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Omnichannel sales have provided new impetus for the development of catering merchants. The authors thus focus on how catering merchants should manage capacities at the ordering, production and delivery stages to meet customers’ needs in different channels under third-party platform delivery and merchant self-delivery. This is of great significance for the development of the omnichannel catering industry.

This paper formulates the capacity decisions of omnichannel catering merchants under the third-party platform delivery and merchant self-delivery mode. The authors mainly use queuing theory to analyze the queuing behavior of online and offline customers, and the impact of waiting time on customer shopping behavior. In addition, the authors also characterize the merchant’s capacity by the rate in queuing model.

The authors find that capacities at ordering stage and food production stage are composed of base capacities and safety capacities, but the delivery capacities only have the latter. And in the self-delivery mode, merchants can develop higher safety capacities by charging delivery fees. The authors prove that regardless of the delivery mode, omnichannel sales can bring higher profits to merchants by integrating demand.

The authors focus on analyzing the capacity management of omnichannel catering merchants at the ordering, production and delivery stages. And the authors also add the delivery process into the omnichannel for analysis, so as to solve the problem of capacity decision-making under different delivery modes. The management of delivery capacity and its impact on other stages’ capacities are not covered in other literature studies, which is one of the main innovations of this paper.

Original equipment manufacturers and other manufacturing companies rely on the delivery performance of their upstream suppliers to maintain a steady production process. However, supplier capacity uncertainty and delayed delivery often poses a major concern to manufacturers to carry out their production plan as per the desired schedules. The purpose of this paper is to develop a decision model that can improve the delivery performance of suppliers to minimise fluctuations in the supply quantity and the delivery time and thus maximising the performance of the supply chain.

The authors studied a single manufacturer – single supplier supply chain considering supplier uncertain capacity allocation and uncertain time of delivery. Mathematical models are developed to capture expected profit of manufacturer and supplier under this uncertain allocation and delivery behaviour of supplier. A reward–penalty mechanism is proposed to minimise delivery quantity and time of delivery fluctuations from the supplier. Further, an order-fulfilment heuristic based on delivery probability is developed to modify the order quantity which can maximise the probability of a successful deliveries from the supplier.

Analytical results reveal that the proposed reward–penalty mechanism improves the supplier delivery consistency. This consistent delivery performance helps the manufacturer to maintain a steady production schedule and high market share. Modified ordering schedule developed using proposed probability-based heuristic improves the success probability of delivery from the supplier.

Practitioners can benefit from the findings of this study to comprehend how contracts and ordering policy can improve the supplier delivery performance in a manufacturing supply chain.

This paper improves the supplier delivery performance considering both the uncertain capacity allocation and uncertain time of delivery.

This paper aims to analyse the key trends in oil delivery and production and evaluate the capacities of crude oil transportation systems in the Western European region.

To meet these goals, qualitative data analysis was used to assess the contribution of countries in the region to the total crude oil production and delivery, the changes in concentration of crude oil deliveries and refineries’ capacities, the capabilities of the regional crude oil transportation system and the trends in crude oil supplies and processing from 2005 to 2015.

The study established that from 2013 to 2015 oil supply to the region’s refineries increased and generated additional stress on the transportation and refining infrastructure.

This study examined the aggregate values of crude oil production, crude oil deliveries and refining capacities. In practice, different refineries are set to process certain types of crude oil. It is possible to use the described approach with a certain crude oil grade.

When developing the programmes for crude oil supply to refineries, it is vital to take into account the capacities of refineries and the capabilities of the crude oil transportation systems.

The study suggests that the region’s infrastructure has the necessary reserves to operate for the next few years without additional investments.

The aim of administrative reform— a special public policy instrument of governments— is to improve the capacity of public service delivery systems. This study examines the reform-led service delivery situation of public institutions at the local level in South Asia. The study offers an in-depth qualitative study with gleaned data, focusing on primary education in the country in relation to MDGs basic education. Local administration in the country has been a ‘low modicum of self-governance to provide public services. Institutional capacity dealing with educational management has called into question. Primary education in the country is quantitatively discussed while qualitatively is in a state of disarray. As a thorough academic qualitative study with a country-specific case has by far not been explored yet, it fills the information gap. Little is known about the public service delivery capacity with primary education at the local level. This study implicates governments and development partners such as the UN SDGs for effective partnership in development in an era of post-CVID-19 crisis.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate capacity coordination in services supply chain (SSC). It provides discussion and application of various contracts in a two-stage single period SSC.

