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Industrial vending solutions are unique in that they represent a very specific form of vendor-managed inventory (VMI). The purpose of this paper is to investigate performance outcomes associated with industrial vending implementation, a topic that has been largely ignored by the academic community.

A survey instrument was developed from earlier work on VMI success. Structural equation modeling is used to identify relationships between three enablers (information exchange, information quality, and relationship quality), perceived vending system implementation success, and three outcomes (cost benefits, customer service benefits, and inventory benefits).

Statistical outcomes demonstrate support for the benefits arising from successful vending system implementation. This study demonstrates that industrial vending implementation success is strongly tied to the amount and quality of the information shared between the relationship partners.

Successful industrial vending implementation results in improved inventory control, increased levels of customer service, and tighter cost control. This study provides supply chain managers with current findings, which should aid them in evaluating their current and proposed vending solutions.

Although VMI has been studied in the past, little work has been conducted on industrial vending as a specific form of VMI. This is the first study to explore industrial vending from the viewpoint of VMI implementation and performance. Empirically tested study results that are grounded in transaction cost theory confirm a series of performance outcomes of industrial vending from a buyer’s perspective as well as a number of enablers for successful industrial vending implementation.

This study identifies the conventional elements of the vending marketing mix and how they vary across academic segments in the context of a typical French university.

To determine the elements of the vending marketing mix, the author conducts interviews with international industry experts and undertake 170 direct observations at various universities to verify the differences between the marketing mix proposals of dissimilar target markets.

The results reveal significant variances across all elements of the marketing mix, with distribution characteristics being the most frequently adapted element across various markets, followed by promotion- and product-related parameters, while pricing characteristics are most commonly standardised.

Vending operators should pay particular attention to marketing decisions related to the product assortment length, selection of appropriate locations, availability of smart payment options and feedback communication channels. The results reveal significant variances across all elements of the marketing mix indicating that vending operators apply strategies to reach different market segments. However, there is a high degree of standardisation within vending channels.

Though vending channels are an important retail format, prior studies do not investigate their marketing mixes. This is the first attempt to empirically establish the conventional elements of the vending marketing mix and to measure its variation across customer segments.

Successful planning of a corporate catering facility depends on a thorough appraisal of staff needs and expectations — and on the level of subsidy management is prepared to commit to service. As we pointed out in a previous Facilities article (Vol 2/No 7/July 1984), the style of your catering operation will be a direct reflection of the degree and quality of care your organisation extends to its employees and a direct influence on staff productivity and morale. This month we start a new series to help facilities managers specify, cost and manage their catering operation and provide the right style and quality of service to staff.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze friction and controversies with interaction processes and their effects on forming new resource interfaces, through the lens of boundary objects.

The empirical setting consists of two organizations that are trying to enhance their competitive advantage through digitalization. During the process of data collection four different boundary objects were identified. The study illustrates how these boundary objects were characterized in terms of their modularity, standardization, abstractness and tangibility. This paper provides an analysis of how respondents perceived that the development of these boundary objects affected the creation of novel resource interfaces, and the resulting friction and controversy between new and old structures.

The study concludes that within a producer–user setting a focal boundary object will take on tangible and standardized properties, and the interaction process will expose friction in terms of both power struggles and resource incompatibilities. On the other hand, a boundary object’s modularity gives the actors central to the interaction room to maneuver and avoid resource incompatibilities and the development setting will hence be characterized by controversies.

The analysis indicates that the way individuals perceive boundary objects is central to interaction processes, answering calls for studies that investigate the role of objects within subject-to-object interaction.

The main operations of the powder-coating process are staggered along a closed-loop conveyor. Given the volatile market demands, using a fixed level of staffing may result in significant productivity losses. The present study aims to capture stochastic behavior and optimize operator assignment problems in a practical powder-coating process. By using the proposed methodology, when demand changes, the optimal operator assignment configuration can be provided, ensuring high labor productivity.

The powder-coating process is an important industrial application and is often a labor-intensive system. The present study adopts a practical case to optimize its staffing level. Because of its operational complexity, the problem is solved by a proposed simulation-optimization approach. The results are promising, and the proposed methodology is shown to be an effective approach.

The proposed methodology was tested for various demand levels. The optimized operator assignment configuration always improves on the performance of other staffing levels. Given the same daily throughput, the optimized operator assignment configuration can improve performance by as much as 19%. In scenarios where there is increased demand, the resulting reduction in overtime work improves performance by between 20.33% and 56.72%. In scenarios where there is reduced demand, the optimized staffing level produces improvements between 3.13% and 50%. Compared with the fixed staffing policy of the case company, the flexible staffing policy of the proposed methodology can maintain high labor productivity across demand variations. The results are consistent with the Shojinka philosophy of the Toyota Production System.

This study proposes a solution to the operator assignment decision in a labor-intensive manufacturing system – a powder-coating processing system. Powder coating provides a solid powder coating without any solvent. Because of its excellent application performance and environmental protection, it is widely used in the field of metal coating, especially appliances for offices and homes. Most of the existing literature has solved the problem by making unrealistic assumptions. The present study proposes a simulation-optimization method to solve a practical problem in powder-coating processing. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology is illustrated by a practical application. According to the experimental results, five operators can be saved for the same daily throughput. An average of 35 and 19 min of overtimes can be saved when demand increases by 10% and 20% with one less operator; between 2 and 16 operators can be saved when demand falls by 10%–60%.

This paper explores innovation adoption in inter-organizational healthcare networks. The authors develop theoretical speculations to investigate better the role of artificial intelligence (AI) as an innovative tool to improve buyer-supplier relationships, creating better performance outcomes.

