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Nan province, the biggest cultivation area of fresh mulberry fruit in Thailand is located in four districts: Chaloem Phra Kiat, Bor Klua, Tha Wang Pha, and Wiang Sa. The production yield of mulberry is about 848.6 kg/acre/year; however, it is mostly sold as frozen product. The Queen Sirikit Department of Sericulture intends to develop a new marketing channel for fresh mulberry fruit. The present study was to explore the current situation of mulberry fruit supply chain management in Nan province and to propose a new supply chain model for fresh mulberry. To gather information about supply chain management, the supply chain operation reference (SCOR) model was utilized to investigate four members of the mulberry supply chains, including growers, primary middlemen, secondary middlemen, and customers. The SCOR model possibly identifies critical points in the current supply chain and five obstacles in the distribution of fresh mulberries that are improperly handled, affecting market channels and product quality due to a lack of suitable knowledge and technology for postharvest handling. Active packaging technology of fresh mulberries from a previous study was introduced to design a new supply chain model, and it was found that this technology could extend the product’s shelf life and preserve its freshness. Although the cost of the active packaging technology leads to a much higher cost on the newly developed supply chain compared to that of the traditional supply chain, the developed model could enhance new market channels, including selling prices, and provide growers with more benefits than the traditional supply chain.

Vaccines against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) have provided hope for containing the pandemic, but there are challenging obstacles to international transport and logistics of the new vaccines and vaccine inputs needed for manufacturing. This study identifies key barriers in the Asia-Pacific region to the timely and effective transport of vaccines from the countries where they are manufactured to the countries where they are needed. The main hurdles for vaccines are import and export restrictions and limitations, and the lack of policy priority. Major bottlenecks include securing vaccine import approval by the national food and drug authority, having correct and efficient shipment routes (reliable direct flights and transport capacity), ensuring timeliness on customs clearance along with security control measures, assuring cold chain integrity along the supply chain and implementing transparency and visibility through tracking and tracing systems. It is recommended that Governments develop a national cold chain tracking and tracing system to ensure information sharing and monitoring. Furthermore, there is a lack of cold chain capacity for traditional, frozen and ultra-cold vaccines, in particular in low-income and lower-middle-income countries in the Pacific and Central Asia subregions. To overcome obstacles and ease bottlenecks for import and export of vaccines and vaccine inputs, it is recommended that Governments in the region ensure good cooperation and coordination, including national, regional and international cooperation, among key industrial stakeholders in the public and private sectors. Such cooperation and coordination will help to smooth and ease the import and export process for both vaccines and vaccine inputs. Many countries in the region, such as Australia, India, Indonesia and Thailand, have reduced the cross-border processing time to less than three hours. Lastly, cold chain facilities and readiness are the key to the supply chain of vaccines. Where complying with different requirements and procedures for temperature management and control of different vaccines during transportation and cross-border processing is a challenge, it is recommended to conduct country-wide personnel training with an easy-to-understand procedure manual in local languages to build flexibility and capability.

Logistics Service Providers (LSPs) in Indonesia will play an increasingly significant part in the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). To prepare for the single market place at the end of 2015, Indonesia LSPs need to understand their existing situation and how they can improve their performance. The study follows a prior research on Thai LSPs and thus the same questionnaire was distributed to Indonesia LSPs and users. The SERVQUAL method was utilized to identify the gaps between the LSPs and users. It was found that neither Indonesia LSPs nor Thai LSPs can perform their service to meet with their customers’ expectation over the service delivered. The LSPs must improve their performance to satisfy their customers, which will directly drive product flows and eventually help them gain benefits from AEC.

The principal application domain for statistical process control (SPC) charts has been for process control and improvement in manufacturing businesses. However, the number of applications reported in domains outside of conventional production systems has been increasing in recent years. Implementing SPC chart approaches in non‐standard applications gives rise to many potential complications and poses a number of challenges. This paper reviews non‐standard applications of SPC charts reported in the literature from the period 1989 to 2000, inclusive. Non‐standard applications are analysed with respect to application domain, data sources used and control chart techniques employed. Applications are classified into five groups according to the types of problem to which control chart techniques have been applied. For each group the nature of the applications is described and analysed. The review does not show a paradigm shift in the types of SPC control chart applications but does show clearly that the application boundaries extend considerably beyond manufacturing and that the range of problems to which SPC control chart techniques can be applied is much wider than commonly assumed. The paper highlights the critical fundamental and technical issues that need to be addressed when applying SPC chart techniques in a range of non‐standard applications. Wider managerial issues of importance for successful implementations in non‐standard applications of SPC control charts are also discussed.

Thai Agricultural Research Journal, 32, 1, 16-34

In both manufacturing and service operations effective scheduling plays an important role in achieving delivery performance and in utilizing resources economically. Classical scheduling theory takes a narrow, static view of performance. In reality the assessment of scheduling performance is a particularly difficult task. Typically scheduling is an activity that takes place repeatedly over time in the context of an overall planning and control architecture. Scheduling may be viewed as an activity within a process. Statistical Process Control (SPC) provides an attractive option for monitoring performance. In this paper we investigate the potential of applying SPC control charts in this context. The feasibility of monitoring flow time in a single processor model using control charts is studied using simulation. The application of control charts to monitor time-related measures in operational systems raises fundamental statistical problems. The need for approaches that are robust with respect to data correlation and lack of normality is shown to be an essential requirement. Residual-based approaches and the Exponentially Weighted Moving Average (EWMA) chart are shown to be reasonably effective in avoiding false alarms and in detecting process shifts. The applicability of the single processor model to more complex operational systems is discussed. The implications of the work for the design of performance monitoring and continuous improvement systems for time-related measures in manufacturing and service operations are considered. A number of areas are highlighted for further theoretical and practical studies.

Thai Agricultural Research Journal, 30, 1, 73-90

THAI AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH JOURNAL, 35, 3, 296-309