Search results

Business process re‐engineering (BPR) is certainly one of the latest buzzwords and is the subject of great interest and also great controversy. Organizations need to shake themselves out of complacency to close competitive gaps and achieve superior performance standards ‐ the reason why many have embarked on huge BPR projects. In view of the high risks associated with radical change, there are, however, many problems associated with BPR. For some BPR is going off the rails before it is properly understood, and many BPR exercises are not delivering the goods. Sometimes, organizations are expecting “quick fixes”, thus displaying their lack of understanding of a complex system. It is unreasonable to expect quick results when so much change is involved, especially when these business processes involve not only machines, but also people. Many believe, such as Mumford, that the management of change is the largest task in re‐engineering. Many people perceive re‐engineering as a threat to both their methods and their jobs. Owing to this recognition, many authors concentrate on the need to take account of the human side of re‐engineering, in particular the management of organizational change.

Business process re‐engineering (BPR) is the latest addition to the armoury of management techniques available. BPR purports to produce quantum improvements in performance by radically redesigning organizational processes. There is, however, some confusion as to what exactly constitutes BPR and how, if at all, BPR should be integrated with other approaches such as total quality management (TQM) and benchmarking. Uses a survey of 65 organizations from different industrial sectors to examine the industry understanding and use of BPR, and its integration with other management techniques.

Business process re‐engineering (BPR) was first introduced in 1990 by Hammer and Davenport and Short. In these articles, the authors outlined a new approach to the management of processes which, it was claimed, was producing radical improvements in performance. These articles were quickly followed by a number of articles describing the benefits to be gained from BPR.

This study aims to explore the gaps concerning the organizational operant resources (OORs) of logistics service providers (LSPs) expected in outsourcing relationships. The study considers the views of both manufacturing firms (M-firms) and LSPs in India and DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) seeking gaps within and across regions.

This research employed a survey targeting executives from large M-firms and LSPs in both India and DACH. The perceptions about the importance and improvement expectations of 17 OORs are analyzed. A modified version of importance-improvement analysis (A-B), a novel comparative A-B analysis (CABA) method, has been proposed to identify the importance and improvement gaps in OORs between M-firms and LSPs within and across India and the DACH region.

There are more gaps between M-firms and LSPs in India compared to DACH. Cross-country comparisons reveal that LSPs in India and DACH have similar perceptions concerning the OORs, but M-firms in India have significantly higher improvement expectations than those in DACH.

This study proposes an analytical approach that enables managers to identify improvement areas and better align with their outsourcing relationship partners. It also highlights aspects that need to be considered while entering emerging markets such as India.

The analysis approach using CABA is novel. Also, among the cross-country studies, this is the first to compare outsourcing relationships in India with the DACH region while involving both users' and service providers' perspectives.

Generic quality management system standard ISO 9001 and the automotive quality management system standard IATF 16949 both require organisations to demonstrate continual improvement in their customer satisfaction and the number of non-conformities identified during quality system audits. However, the long-term trends of these two parameters under ISO 9001 and IATF 16949 standards are not researched so far. It is expected that under continual improvement, organisations will achieve a step-function/stair-case shaped pattern. This study evaluates if this expectation is true when long-term performance of certified organisations is assessed.

A longitudinal exploration of three organisations certified to ISO 9001 standard and three certified to IATF 16949 standard is done. The observations are further substantiated using secondary data for the same ten years period about customer satisfaction of the major automobile manufacturers.

It is observed that none of the two indicators, i.e. the customer satisfaction and number of non-conformities, in any of the six organisations show step-wise/stair-case type improvement. All indicators followed random up and down patterns like ocean waves. It is paradoxical that certified organisations are claiming continual improvement and are remaining certified but there is actually no long-term improvement.

Longitudinal studies for the generic quality management standard ISO 9001 and the quality system standard for automotive sector IATF 16949 are rare. The revelation about ocean wave patterns observed in the long-term trends for customer satisfaction and the number of non-conformities in ISO 9001 and IATF 16949 certified organisations is a startling finding. It is outlandishly different from the conventional perception of a staircase-styled continual improvement pattern expected a priori in certified organisations.

This paper aims to explore the effect of e‐marketplace on the supply chain's performance under the markdown policy. Profit and risk analyses are both conducted and channel coordination issues are examined.

The paper presents a markdown policy supply chain analytical model with e‐marketplace and examines the optimal markdown policy. The mean‐variance theory is employed to study both the risk and profit residing in the supply chain. Extensive numerical analysis is conducted. The paper investigates both the cases when e‐marketplace selling price is exogenous and endogenous.

The markdown policy can coordinate the supply chain as long as the parameters satisfy certain analytical conditions. The expected profit and risk in the supply chain are both increased when e‐marketplace is introduced. The retailer shares a larger portion of the increased expected profit but at the same time bears a higher risk.

In this study, similar to the mainstream literature in the related area, the supply chain consists of one manufacturer and one retailer, and there is one single selling season with one product. Despite being able to generate interesting analytical results, this model fails to capture the more complicated real world practices.

The existence of e‐marketplace can be beneficial to the whole supply chain in terms of expected profit improvement. When the expected profit increase brought about by e‐marketplace is large enough to compensate for both the operational cost of e‐marketplace and the increase of the risk, the retailer could consider introducing e‐marketplace to dispose of the excess inventory.

This paper is an original work. It is based on the reviewed literature and the model with markdown policy is new. This could be a reference for further research into optimal performance in the supply chain with e‐marketplace.

The purpose of this study has been to determine the level of difficulties/obstacles associated with the implementation of ISO 9000, the importance of achieving expected improvements and the level of success in achieving expected improvements. The overall aim is to specifically explore the influence of these factors on service companies' satisfaction with ISO 9000.

A survey methodology was used to gather data. Simple t‐ and Tukey tests, principal components analysis, and multiple regression analysis were used to test the hypotheses of this study.

The results suggest that service companies may be more than satisfied with ISO 9000 if they lay greater emphasis on considering alternative approaches to educating the top and medium level managers and receiving support from top management. They also need to focus on enhancing the enterprise's quality in terms of reputation, inter personal relations, and motivation on the part of employees.

There are several limitations. First, the fact should not be ignore that these relationships may not apply to all businesses because the data have been collected from service companies. Second, a large percentage of the satisfaction remains unexplained suggesting the need for additional research incorporating potential unmeasured variables in the current study.

Educating top and medium level managers must increase in importance as a competitive priority. Personnel must be provided with extensive training particularly in communication and quality skills. Activities aimed at increasing personnel motivation must be given a high priority.

This study presents a thorough understanding on a model of service companies' satisfaction with ISO 9000, and how various factors moderate several paths of the model.

This study proposes targeted modernization of the Department of Defense (DoD's) Joint Forces Ammunition Logistics information system by implementing the optimized innovative information technology open architecture design and integrating Radio Frequency Identification Device data technologies and real-time optimization and control mechanisms as the critical technology components of the solution. The innovative information technology, which pursues the focused logistics, will be deployed in 36 months at the estimated cost of $568 million in constant dollars. We estimate that the Systems, Applications, Products (SAP)-based enterprise integration solution that the Army currently pursues will cost another $1.5 billion through the year 2014; however, it is unlikely to deliver the intended technical capabilities.

BRITISH industry and commerce as a whole is recovering confidence despite continued stagnation in the manufacturing sector, forecasts a survey for the next quarter published by Manpower, the international work contractors.