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Risks can easily disrupt the demand–supply match targeted by sales and operations planning (S&OP). As surprisingly little is known of how organizations identify, assess, treat and monitor risks through tactical planning processes, this paper zooms in on the S&OP set-up and process parameters to explore how risks are managed through S&OP.

A multiple case study analyzes the S&OP processes of seven organizations in the process industry, drawing on 17 in-depth interviews with high-ranking representatives, internal and external documents, and a group meeting with participating organizations.

The study finds that organizations proactively design their S&OP based on their main risk focus stemming from the planning environment. In turn, such designs proactively support organizations' risk identification, assessment, treatment and monitoring through their S&OP execution. Reactively, a crisis S&OP meeting – making use of the structure of S&OP – can be used as a risk-treatment tool, and S&OP design can be temporarily adapted to deal with emerging risks.

This study is among the first to empirically elucidate risk management through S&OP. S&OP design, execution and adaption are identified as three interconnected strategies that allow organizations to manage risks. The design enables risk management activities in the monthly execution of S&OP. The reactive role of S&OP in risk management is particularly novel.

This paper aims to examine how the extant publication has related big data analytics (BDA) to supply chain planning (SCP). The paper presents a conceptual model based on the reviewed articles and the dominant research gaps and outlines the research directions for future advancement.

Based on a systematic literature review, this study analysed 72 journal articles and reported the descriptive and thematic analysis in assessing the established body of knowledge.

This study reveals the fact that literature on relating BDA to SCP has an ambiguous use of BDA-related terminologies and a siloed view on SCP processes that primarily focuses on the short-term. Looking at the big data sources, the objective of adopting BDA and changes to SCP, we identified three roles of big data and BDA for SCP: supportive facilitator, source of empowerment and game-changer. It bridges the conversation between BDA technology for SCP and its management issues in organisations and supply chains according to the technology-organisation-environmental framework.

This paper presents a comprehensive examination of existing literature on relating BDA to SCP. The resulted themes and research opportunities will help to advance the understanding of how BDA will reshape the future of SCP and how to manage BDA adoption towards a big data-driven SCP.

This study is unique in its discussion on how BDA will reshape SCP integrating the technical and managerial perspectives, which have not been discussed to date.

Port throughput analysis is a challenging task, as it consists of intertwined interactions between a variety of cargos and numerous influencing factors. This study aims to propose a quantitative method to facilitate port throughput analysis by identification of important cargos and key macroeconomic variables.

Mutual information is applied to measure the linear and nonlinear correlation among variables. The method gives a unique measure of dependence between two variables by quantifying the amount of information held in one variable through another variable.

This study uses the mutual information to the Port of Isafjordur in Iceland to underpin the port throughput analysis. The results show that marine products are the main export cargo, whereas most imports are fuel oil, industrial materials and marine product. The aggregation of these cargos, handled in the port, meaningfully determines the non-containerized port throughput. The relation between non-containerized export and the national gross domestic product (GDP) is relatively high. However, non-containerized import is mostly related to the world GDP. The non-containerized throughput shows a strong relation to the national GDP. Furthermore, the results reveal that the volume of national export trade is the key influencing macroeconomic variable to the containerized throughput.

Application of the mutual information in port throughput analysis effectively reduces epistemic uncertainty in the identification of important cargos and key influencing macroeconomic variables. Thus, it increases the reliability of the port throughput forecast.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relation between estate transformations produced during the governments of the Citizen Revolution (CR) in Ecuador (2007-2017) and welfare regime transformations.

The CR’s project registers an array of specificities that make it a relevant case study to understand it. Among them, it articulated the transformation of the development model with a comprehensive state reform: emphasized both the modernization of the state and the productive structure, and the creation of the basic pillars of a welfare state. The ambitious project materialized in an ambivalent manner, revealing accomplishments and limitations.

The recovery of resources for the state, the efficient organization of resources, decentralization and deconcentration processes, public administration transformations and policy de-corporatization processes accompanied and even propelled important achievements in the social sphere in terms of decommodification, stratification, commodification and defamiliarization. Ecuador’s starting point, as a small and impoverished country with pubic and communal goods and services dismantled through neoliberal reforms, was quite precarious. But, progress was made. Beyond the identified limitations, its accomplishments must be highlighted because they are novel in comparison to other progressive government experiences, especially in the context of Central Andean countries.

This article vindicates the need to link state transformation processes to welfare regime transformations, as well as the academic literature that informs both fields. The description of what took place in Ecuador in the field of social welfare during the ten years of the CR continues to confirm the theoretical potential of the concept of welfare regime with the necessary translations and appropriations that allow for the analysis of countries in the region. It enables an approach to a more theoretically and methodologically elusive object that is at the same time tremendously potent in analytical terms and in its contributions to social transformations. An object that alludes to areas gravely affected during neoliberal hegemony, linked to public institutionality, state capacity and state autonomy. This is why everything that affects the state and the management of public goods and services must be incorporated into the analysis.

To date, the literature has usually assumed that a universal approach to resilience is appropriate in which different resilience capabilities are equally important for all organizations independent of contextual characteristics. In contrast this study investigates if production process characteristics affect resilience capabilities in terms of redundancy, flexibility, agility and collaboration.

An in-depth exploratory multiple case study was carried out in eight companies across different industries. Data were gathered through multiple interviews with key informants in each company.