This paper considers a two-stage serial supply chain with demand uncertainty and price insensitivity. A model is developed to represent a global IT SSC incorporating services specific factors like over-capacity cost and higher degree of substitution resulting in flexibility to meet unplanned demand. At first, centralized and competitive solutions of the model are studied. Then, the paper studies coordination in this supply chain using some of widely used contract templates.

This paper finds several key insights for the researchers and practitioners in this area around adverse impact of over-capacity cost on demand, positive effect of delivery team’s exposure to market on contracting terms and better understanding of efficient frontiers for selected contracting mechanism.

This paper has limited its analysis to three key and most widely used contracts and made assumptions about risk-neutrality of the firms. Future research can study other contracting templates and/or relax for the model as laid out in this paper.

An automated software agent can be built leveraging the closed form equations developed here to help decide on optimal capacity investment and devise coordinating contracts.

This paper established that because of higher degree of substitution, perishability and non-trivial over-capacity cost, SSC behave bit differently than the physical goods supply chain and coordination of participating firms needs to be studied in a services specific context for improving system-wide performance.

The purpose of this study is to identify the capacity needs of building professionals to deliver environmentally sustainable buildings (ESBs) globally, from a unique systems approach. Through a review of extant literature, this study contributes to knowledge of the global delivery of ESBs by identifying research trends and gaps that can be tackled in future research, and current hotspots in capacity building (CB) research within the built environment (BE). The adopted systems approach to CB postulates that the construction industry is systemized in nature, and thus, CB solutions within the industry should be approached from a systems approach.

A literature search was conducted using the Scopus search engine, augmented by Google Scholar and Web of Science, to produce 54 relevant articles for analysis. The scientometric analysis was undertaken with the use of VOSViewer to better understand the broad literature on CB in the construction industry which would not have been possible with traditional data analysis. The content analysis allowed, for a systematic review of selected articles, to reveal key themes in this study.

Through a content analysis, four levels of CB were identified within the construction industry; individual level, organizational level, industry level and state level. Nine sub-capacities were subsumed under the four identified levels adopted from Potter and Brough (2004), including but not limited to Performance capacity, Workload capacity, Supervisory capacity, Industry Role capacity and Systems capacity. Under each sub-capacity, key questions were posed to aid identify the capacity needs of BE professionals. A framework for identifying capacity needs in the BE is proposed.

The findings of this study serve as a useful reference for practitioners and policymakers to assess their level of commitment to CB efforts for ESB delivery. The findings of this study have revealed that building the capacities of BE professionals to deliver ESBs should be addressed as part of a broader framework, interdependent on the other levels of CB in the systemic construction industry.

As a review study identifying capacity needs for BE professionals to deliver ESBs, this study enhances knowledge of CB within the construction industry.

A deteriorating security situation and an increased need for defence equipment calls for new forms of collaboration between Armed Forces and the defence industry. This paper aims to investigate the ways in which the accelerating demand for increased security of supply of equipment and supplies to the Armed Forces requires adaptability in the procurement process that is governed by laws on public procurement (PP).

This paper is based on a review of current literature as well as empirical data obtained through interviews with representatives from the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration and the Swedish defence industry.

Collaboration with the globalized defence industry requires new approaches, where the PP rules make procurement of a safe supply of defence equipment difficult.

The study's empirical data and findings are based on the Swedish context. In order to draw more general conclusions in a defence context, the study should be expanded to cover more nations.

The findings will enable the defence industry and the procurement authorizations to better understand the requirements of Armed Forces, and how to cooperate under applicable legal and regulatory requirements.

The paper extends the extant body of academic knowledge of the security of supply into the defence sector. It serves as a first step towards articulating a call for new approaches to collaboration in defence supply chains.

