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This paper aims to assess the findings of a research project that investigates the scope for lean strategies to be adopted in beef, lamb and pig supply chains.

The paper reports on action research carried out in three red meat supply chains. The methodology is inductive and qualitative, using a multi‐case, multi‐site approach. Each of the supply chains was analysed from farm gate to consumer, interviewing multiple participants at each stage of the supply chain.

The analysis demonstrates that, although a lean approach has been introduced in the pig supply chain, it is much more problematic in beef and lamb supply chains. Furthermore, the majority of participants in the UK pig supply chain – the first to adopt lean strategies – have not received the commercial improvement (the “stairway to heaven” of higher returns) that was anticipated. On the contrary, the majority of participants in this supply chain are experiencing a strategic “treadmill to oblivion” of continuous lean operational efficiency, but with low commercial returns.

The research is based upon three red meat supply chains – beef, lamb and pig. It would be beneficial if further in‐depth studies could be undertaken in other agri‐food supply chains to further validate the findings.

If government agencies and/or multiple retailers develop lean strategies in UK beef and lamb supply chains, it is not at all clear that this will benefit all parties in these chains. This raises important questions about the efficacy and appropriateness of lean strategies in supply chains that do not have the same demand, supply and power and leverage characteristics as those in which lean principles were first developed.

This paper should be of value to researchers in this area and to managers responsible for strategy formation in UK agri‐food supply chains.

Supply chain management (SCM) proficiency is generally associated with superior business performance. Yet, SCM research continues to focus predominantly on the performance of individual firms, rather than on the collective performance of multiple supply chain participants as espoused by the extended enterprise (EE) concept. In response to calls for quantitative studies that examine the collective performance of multiple supply chain participants, this research study compares the combined performance of triads comprising focal firms recognized for their relative SCM proficiency and their upstream (supplier) and downstream (customer) supply chain partners with that of their close industry competitors' triads.

The triadic, longitudinal examination of multiple supply chain participants' collective performance utilized archival financial data of the period 2007–2017 from the Compustat database and the supply chain (SPLC) function of Bloomberg.

Findings of this study indicated that supply chain triads that included focal firms recognized for their relative SCM proficiency experienced significantly lower sales and general administrative expenses and significantly higher productivity, return on assets and profitability over time than their close industry competitors' triads. However, contrary to expectations, the performance advantages identified did not extend to revenue growth.

Supply chain triads cannot fully represent entire supply chains or EEs. However, this study’s triadic analysis can be viewed as a practically achievable proxy for further validating the EE concept. Moreover, based on assertions that triadic studies are suitable for SCM research and on empirical studies that consistently show individual firms recognized for their relative SCM proficiency outperform competitors, the authors contend that the study’s findings appropriately corroborate the value of the EE concept.

Because such empirical evidence is so rare, the consistent, collective performance advantages identified in this study should be highly significant to managers.

Robust, longitudinal evidence that supply chain triads which include focal firms recognized for relative SCM proficiency collectively outperform their close industry competitors' triads extends generally accepted associations between SCM proficiency and business performance, suggesting that the application of extended resource-based view (ERBV) in supply chain contexts warrants further examination and further substantiates the efficacy of the EE concept.

Supply chain is an important aspect for all the companies and can affect many aspects of companies. Especially the disruption in supply chain is causing huge impacts and consequences that are difficult to deal with. This chapter presents a review of selected multiple criteria problems used in supply chain optimization. Research analyzed the multiple criteria decision-making methods to tackle the problem of supplier evaluation and selection. It also focuses on the problem of supply chain when a disruption happens and presents strategies to deal with the issue of disruptions in supply chain and how to mitigate the impact of disruptions. Prevention, response, protection, and recovery strategies are explained. Practical part is focused in the risk-averse models to minimize expected worst-case scenario by single sourcing. Computational experiments for practical examples have been solved using CPLEX solver.

The purpose of this paper is to study various combination forms of the three basic sharing elements (i.e. orders sharing, manufacturers capacity sharing and suppliers capacity sharing) in the cluster supply chain (CSC), formulate a distributed model to protect enterprises’ decision privacy and seek to develop an effective method for solving the distributed complex model.

A distributed assembly cluster supply chain configuration (ACSCC) model is formulated. An improved augmented Lagrangian coordination (ALC) is proposed and used to solve the ACSCC model. A series of experiments are conducted to validate the improved ALC and the model.

