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The subject areas are Operations Management, Operations Research, Transportation and Logistics.

The following courses (MBA/Post Graduate level) can use the case as part of their teaching material: Applied Forecasting Techniques; Optimization Methods; Operations Research.

The case details a problem faced by the Gokuldhaam Society. The society was located a great distance from the city, as the majority of the residents who live in the society work in the nearby industrial area. To cater to the daily needs of residents, the society has shuttle buses plying to and from the city at different times during the day. However, due to operational inefficiencies, the administration faced excessive transportation costs. Looking for advice in this regard, the chairman of the society contacted the Head of Department at Operations Management, Indira Institute of Management, Indore hoping to find a way to reduce some of the operational costs.

The expected learning outcomes are as follows: to make the students apply two different stationary time series forecasting techniques to a real-life problem and data set; to make the students carefully choose a specific trend-based time series forecasting technique due to the inherent constraints in the availability of data set; and to make students appreciate the importance of application of linear programming in a time series problem.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS 9 Operations and logistics

The case primarily focused on a real-life problem and shows that existing operations management tools can be used to solve a complex problem. Through this case, the participants will learn the application of the factor loading method and aggregate planning.

This case revolves around the Modi Agro Pvt. Ltd, a mango procurement and distribution business established in 1994 by Mr Dhanush Modi in Mumbai, India. Mr Mahendra Modi, son of the company owner, observed that the different seasons of cultivation and varied customer demands lead to changing workforce requirements during the procurement process. In addition, the production quality, variety, available resources, procurement location and cost play a significant role in establishing a long-term relationship with the customers. This case highlights the problem faced by Mahendra in determining an appropriate location among all available options for mango procurement and the optimal workforce for each month to meet the varying customers’ demands.

The case can be used as teaching material for participants of the course Service Operations Management, Operations Management, Decision Analysis and Quantitative Techniques

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 9: Operations and logistics.

The construct of Organizational Learning has been studied through various perspectives but still there is a dearth of literature on how the organization’s outsourcing activities impact the learning process, specifically human resource outsourcing. This paper intends to link these two concepts.

Several research articles related to Organizational learning and outsourcing have been read and reviewed. Based on the understanding from the literature the insights are summarised and discussed.

This paper demonstrates linkage between organizational learning and human resource outsourcing by putting forth the impact human resource outsourcing can have on organizational learning from both positive and negative lenses.

Not many studies have established the linkage between two important constructs- Organizational Learning and Human Resource Outsourcing. This paper intends to bridge this gap in the literature by highlighting both positive and negative aspects of HR Outsourcing on the learning capabilities of the organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the efficacy of diversification-based learning (DBL) in expediting the performance of simulated annealing (SA) in hub location problems.

This study proposes a novel diversification-based learning simulated annealing (DBLSA) algorithm for solving p-hub median problems. It is executed on MATLAB 11.0. Experiments are conducted on CAB and AP data sets.

This study finds that in hub location models, DBLSA algorithm equipped with social learning operator outperforms the vanilla version of SA algorithm in terms of accuracy and convergence rates.

Hub location problems are relevant in aviation and telecommunication industry. This study proposes a novel application of a DBLSA algorithm to solve larger instances of hub location problems effectively in reasonable computational time.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first application of DBL in optimisation. By demonstrating its efficacy, this study steers research in the direction of learning mechanisms-based metaheuristic applications.

An apparel supply chain primarily consists of geographically distant suppliers, manufacturers and retailers. The coordination among the members of the supply chain becomes difficult when we consider the triple bottom line of sustainability in it. Moreover, the complexity increases with the change in dominance power of the respective members. However, the task of managing the channel further becomes complicated after incorporating sustainability and dominance power simultaneously into the supply chain. To fill this gap, this paper focuses on designing of mechanism and demonstration of three-echelon model to coordinate sustainable supply chain.

In this paper, the noncooperative game theoretic method has been applied for the exploration of models. The various structures of the centralized and decentralized supply chain are considered on the basis of a player's dominance power. The model uses simultaneous and sequential move games to analyze optimal profit of supply chain agents, total channel profit, green innovation level and corporate social innovation level.

Analytical results show that simultaneous game performs better than the sequential game. The consumer sensitivity toward green and social innovations increases total channel profit. We also proposed a linear two-part tariff contract model. The proposed model enhances the sustainability level and leads to perfect channel coordination. Using a numerical example, we present the effectiveness of multiple game structures under centralized and decentralized settings. The results reveal that channel efficiency is the highest in the two-part tariff contract followed by a simultaneous move game structure and lower in the cases of sequential move game.

In this research, model setting are deterministic and there is no any information asymmetry. Therefore researchers are encouraged to study multiechelon sustainable supply chain coordination models under stochastic and information asymmetry settings.

The paper includes implications for the development of sustainable supply chain coordination model to tackle the problems of dominance power, sustainability issues and lower channel efficiency of supply chain.

This study proposes game-theory-based three-echelon sustainable supply chain for the channel coordination.

Supply chain network is complicated to manage due to the involvement of a number of agents. Formation of virtual organization using Industry 4.0 (I4.0) is an approach to improve the efficiency and effectiveness and to overcome the complexities of the channel. However, the task of managing the channel further becomes complicated after incorporating sustainability into the supply chain. To fill this gap, this paper focuses on designing of mechanism and demonstration of I4.0-based virtual organization to coordinate sustainable supply chain.

In this paper, we model and compare I4.0-based virtual organization models using four other traditional contracts with centralized supply chain. The non-cooperative game theoretic approach has been used for the analysis of models.

Our game-theoretic analysis shows that investment in I4.0 and sustainable innovation are beneficial for the overall supply chain. Our results show that linear two-part tariff contract and I4.0-based virtual organization model can perfectly coordinated with the supply chain.

This study consider deterministic model settings with full information game. Therefore researchers are encouraged to study I4.0-based coordination models under information asymmetry and uncertain situations.

The paper includes implications for the development of I4.0-based coordination model to tackle the problems of channel coordination.

This study proposes I4.0-based game-theoretic model for the sustainable supply chain coordination.

Due to the ever increasing concern toward sustainability, suppliers nowadays are evaluated on the basis of environmental performances. The data on supplier’s performance are not always available in quantitative form and evaluating supplier on the basis of qualitative data is a challenging task. The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework for the selection of suppliers by evaluating them on the basis of both quantitative and qualitative data.

Literature on sustainability, green supply chain and lean practices related to supplier selection is critically reviewed. Based on this, a two phase fuzzy goal programming approach integrating hyperbolic membership function is proposed to solve the complex supplier selection problem.

Results obtained through the proposed approach are compared to the traditional models (Jadidi et al., 2014; Ozkok and Tiryaki, 2011; Zimmermann, 1978) of supplier selection and were found to be optimal as it achieves higher aspiration level.

The proposed model is adaptive to solve real world problems of supplier selection as all criteria do not possess the same weights, so the managers can change the criteria and their weights according to their requirement.

This paper provides the decision makers a robust framework to evaluate and select sustainable supplier based on both quantitative and qualitative data. The results obtained through the proposed model achieve greater satisfaction level as compared to those achieved by traditional methods.