gaining increasing importance due to an ever-increasing freight movement, globalisation and operational flexibility. The transport managers across the globe are finding it difficult to manage the increasing risks in its operation and implementation of risk-mitigation strategies under economical sustainability. However, very few literatures have examined the impact of sustainable risk management practices on road freight transportation. Our study addresses this important gap in the literature by proposing an integrated fuzzy failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) approach in the selection of risk-mitigation strategy on the trucking industry. Our findings direct to the managers that risk-mitigation strategies must be selected considering the criticality of risks along with the limited budget. In addition, we find that considering subjective evaluations of expert's judgment and cost benefit justification gives a convincing outcome while calculating of risk-mitigation number in FMEA approach. Proposed approach provides supportive guidelines to the manager to improve the decision-making process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Iterative multi-attribute reverse auctions in practice create certain difficulties for both the buyer and participating bidders. While the buyer faces the problem of creating the right attribute weights, the bidders have difficulty in adjusting the attribute values in each round. In this paper, we present an iterative multi-attribute reverse auction mechanism based on integrated data envelopment analysis (DEA) and best–worst method (BWM) with an objective of reducing the intervention of the buyer in the determination of the winner and also easing up the preference elicitation process. Unlike the typical scoring auctions, the proposed mechanism does not require the buyer to estimate the characteristics of the participating sellers in order to determine the optimal scoring function. As there will be no other intervention from the buyer during the winner determination process, the proposed method makes the procurement process impartial and corruption-free. Besides solving the buyer's problem, the proposed mechanism is also associated with an optimal bid determination method (OBDM) to assist the sellers in formulating improvised bids in iterative rounds of the auction. Simulation experiments show that the proposed OBDM benefits both the buyer and sellers. For the buyer, it provides higher expected utility and attribute values as per his preferences; for the seller, it gives a better expected profit and a higher probability of winning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the influence of using strategic inventory and forming collusion between upstream manufacturers and downstream retailers is studied when two competing supply chains offer substitutable products in a common market through exclusive retailers. The optimal pricing decisions are explored in five different scenarios. It is found that with a specific limit of holding cost, the retailer can carry inventory strategically for the benefit of each member when upstream manufacturers have a first-mover advantage. Two-period planning can outperform a single-period decision. However, if two downstream retailers form collusion and uphold strategic inventory, the profit share of upstream manufacturers can reduce considerably, but the sales volume of both supply chains increased. In that circumstance, retailers rely upon more strategic inventory, and manufacturers need to drop their respective wholesale prices considerably in the second period. A long-term wholesale price commitment contract is used to safeguard the interest of upstream manufacturers. We find that the proposed mechanism can improve the performance of all the members. Numerical experiments provide valuable managerial insights regarding the supply chain members' strategic decisions under competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study a vendor-buyer integrated supply chain with uncertain demand and random defect rate under carbon cap-and-trade policy. We assume that the lot sent by the vendor to the buyer in each shipment contains a random fraction of defective item, and a fraction of defective items can be repaired. The defective items get screened at the buyer and sent back to the vendor, and the vendor sorts out the repairable items. At the end of each production cycle, the accumulated repairable items at the vendor are repaired in a single lot. We have taken into account the carbon emissions from all the major sources, i.e. production, inventory, transportation, repairing, and scrapping. Shortages at the buyer are partially backordered. A mathematical model is formulated to minimize the total expected cost of the supply chain by optimizing the order quantity, reorder point, and the number of shipments between the vendor and buyer under carbon cap-and-trade policy. An algorithm is proposed to solve the model. A numerical example and sensitivity analysis are presented to get some managerial insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Government of India introduced the National Food Security Act (NFSA) 2013 to strengthen the public distribution system (PDS) in India. Extending the PDS service network is a contentious issue, especially for India's rural regions. This article aims to estimate the level of expansion of the PDS network, additional food grain requirement, and increased storage facilities required to serve the growing population of India up to 2025. The statistical analysis highlights the need for significant changes in the PDS to meet NFSA, and the findings can aid policy-makers to design a more robust PDS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores characteristics of three different channel structures of three-echelon supply chain, namely a traditional retail channel; a manufacturer's dual-channel and a retailer's dual-channel. In the dual-channel setting, a manufacturer operates retail channel through a distributor and a retailer while either the manufacturer or the retailer operates the direct e-channel. Mathematical models for both noncooperative and cooperative decisions are developed. Optimal pricing policies of all the proposed models are analyzed with theory. It has been showed that in three echelon supply chain, introduction of dual channel is not always profitable for the channel members compared to single retail channel. Optimal price of the product is always greater in single retail channel compared to retail prices in both the dual channels. To eliminate channel conflicts of non-cooperative supply chain, a two-way price discount mechanism is used to coordinate both the dual channels. It is analytically found that the retailer has opportunity to gain more profits in own dual-channel and in non-cooperative single retail channel instead of manufacturer dual channel. The distributor also prefers the retailer's dual-channel compared to the manufacturer's dual-channel. All analytical results are illustrated numerically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trucking is the backbone of Indian freight transportation as 63% freight movement is carried out via road. Trucking industry needs to focus on the operational efficiency, but at the same time, it is extremely important to minimize the likelihood of occurrence of the risk events with a strategic risk response plan during operation of the industry. Indian trucking industry is facing many risky situations such as fragmentation in the industry, underutilization of trucks, shortage of drivers and many others issues. To compete and sustain in the globalized scenario, it is necessary to quantify the perilous situations facing the trucking industry and develop an appropriate mitigation plan to handle such situations. This paper identifies various failure modes of trucking industry, their effects and possible actions for risk mitigation. The paper also proposes a Modified Failure Modes and Effect Analysis (MFMEA) to prioritize the mitigation strategy, using Modified Risk Mitigation Number (MRMN) approach and applies Interval type-2 Fuzzy FMEA to rank the risk factors. The proposed approach takes into account the ranked weightage of the risk factors and personal opinions of the experts for computation of risk mitigation matrix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]