Two major findings are obtained. First, the market order’s quantity change and the sales price of the product have a great impact on both the optimal results of the ACSCC and the cooperative strategy, especially, when the market order increases sharply, enterprises have to adopt multiple cooperative strategies to complete the order; meanwhile, the lower sales price of the product helps independent suppliers to get more orders. Second, the efficiency and computational accuracy of the improved ALC method are validated as compared to the centralized ALC and Lingo11.

This paper formulated the single-period ACSCC model under certain assumptions, yet a multi-period ACSCC model is to be developed, a more comprehensive investigation of the relationships among combination forms is to be extended further and a rigid proof of the improved ALC is necessary.

Enterprises in the industrial cluster should adopt different cooperative strategies in terms of the market order’s quantity change and the sales price of the product.

The proposed various combination forms of sharing elements and the formulated ACSCC model provide guidance to managers in the industrial cluster to choose the proper policy.

This research studies various combination forms of the three basic sharing elements in the CSC. A distributed ACSCC model has been established considering simultaneously multiple sharing elements. An improved ALC is presented and applied to the ACSCC problem.

A review of the literature reveals that previous research on capabilities has been limited to static capabilities and have largely been firm‐centric, which neglect today's evolving supply chain environment. To address this shortcoming, this paper aims to explore dynamic supply chain capabilities (DSCCS) as a path to achieving sustainable competitive advantage.

Logistics and supply chain literature is reviewed to provide a foundation for introducing a model of DSCCS driving competitive advantage. Propositions for future research are presented based upon the theoretical model.

The need to continuously renew boundary spanning supply chain capabilities may be facilitated by the presence of a supply chain orientation and a learning orientation found across the multiple partners.

Supply chain organizations exist in a continually evolving environment with the best‐performing firms often being characterized as agile and continually improving. The dynamic capabilities perspective provides a theoretical foundation that may be used to better understand and predict the success of supply chain firms. The work presented here is conceptual and empirical examination of the propositions should occur before any broad generalization can be drawn.

Long‐term organizational success may be facilitated by continuous renewal and creation of new static capabilities through the use of DSCCS.

The paper demonstrates that dynamic capabilities may be extended beyond the traditional single‐firm view to exist across the relationships developed by multiple organizations in a supply chain.

This paper aims to empirically explore demand-related information sharing in the extended supply chain.

Through a single, embedded case design, a range of methods are used to collect data from companies representing three different supply chain tiers, including focal company, first-tier suppliers and first-tier customers. The collected data are analysed through the theoretical lens of interdependence.

The findings indicate that the supply chain actors adapt information sharing to the pooled, serial or reciprocal type of interdependence. Information sharing is thus increased with key dyadic partners representing, for example, unique offerings and high market shares as percentage of total expenditure/sales. The study also unearths several barriers to information sharing beyond dyadic ties, including problems related to dis-aggregated, misinterpreted and/or incomplete information.

The study empirically contributes to the existing literature by exploring information sharing in the extended supply chain and by suggesting different approaches to information sharing depending on the type and intensity of interdependence between supply chain partners. Further, the paper contributes to the existing literature on barriers of information sharing in supply chains by identifying barriers specific to multi-tier information sharing. “Meta-information” (i.e. information about the shared information) is needed to overcome some of the barriers of sharing information in cases of weak, pooled interdependencies in the supply chain.

Similar to previous empirical research, this exploratory study indicates that companies, in general, refrain from sharing information beyond dyadic ties. Supply chain managers would instead mostly focus on stronger, reciprocal interdependencies and emphasise dyadic information sharing. To further guide managers, a demand profiling framework considering market share and demand uncertainty is presented. It may be interesting to engage in multi-tier information sharing in particular cases where strong interdependence exists between three or more partners.

This study contributes to existing research on information sharing in supply chains by empirically studying information sharing in an extended supply chain, applying interdependence theory as its analytical framework and unearthing several barriers that are specific to multi-tier information sharing.

The spatial and psychological distance within agri-food chains provides both profit and risk for supply chain members. Grounded on the transaction cost economics (TCE) and institutional theory (IT), the purpose of this paper is to test whether the adoption of multiple supply chains (MSCs), which adopt both traditional and shortened supply chains, can be used to manage uncertainty and mitigate the risk associated with a supply chain.

In order to test the hypothesis, matched questionnaire surveys were developed to collect the data from farm managers and consumers. Completed questionnaires were received from 112 respondents. The hierarchical regression analysis was performed to test hypotheses.

