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There is an increasing trend of outsourcing maintenance activities of heavy equipment, including belt conveyor installations. However, there are numerous challenges in maintenance outsourcing. This paper aims to identify and analyze various challenges of outsourcing maintenance activities associated with belt conveyor installations.

This paper identifies maintenance outsourcing challenges of belt conveyor installations through literature review, field visits and expert opinion. An integrated structural hierarchical framework of the identified challenges is developed through analytic hierarchy process and decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory.

The paper has identified eight challenges, namely, attainment of organizational strength by contractors, legal and financial challenges for contractors, attainment of necessary technician skills by contractors, maintenance data acquisition and analysis challenges, facilitation with modern equipment, gadgets and instrumentation, service quality challenges, health, safety and environment-related challenges and spares supply chain management challenges. The segregation of driver and dependent challenges, including their hierarchical framework had been established in this work.

A comprehensive list of challenges and their prioritization in maintenance outsourcing of belt conveyor installations had been established. This will help the organizations who own and operate these installations to make judicious decisions regarding outsourcing maintenance.

This paper significantly contributes to the literature on maintenance outsourcing of heavy machinery installations like a belt conveyor system based on the input of different stakeholders. This study will lead to the development of frameworks for maintenance contractor selection for such installations.

The construction industry shows an increased interest in how to manage logistics within construction projects. Often construction logistics is outsourced to a logistics service provider (LSP). However, construction logistics is normally approached either as a strategic decision or as an operational issue and rarely as a tactical concern. The purpose of this study is to explore how to organize the logistics outsourcing decision at strategic, tactical and operational levels.

This study is performed as a single-case study within a construction corporation, containing (amongst others) a building contractor (BC) and a construction equipment rental company (CERC) offering logistics services.

The study shows that to procure construction logistics service successfully, BCs need logistics capabilities at strategic and tactical levels to maintain an alignment between the use of logistics services and operational characteristics. Simultaneously, CERC’s need to design their service offerings to correspond to the needs of the BC.

This study builds on a single-case study of a Swedish construction corporation. Further research is needed to better understand current logistics outsourcing and development practices and how these can be improved to foster better logistics management at the project level.

BCs find suggestions of different logistics organization structures and suitable outsourcing arrangements. CERCs and LSPs can use the findings to understand their customers’ needs and adapt service offerings.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first studies of how two companies within a corporation can work together to develop construction logistics service offerings.

The aim of this research is to underscore the pivotal role of warehouse management in the current turbulent global landscape exacerbated by the confluence of a health crisis and geopolitical instability in Europe. In today's interconnected global economy, the turbulence of the global supply chain causes a lack of its resilience among companies. Facing this critical crisis context, companies are refocusing on business processes and outsourcing support processes such as logistics. In this paper we have empirical and methodological objectives. Methodologically, we employ a qualitative research approach utilizing action research in a collaborative framework that involves academics and practitioners. The purpose of this methodology is to empirically investigate warehouse outsourcing as a solution for enhancing a company's performance and agility within the crisis context.

The authors’ action research based on case study approach is conducted through an immersion within the ALCL French multinational company located in Morocco. The authors mobilize the theory of constraints, which allows us to set up a process of identification and optimization of managerial constraints (Goldratt, 1990). The approach allows to set up a retroactive loop to increase the performance of the constraint.

The study shows that ALCL has a storage over-dimension constraint due to the decrease of physical flows caused by the global crisis. The results of action research protocol show that the optimization of warehousing constraint is achieved by the total outsourcing of the process.

The study provides new insights into how action research can improve management practices within companies and explore concrete solutions to the logistical challenges faced by businesses.

An ever-increasing number of companies outsource logistics activities to third-party logistics (3PL) providers to beat the competition. From the buyer's (shippers') perspective, selecting the right 3PL provider is crucial, and from the 3PL provider's perspective, it is imperative to be attractive and to retain clients. To this aim, a potential lever can be physical assets, such as warehouses, which the literature has traditionally neglected. The objective is to benchmark the importance of warehouses for 3PL providers to attract/retain clients and for shippers to select the right 3PL provider.

