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The authors develop a methodology to select appropriate sustainable supply chain indicators (SSCIs) to measure Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the global supply chain.

SSCIs are identified by reviewing the extant literature and topic modeling. Further, they are evaluated based on existing SDGs and ranked using the fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) method. Notably, the evaluation of indicators is a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) process within a fuzzy environment. The methodology has been explained using a case study from the automobile industry.

The case study identifies appropriate SSCIs and differentiates them among peer suppliers for gaining a competitive advantage. The results reveal that top-ranked sustainability indicators include the management of natural resources, energy, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and social investment.

The study outcome will enable suppliers, specialists and decision makers to understand the criteria that improve supply chain sustainability in the automobile industry. The analysis provides a comprehensive understanding of the competitive package of indicators for gaining strategic advantage. This proactive sustainability indicator selection promotes and enhances sustainability reporting while fulfilling regulatory requirements and increasing collaboration potential with trustworthy downstream partners. This study sets the stage for further research in SSCIs’ competitive strategy in the automobile industry along with its supply chains.

This study is unique as it provides a framework for determining relevant SSCIs, which can be distinguished from peer suppliers, while also matching economic, environmental and social metrics to achieve a competitive advantage.

The technology used by an organization is significantly influenced by the organization’s preferred competitive capabilities. The Internet of things (IoT) is an important technology, which is implemented by most prominent business organizations. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between an organization’s strategies and the IoT architectures implemented by the organization.

This study has been carried out on primary data collected with the help of a structured questionnaire. The data have been analyzed by statistical techniques like cluster analysis and discriminant analysis through SPSS.

The empirical investigation of data revealed that there is a relationship between organizational strategy and IoT architectures. The three-layered architecture of the IoT is most suitable for caretakers; the three-, four- or five- layered architectures are suitable for marketeers; whereas innovators find it more suitable to use five- or more-layered architecture of the IoT. This paper draws the conclusion based on maximum likelihood rather than using statistical analyses like ANOVA. The idea behind using the maximum likelihood estimate is that there are many subjective parameters in deciding the architectures of the IoT. These subjective parameters are difficult to quantify, so it is not possible to apply ANOVA on these parameters.

This study considers three organizational strategies; the relationship between other organizational strategies and IoT architecture will be studied in future.

This study offers multiple opportunities to practitioners and consulting firms of the IoT to adopt a suitable IoT architecture according to the organizational strategy. This study equips IoT development engineers to select suitable technology for data capturing, data transmission, and data management and access for an IoT architecture.

Although a lot of work has already been done on the architecture of IoT for different industries and businesses, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that relates organizational strategies to IoT architectures. This study applies to all the major industry types.

The aim of this paper is to identify the criteria that are used for vendor or supplier rating, prioritize these criteria based on the industry inputs and develop a vendor rating model. The data were collected from an Indian start-up working in product development using three-dimensional printing (3DP).

Factors of importance for vendor rating were identified through industry visits, and interacting with the industry experts from the start-up under consideration, substantiated by extensive review of relevant literature. A questionnaire-based survey was carried out to further narrow down the factors important to the industry, prioritizing them with a pairwise comparison analysis as envisaged in the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) technique along with the calculation of consistency ratios. Technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) methodology was further used for data aggregation.

This research brought forward the criteria that are useful for rating vendors or suppliers with reference to 3DP sector.

This paper integrates AHP and TOPSIS to solve a multi-criteria vendor rating problem. The attempt was made to make vendor rating process universal so that it can encompass all the vendors of the firm.

This study aims to propose a framework for identifying and measuring the gaps between evaluation and goal setting in service supply chain (SSC) processes towards planning and development of sustainable tourism aligned with the firm's real conditions and capabilities.

By the concept of the service quality gap model, the existing gaps between auditors' evaluation and the managers' goals in SSC processes maturity were examined. Then, each of the designed gaps was measured considering the goals addressed by managers’ and auditors' evaluation. Finally, the strategy and priority of sustainable tourism planning and development were determined based on importance–performance analysis (IPA).

The gaps caused by the expectations and perceptions of the firm about the dissatisfaction of managers regarding their addressed goals and the evaluation of auditors in the planning and development of sustainable tourism can be classified into three categories of goals gap, assessment gap and main gap. To improve the performance of the firm in each of the evaluation criteria under the results of IPA analysis, solutions were provided.

Realistic evaluation and recognition of the capabilities of the organization's processes through the proposed framework can be effective in goal setting and sustainable tourism development policies.

The framework proposed in this study can be a suitable approach for the balanced growth of all aspects of the firm in planning and developing sustainable tourism and helps firms in setting the right and logical goals.