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Mismanagement of supply chain operations may lead to waste of products and incur substantial monetary losses. This is particularly true for products with attributes that hasten deterioration, e.g. time, temperature, humidity and barometric pressure. Attribute-sensitive products must be carefully monitored throughout all supply chain processes to ensure acceptable quality to the end customers. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the scientific literature on attribute sensitive products and on attribute sensitive supply chains. The collected studies were reviewed using the content analysis method, focusing on the following aspects of attribute sensitive products: (1) industries; (2) product categories; (3) decisions involved; (4) processes; (5) current issues; (6) sustainability concerns; (7) research methods used; (8) objectives of decision makers; (9) solution approaches used; (10) incentives driving management and (11) future research issues. Based on the analysis of findings, gaps are identified, and future research directions are proposed.

Literature review and content analysis.

The authors discovered that, while the importance of product attributes vary from one industry to the other, overall the time attribute was critical in all of the industries considered in this literature review. Coordination, customer satisfaction, reliability and safety were key issues in attribute sensitive product supply chains (asp-SCs). Similar to the typical supply chains, asp-SCs face economic, social and environmental sustainability issues. However, the majority of the studies in our analysis emphasized importance of the social sustainability. The majority of the papers were reviewed and analyzed and adopted the modeling approach as a research method. Furthermore, it was found that asp-SCs were mostly driven with customer demands and social pressure.

Based on the literature review and content analysis, there are a number of directions for the work conducted in this study to be extended in several directions. First, the literature search could be expanded by relaxing some of the restrictions (e.g. include the conference papers and articles from on-line business journals). Second, additional scientific publishers can be considered (e.g. Emerald Insight–www.emeraldinsight.com; Inderscience–www.inderscience.com). The latter two extensions would allow a more precise assessment of published to date work on asp-SC operations. Third, our findings could be validated based on interviews with professionals and executives from companies dealing with asp-SCs. Such validation will allow identification of the differences between the state of the art and the state of practice.

Supply chains that handle attribute sensitive products (asps) must consider the complexity of products that significantly change their properties due to factors such as time, temperature, barometric pressure, humidity. Mismanagement of operations within such supply chains may lead to significant product waste, as well as substantial monetary losses.

This study presented a comprehensive literature review and content analysis of studies dealing with asps in the following industries: fashion, food, healthcare, humanitarian and pharmaceutical industries

The paper aims to further understanding of connectivity from the perspective of blockchain technology (BT) in the supply chain (SC). It presents the weaknesses (inhibitors) of connectivity during technology implementation, focusing on supply chain interaction and resilience.

Restricting the focus to digital connectivity, interaction and supply chain resilience, this paper uses a systematic literature review (SLR) to examine how the literature has addressed, related or flagged connectivity weaknesses affecting supply chain interaction and resilience.

This study highlights the influence of connectivity for blockchain-technology projects. Technical and organisational influencers that affect the adoption of technology in the SC are presented. These influencers support the factors proposed in this study regarding the weaknesses that negatively affect the interaction between the agents involved and the SC's resilience. The research suggests that the weaknesses are related to technical needs and the relationships between companies arising from functionalities.

This paper is restricted to a review of the theory and the researched material. Although the author was careful to choose the best search terms related to the research objective, some potentially relevant articles may have been excluded.

The study summarises research on blockchain connectivity influencers in the SC, helping managers to anticipate and mitigate some of doubts and concerns in projects of this nature.

This is one of the first articles in the area of operations and SCs that addresses the topic of connectivity, focusing on its restrictive factors (connectivity inhibitors), in the context of blockchain implementation in the SC.

High-quality cold-chain logistics are key to effectively managing the quality of temperature-sensitive foods. Hence, this study investigates the service quality of such logistics, using a real-life case of temperature-sensitive milk delivery.

This study focuses on developing business analytics for quality control in cold-chain perishable-food logistics, grounded in normal accident theory and stakeholder theory, and tests them using real-world data.

The empirical business-analytics results indicate that cargo locations, logistics status and delivery times are the essential factors that influence the quality of temperature-sensitive milk.

This study confirms that a combination of normal accident theory and stakeholder theory can be usefully applied to the development of strategies for managing perishable-food logistics. As such, its proposed business analytics provide a fresh foundation for research on logistics quality management.

The balance between efficiency and service quality in a logistics system should be assessed carefully, and logistics companies should collaborate with their stakeholders and can help to mitigate potential cold-chain risks.

This pioneering analytical study explores the essential quality issues that confront cold chains and demonstrates how to extract vital insights from temperature-sensitive food logistics monitoring data. As such, it represents a noteworthy contribution to the field of logistics quality management.