This paper studies a concept for protecting vulnerable population groups during pandemics using direct home deliveries of essential supplies, from a distribution logistics perspective. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate feasible and resource-efficient home delivery strategies, including collaboration between retailers and logistics service providers based on a practical application.

A food home delivery concept in urban areas during pandemics is mathematically modeled. All seniors living in a district of Berlin, Germany, represent the vulnerable population supplied by a grocery distribution center. A capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP) is developed in combination with a k-means clustering algorithm. To manage this large-scale problem efficiently, mixed-integer programming (MIP) is used. The impact of collaboration and additional delivery scenarios is examined with a sensitivity analysis.

Roughly 45 medically vulnerable persons can be served by one delivery vehicle in the baseline scenario. Operational measures allow a drastic decrease in required resources by reducing service quality. In this way, home delivery for the vulnerable population of Berlin can be achieved. This requires collaboration between grocery and parcel services and public authorities as well as overcoming accompanying challenges.

Developing a home delivery concept for providing essential goods to urban vulnerable groups during pandemics creates a special value. Setting a large-scale CVRP with variable fleet size in combination with a clustering algorithm contributes to the originality.

In difficult geographical zones (mountain, intra-cities areas, etc.), many shippers, from small and medium enterprises to individuals, may demand delivery of different food products (fresh, refrigerated, frozen, etc.) in small quantities. On the other side, carrier companies wish to use their vehicles optimally. Taking into account the perishability constraints (short-shelflife, temperature limits, etc.) of the transported food products and environmental constraints (pollution, carbon impact) while consolidating multiple kinds of food products to use vehicles optimally is not achieved by current transportation planning solutions. The purpose of this paper is to present an interoperable solution of a marketplace, formed by shippers and carriers, dedicated to the schedule of food transport orders.

This transportation planning system named Interoperable-Pathfinder, Order, Vehicle, Environment and Supervisor (I-POVES) is an interoperable multi-agent system, based on the SCEP (supervisor, customer, environment and producer) model (Archimede and Coudert, 2001). Ontologies are developed to create the planning marketplace comprising demands and offers from different sources (multiple shippers and carriers).

A hierarchy ontology for food products. A transporter system ontology. A global ontology that contains all shared concepts used by local ontologies of both shippers and carriers. I-POVES an interoperable model, which facilitates collaboration between carriers and their shippers through its active agents.

I-POVES is tested on a case study from the TECCAS Poctefa project, comprising transport and food companies from both sides of the Pyrenees (France and Spain).

There has been much work in the literature on the delivery of products, but very few on the delivery of food products. Work related to delivery of food products focuses mostly on timely delivery for avoiding its wastage. In this paper, constraints related to food products and to environment (pollution and carbon impact) of transport resources are taken into account while planning the delivery.

Due to increased health concerns, restaurant customers rely more on credible cues that indirectly represent health-related credence quality. To comprehensively understand the dynamics between credence cues and restaurant delivery with different infection risks, this study aims to investigate changes in cue utilization during the pandemic.

Data on delivery sales, brand and review rating between 2019 and the first half of 2020 were obtained from Meituan. Fixed-effects estimation was used to investigate 579,858 restaurant observations across 338 cities in China.

Health concerns significantly increased the use of restaurant delivery and the increased delivery sales remained steady even after infection risk was reduced. However, cue utilization in restaurant delivery substantially changed depending on inflection risk. In the pandemic-spreading period, the sales effect of the brand increased while that of review rating decreased. The decreased effect of review rating was recovered in the pandemic-flattening period, whereas the abnormal brand effect continued only when branded restaurants had a high rating.

The findings demonstrate the selective and contextual nature of cue utilization in the restaurant delivery setting. These characteristics are also manifested in a health crisis from a credence cue perspective.

The findings demonstrate the selective and contextual nature of cue utilization in the restaurant delivery setting. These characteristics are also manifested in a health crisis from a credence cue perspective. Further, this study re-conceptualizes credence quality and cues, considering their roles in risk management. The findings help develop risk management strategies based on customers’ usage patterns of credence cues in health crises.

The dynamics between credence cues and restaurant delivery has not been comprehensively investigated, especially when infection risk changes. This study delivers theoretical and practical contributions about how to use credence cues in the restaurant business amid health crises.