The result shows the positive effects of environmental and behavioral uncertainties on MSC adoption and represents the diminished moderating effects of institutions (industrial and consumption tendency) on the relationship between uncertainties and MSA adoption.

This study only explored producers and their recommended consumers; future studies can undertake questionnaire designs (one producer-to-many consumers) and empirical analyses with analytic hierarchy process theory to reexamine the hypotheses proposed in this study.

MSC adoption is a way to manage uncertainties resulting from spatial and psychological distance in the supply chain. Producers and consumers show their risk preferences by SC adoption after considering pre-constructed societal norms. Therefore, the consumers’ and producers’ choice of a supply chain reflects a process of communicating risk. The adoption of a mixed governance mode (MSC adoption) and accessing information about common practices are two ways to decrease such uncertainties.

There are multiple goals (traceability, fairness, efficiency, well-being) in the food supply chain that may be satisfied by MSC adoption. Therefore, policymakers should understand the different values of various supply chains and facilitate the development of various supply chain modes.

This study integrated the undersocialized and oversocialized perspectives (TCE and IT) to understand how uncertainties of supply chains may be diminished. Based on these perspectives, it found that the adoption of the mixed governance mode and accessing of institutional information are two ways to decrease such uncertainties.

The cluster supply chain is widely used in the professional towns in China, and improves the competitiveness of small and medium enterprises through integrating the supply chain with the industrial cluster. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This paper studies a cluster supply chain under vendor managed inventory (VMI) system, which includes vendors, third-party logistics (TPL) enterprises and retail enterprises, and aims to study the replenishment decisions and coordination contracts in the supply chain. The economic order quantity model is applied to analyze the influence of marginal transportation cost factor under two replenishment modes – direct delivery and milk-run delivery, in order to find out the optimal replenishment decisions corresponding to different marginal transportation cost factors. And then, the revenue sharing contract is used to identify the change of profits of enterprises in the supply chain before and after the coordination contract.

It is concluded that the marginal transportation cost factor is an important factor influencing the replenishment decision especially in milk-run delivery, and the introduction of the revenue sharing contract can improve the revenue in the supply chain.

This is the first study that explores the relationship between a single transport cost and a single transport batch of cluster supply chain in centralized VMI & TPL system. The conclusions of the study have certain theoretical significance for the decision making and coordination of cluster supply chain.

The aim of this study is to empirically identify crucial dimensions of security management in the container shipping sector in Taiwan and assess their impacts on security performance.

Data for this study were collected by questionnaire survey. An exploratory factor analysis was performed to identify crucial security management dimensions in the container shipping sector. Multiple regression analysis was then performed to examine the effect of security management on the security performance.

Four crucial security management dimensions were identified: facility and cargo management; accident prevention and processing; information management; and partner relationship management. Multiple regression analysis revealed that information management and partner relationship management had significant positive effects on safety performance, whereas partner relationship management had a significant positive effect on customs clearance performance.

This study primarily focuses on the effect of security management on security performance. Future research could identify the drivers and barriers to comply with supply chain security initiatives.

Container shipping firms can improve safety and customs clearance performance by focusing security management efforts on facility and cargo management, accident prevention and processing, information management, and partner relationship management.

Government administrators or other authorities may want to consider using crucial container shipping security management dimensions as criteria for assessing security performance in container shipping firms.

This study presented is the first to assess the effect of security management on security performance in the container shipping sector. Particularly, partner relationship management is found to be the key dimension for supply chain security success.

Understanding the significance of supply chain, demands need of multiple criteria for its performance evaluation. The aim of this paper is to propose an approach to evaluate the performance of supply chain using multiple criteria.

A multi‐criteria decision making tool, like analytic hierarchy process is used to develop an eight step methodology for performance evaluation. The proposed methodology is also elucidated with an illustration and a case from Indian chemical company.

Supply chain performance number is computed, suggesting the present performance status of the supply chain. The methodology also helps rank the various links according to its performance. The analysis leads in computation of supply chain performance number (SCPN): the value lies between 0 and 1.

The methodology can be suitably modified to accommodate any number of criteria and supply links, given the structure of the supply chain.

A case from an Indian chemical industry is presented in this paper. The findings of which, are encouraging and have benefited the practicing mangers in various ways.

This paper presents a unique approach for supply chain performance evaluation considering multiple criteria, with a flexibility to modify and analyze using the available data sets.