The authors performed an empirical investigation through interviews on dyads (3PL providers/shippers) and utilized the Best-Worst Method (BWM) to rank the criteria used in the 3PL buying process and allow the warehouse's role to emerge.

Results show that the 3PL buying process consists of four phases and three evaluation steps. The selection criteria are classified into three groups: order qualifiers, order winners and retention factors. The warehouse has different levels of importance throughout the process. It appears that it can indirectly enhance the attractiveness and retention capability of 3PL providers through other selection criteria.

By combining the resource-based view and the customer value theory, this research extends the theory on logistics outsourcing by studying the phases of the 3PL buying process and scrutinizing the criteria used in different evaluation steps. The research adds a double perspective of analysis (3PL providers and shippers), which is missing in the literature, and focuses on the importance of warehouses.

This paper presents a decision-making framework for e-banking operations, based on the Quality Function Deployment and the Analytic Hierarchy Process. The main research question is the development of a framework and its potential contributions in supporting decision makers in implementing quality strategies that will encourage the usage of e-banking services (EBS).

The introduced framework comprises four distinct stages which include criteria determination, field surveys and EFA, QFD application including AHP and finally sensitivity analysis investigating the dynamic nature of the environment. AHP determines the intensity of the relationship between e-banking quality criteria and customer banking activities. A novel House of Quality (HoQ) is proposed, based on a market mix founded on key e-banking activities, and sensitivity analysis is used to investigate alternative scenarios. To illustrate the steps of applying this framework, the authors use a convenience sample from the Greek e-banking sector.

Through the illustrated example is supported that the proposed approach can reveal valuable information when contemplating strategies to improve e-banking usage and expand its acceptance. In addition, sensitivity analysis leads to purposeful insights regarding the effects of market segmentation and/or target settings on the ranking of e-banking quality/selection criteria provided by the HoQ. In the specific numerical example, the most critical quality factors were “Security and Reliability”, “Convenience”, “Design”, “Pricing” and “Skills,” although different rankings night well appear in different contexts or geographical regions. Moreover, sensitivity analysis showed that these results depend on the specific market mix and targets. As mentioned above, the implementation of the framework in different geographical regions or e-service sectors might certainly reveal different critical factors.

Discussed in the paper body.

Discussed in the paper body.

The paper presents a well-defined four stage framework for improving EBS penetration. It utilizes a structured qualitative and quantitative approach and outlines and ranks e-banking quality factors stemming from the market mix and allows assessment of alternative scenarios through sensitivity analysis.

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.

This study aims to empirically analyze how the quality of alternatives influences the commitment level in the relationships between companies in supply chains. It also studies how this ultimately influences the associated satisfaction level and logistics performance.

For this purpose, the authors adopted an extended investment model based on interdependence theory. The authors explored the relationships between logistics outsourcing partners based on the components of the investment model. To examine the correlations between variables, the authors surveyed workers in domestic supply chain–related departments and used a total of 300 valid questionnaires for statistical analysis. The hypotheses were verified through structural equation modeling using SPSS 18.0 and AMOS 18.0.

The quality of alternatives had a positive influence on the commitment level. Additionally, the commitment level had a positive influence on the satisfaction level but did not have a significant influence on logistics performance. Finally, the satisfaction level exhibited a proportional relationship with logistics performance.

First, this study examined the effects of the relationships between supply chain parties and psychological factors on logistics outsourcing. Second, this study applied the investment model to a logistics outsourcing-related topic. Finally, under the COVID-19 and the trade war, this study is significant as it shows that the existing commonly accepted hypotheses can be overturned.

This study differs from other studies in that it applied the investment model to a logistics outsourcing-related topic.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel lean management tool to provide a comprehensive and flexible evaluation model while converting customer voices into technical characteristics in lean implementations.