The research is based on a theoretical investigation aiming at exploring the role of AI-based solutions for managing buyer-supplier relationships. The conceptual approach allows us to identify some research streams (e.g. co-working collaborations in supply chain management) by proposing a matrix that helps clarify the analysis's directions.

The results show the importance of AI that can help the operator in accessing supplier information, including current prices, available stocks, and delivery status, thereby reducing the risk of information asymmetry. AI is intended not only as a technology tool but also as an innovative solution to promote business relationships and support vertical alliances through the value chain between buyer and supplier.

This paper can help healthcare actors examine the choices behind their operational strategies by providing transparency of the activities and availability of information in real-time. Finally, our study reflects the future directions to enhance the cooperation and innovation adoption among healthcare operators.

This article uses the case of paid domestic work in Los Angeles to argue that affluent and middle‐class members of U.S. society constitute important participants in the informal economy. In‐depth, tape‐recorded interviews conducted with thirty‐five employers of nannies and house cleaners, and survey responses of 154 Latina house cleaners and nannies shows that compliance with government regulations, as indicated by payment of Social Security, Medicare and federal tax withholdings, are rare. Affluent citizens may not directly depend on informally generated income, but as employers of paid domestic workers and nannies, they do depend on informally organized and remunerated services. Employers of paid domestic workers rely on three major narrative strategies to distance themselves from the regulations, arguing that the standards should be followed by certain categories of people (attorneys, celebrities, the very wealthy), that the regulations apply only to those employing full‐time help, and that the regulations are illegitimate because both undocumented workers and the state lack legitimacy. These rationalizations allow them to simultaneously condemn Zoe Baird and yet follow the same practices. Upgrading the occupation requires state support and the education of employers. This process would lead to greater recognition of paid domestic work as an occupation, one that merits the protections and regulatory guidelines governing other jobs.

Due to the current volatile environment and fierce competition, manufacturing firms (MFs) must improve their performance to survive. In this regard, checking and monitoring the suppliers' risk should significantly improve the performance of MFs. In addition, a relation based on not being an opportunist, confidence and reliance are influential factors in reducing the supplier defaults on his/her supply obligations and improving supply chain performance (SCP). Besides, the moderator function of supplier involvement (SI) in the relationship between quality of the relationship (QoR) and supply risk mitigation (SRM) is undeniable.

Based on the survey of 148 samples from small to large-sized MFs in Jordan, Turkey and Egypt, empirical evidence has been conducted to support a majority of the authors’ hypotheses. This paper provides a theoretical review of buyer–supplier relationships and supply risk. Hypotheses were tested by using structural equation modeling (SEM)/Smart PLS-4.

According to the results, confidence and reliance have statistically significant and positive impacts on SRM, resulting in better SCP. Moreover, the findings show that SI positively affects and moderates the relationship between confidence (C) and SRM, while it has no statistically significant influence on the relationship between reliance (R) and SRM.

This study provides necessary material for managers and decision-makers in MFs to confirm the importance and understanding of the QoR in building relationships and business dealings with partners in the SC, in addition to limiting and mitigating the risks of an interruption in supply in particular. Therefore, building a high-quality relationship as a practice based on trust and reliability with suppliers positively affects the performance of the SCs of MFs.

This research paper offers empirical evidence for using QoR within SRM resources of MFs' context for enhancing their supply chain performance. This study is one of few studies that examine the QoR and SRM that contribute to enhancing SCP in MFs in developing countries, which also can serve as a reference for many SC managers and practitioners.

In 2016, the ISO/TS 16949 quality management standard for the automotive industry evolved to IATF 16949. The update brought new requirements that need to be analyzed before being implemented in organizations. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to propose guidelines to assist organizations in the automotive sector in the implementation of the elements added in the update to the IATF 16949 standard.

To fulfill this objective, the identification and analysis of the elements added in the evolution from ISO/TS 16949 to IATF 16949 was carried out, and four case studies were conducted in Brazilian automotive companies.

The main elements added to IATF 16949 with the update of the standard are the use of process failure mode effects analysis (PFMEA) for risk analysis; the development of a communication channel for employees to report cases of misconduct and non-conformities; procedures for controlling repaired/reworked products and temporary changes; and the inclusion of autonomous maintenance for the full implementation of total productive maintenance (TPM).

The main practical implication/contribution of the research is the proposed guidelines, which can support managers and automotive companies that want to implement, or will go through, the IATF certification process. The article's originality lies in the combination of a theoretical framework and case study analyses to develop the guidelines.

Recent literature has highlighted the importance of quality and governance in supply networks. Usually, the relationships between the actors are complex, comprising both formal and informal interactions. Despite recent advances in quality and governance in supply networks, extant literature highlights the lack of quality in healthcare supply-chain networks in relation to governance mechanisms. This paper aims to investigate the role of governance mechanisms and their influence on the quality of healthcare supply networks, and assumes that governance instruments can support quality performance.

A multiple-case research approach was employed. Six organisations in the Brazilian healthcare sector were analysed (four operate only with renal replacement therapy, one is a material supplier, and one operates with renal replacement therapy and collective procurement).

Findings showed that there is no formalised supply network structure in these organisations. A possible consequence of this is that the supply-network governance is dominated by informal relationships. In the quality dimension, managers' awareness is limited, but there are mechanisms in place to control the quality of the materials.

Healthcare managers can actively invest in the social aspects of the relationship between buyer and supplier, such as trust and commitment, thus increasing responsiveness in patient care. However, this informal procedure can lead to problems with tracking and reliability, ultimately leading to quality problems. Therefore, it is recommended that formal and informal governance instruments be used jointly to improve service quality.

This study suggests that the integration of formal and informal mechanisms of governance can improve the quality of supply networks. Additionally, if the administrative process is purely formal, network relationships and their efficiency will be impaired.