The authors find differences in, and trade-offs between, resilience capabilities and practices related to redundancy, agility and collaboration induced by the different configurations of production system characteristics: especially between discrete and process industries. Further, a major influential characteristic is the production strategy employed (make-to-stock or make-to-order) which stresses or limits collaboration and redundancy.

This is one of the first studies to explore the effects of production system characteristics as a major contingency factor on the resilience capabilities of an organization. As such it provides valuable insights into the development of a more nuanced contingency approach to how organizations can build resilience and employ specific practices that fit their situation.

This paper aims to identify the occupational profiles of a logistics and a supply chain (SC) controller, both promising SC professions, examining the required competences and tasks undertaken while taking into account current trends in supply chain management and its wider dimensions.

The study used a content analysis based on job advertisements for the position of logistics controller and SC controller. The collected material allowed the construction of an occupational competence mix model in the style of Cheetham and Chivers for the logistics and SC controller, and the identification of the level of competence of both professions, using the model proposed by Czapla. In addition, the analysis of the data was supplemented by use of the Anova test and a radar chart.

The SC and logistics controllers have a high degree of similarity in both the meta and core competences areas. Similarities also occur in the case of the analysed groups of tasks undertaken by these professions. Tasks in the areas of “definition” and “maintaining” prevail. The SC controller and the logistics controller are considered “engaged inspirers” because they have reached this level of professional competence. Both these professions can ensure an effective, sustainable and transparent SC through direct cooperation with the SC manager and/or logistics manager.

This study uses a content analysis based on job advertisements addressed to the German market. These job advertisements are standardized, and therefore, provide only a general outline of the competences and tasks of the SC and logistics controllers.

The study provides information to practitioners by identifying the competences and tasks assigned to the SC and logistics controllers that are needed to improve the efficiency and transparency of the SC and its management. The research is an incentive for people involved in education to adapt changes in curricula in the business (accounting, controlling and logistics) and engineering (related to logistics) fields of study by creating courses based on SC controlling or/and logistics controlling.

The study shows the current, necessary changes for SC professionals (e.g. the appointment of a SC controller and/or logistics controller) resulting from changes in business and the challenges for SC management (e.g. transparency and sustainability).

The paper aims to considering quality that comes from quality employees taking discretionary efforts, having right perception towards quality, getting satisfied from their contribution. Exploring the relationship of engagement, perception and satisfaction, and mapping the levels and identifying managerial implications for improving the levels.

William Kahn’s employee engagement dimensions, Parasuraman and Zeithaml’s quality dimensions and Harter et al.’s satisfaction dimensions applied and variables framed in health-care context, tested and applied. Survey data collected from randomly selected medical and non-medical employees from south Indian state Tamil Nadu health-care organizations, using structured questionnaire.

Age, experience and roles of the respondents in work have a significant association with the levels. It explores a significant positive relationship of perception, engagement and satisfaction. The study explores an average 28% of employees have high level of engagement, perception (18%) and satisfaction (22%), and the rest fall under moderate and low levels. The roles of the respondents significantly predict the levels.

The study focuses on engagement, perception and satisfaction of employees, not of patients. It registered the responses of trained physicians, nurses and administrative staff. It illustrates human resource strategic importance to improve the levels concerning quality measures.

Logistics service performance measurement (PM) is a fundamental activity pertaining to the achievement of logistics goals and the improvement of services. The choice of logistics PM criteria depends on stakeholder goals and expectations, including logistics service providers, customers and government and regulatory institutions. PM is especially challenging in areas where high values are at stake, several actors are involved and uncertainty about cause-and-effect relations is high. This paper aims to examine the measurement of performance in offshore oil and gas logistics, which has unique characteristics such as a supply chain (SC) exposed to a harsh environment, the presence of several independent carriers and a highly specialised and costly set of vessels involved in long-distance transport legs.

The study is designed as a multiple case study of two Norwegian shipping companies and two international oil and gas companies. Data were collected from several parts of the offshore service SC in several Arctic oil and gas fields.

This paper sheds light on the performance of the SC and presents key performance indicators for logistics operations. It concludes that the measurement of SC performance must be context-specific and emphasis needs to be placed on the degree of uncertainty and inter-dependency related to the SC in question.

The study suggests a list of context-specific key performance indicators for offshore logistics with a special emphasis on the peculiarities of a harsh operational environment.

This paper aims to introduce a new mixed integer programming formulation and associated heuristic algorithm to solve the Military Nodal Capacity Problem, which is a type of supply chain network design problem that involves determining the amount of capacity expansion required at theater nodes to ensure the on-time delivery of military cargo.

Supply chain network design, mixed integer programs, heuristics and regression are used in this paper.

This work helps analysts at the United States Transportation Command identify what levels of throughput capacities, such as daily processing rates of trucks and railcars, are needed at theater distribution nodes to meet warfighter cargo delivery requirements.

This research assumes all problem data are deterministic, and so it does not capture the variations in cargo requirements, transit times or asset payloads.

This work gives military analysts and decision makers prescriptive details about nodal capacities needed to meet demands. Prior to this work, insights for this type of problem were generated using multiple time-consuming simulations often involving trial-and-error to explore the trade space.

This work merges research of supply chain network design with military theater distribution problems to prescribe the optimal, or near-optimal, throughput capacities at theater nodes. The capacity levels must meet delivery requirements while adhering to constraints on the proportion of cargo transported by mode and the expected payloads for assets.