For this purpose, the proposed model was constructed by belief space-evaluations, quality function deployment (QFD) and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) in interval type-2 fuzzy (IT2F) environment. This model involves three phases: determining the linguistic weights and belief-based relations with their IT2F-sets, processing information about IT2F-based belief-evaluations and ranking the technical characteristics using the defuzzified belief-based relative importance values.

The proposed model was applied to automotive after-sales service in Turkey to demonstrate its use in lean service-decisions. This model was compared with its classical and type-1 fuzzy versions. The ranking-results of the proposed model differed from those of the other versions. The reason is that the IT2F-environment offers a sensitive and flexible evaluation of the model’s linguistic scales.

Calculations in the proposed model may be quite involved for practitioners. An Excel-dashboard was created to simplify the computational complexity.

Researchers/practitioners can apply this model to any lean manufacturing/service implementation.

Company managers/employees/customers can recognize their perception-mechanisms via belief space-evaluations and experience how uncertainty in the perception-mechanism affects their decisions.

The proposed model provides a new lean tool due to the Bayesian model combined with QFD-AHP in IT2F-environment. This model eliminates the ambiguity in conceptual change-based lean decisions.

This study examines the effect of human and technological resource bundling on the financial and non-financial performance of third-party logistics (3PL) firms in India.

For achieving the research aim, 248 practitioners from India based 3PL firms were surveyed. The relationships between human and technology resources and firm performance were examined using structural equation modelling (SEM).

The results of empirical tests revealed that human and technological resources significantly enhance the performance of the 3PL firm. However, the firm's logistic capabilities related to track and trace, order management and final assembly do not mediate this relationship.

This study contributes by examining resource bundling in India's 3PL industry using empirical data and providing knowledge of the relationship between resources and business performance. It guides managers to consciously develop resource capabilities that influence firm performance.

The main objective of this paper is to provide a systematic literature review (SLR) and structured insight into last mile delivery, ultimately identifying gaps in current knowledge and proposing a framework for future research direction in terms of sustainability in the area.

This paper identifies and synthesizes information from academic journals and examines “Journals and Publishing place,” “Geographic location,” “Year of Publication,” “University and Author Affiliation,” “Themes and Sub-themes,” “Theory,” “Research Design, Methods and Area” and “Industry Involvement.” A collection of online databases from 2005 to 2020 were explored, using the keywords “Last mile delivery,” “Last mile logistics,” “Last mile transportation,” “Last mile fulfillment,” “Last mile operations” and “Last mile distribution” in their title and/or abstract and/or keywords. Accordingly, a total of 281 journal articles were found in this discipline area, and data were derived from a succession of variables.

There has been significant growth in published articles concerning last mile delivery over the last 15 years (2005–2020). An in-depth review of the literature shows five dimensions of the last mile: last mile delivery, transportation, operations, distribution and logistics. Each of these dimensions is interrelated and possess clustered characteristics. For instance, last mile operations, last mile transportation and last mile delivery are operational, whereas last mile distribution is tactical, and last mile logistics possess strategic characteristics. The findings also indicate that even though the sustainability concept can be incorporated into all levels of the last mile, the current literature landscape mainly concentrates on the operational level.

This review is limited to academic sources available from Emerald Insight, Science Direct, Taylor and Francis, Springer, MDPI and IEEE containing the mentioned keywords in the title and/or abstract/or keywords. Furthermore, only papers from high-quality, peer-reviewed journals were evaluated. Other sources such as books and conference papers were not included.

This study dissects last mile delivery to produce a framework that captures and presents its complex characteristics and its interconnectedness with various related components. By analyzing last mile delivery in its entirety, the framework also helps practitioners pinpoint which levels of last mile delivery (operation, tactical or strategic) they can incorporate the concept of sustainability.

The research findings enrich the contemporary literature landscape and future work by providing a conceptual framework that incorporates the “economic,” “environmental” and “social” pillars of sustainability in all dimensions of the last mile delivery.