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This study aims to clarify systematically the contribution of material flow cost accounting (MFCA) to green supply chain management (GSCM) by examining the coordination mechanisms.

Two qualitative case studies are conducted in a major Japanese manufacturing company, which introduced MFCA in two different supply chains. The concept of coordination mechanisms in supply chain management is used to consolidate the understanding on the usefulness of MFCA in GSCM.

The study’s findings reveal the significant role played by MFCA in coordinating material flows and eliminating sub-optimization in the supply chain from both economic and environmental perspectives. Furthermore, the focal company in the chain has an important role as the MFCA leader in implementing MFCA in the chain. In particular, the environmental department can eliminate suppliers’ concerns regarding opportunistic buyer behaviors and focus on material flows across the supply chain.

The study highlights the possibility of reviewing existing transactions by coordinating material flows. This is a new direction for the adoption of MFCA in GSCM. In addition, although the study highlights the importance of the environmental department as an MFCA leader, future research is necessary to establish this aspect with greater precision.

The two case studies discussed in this paper demonstrate the usefulness of MFCA expansion into the supply chain, as well as information sharing and progression, in the development of GSCM.

This study will contribute to enhance the green supply chain by implementing MFCA.

This study indicates that MFCA can potentially reveal the material losses caused by sub-optimization and provide information to avoid sub-optimization in decision-making. Moreover, it highlights the importance of the environmental department as an MFCA leader.

The problems of sub‐optimisation and resistance to change are chronic in organisations. Sub‐optimisation is endemic in horizontal relations, resistance to change in vertical relations. Both involve a dynamic trend towards maintenance and/or improvement of one's strategic position in relation to others in the organisation. Two solutions are presented: structural — from vertical control to horizontal competition; and skills — how to balance co‐operation and competition, with particular emphasis on negotiating skills. The structural approach attempts to reduce intergroup rivalries and to channel competitive energies towards organisational goals by using organisational structure and incentives. The skills approach focuses on the negotiating process as a set of social skills to balance co‐operation and competition. A model of negotiating is presented which could be instrumental in charting the behaviour of negotiators, e.g. in training sessions for structuring feedback.

This paper aims to address the issue of designing aerodynamically robust empennage. Aircraft design optimization often narrowed to analysis of cruise conditions does not take into account other flight phases (manoeuvres). These, especially in unmanned air vehicle sector, can be significant part of the whole flight. Empennage is a part of the aircraft, with crucial function for manoeuvres. It is important to consider robustness for highest performance.

Methodology for robust wing design is presented. Surrogate modelling using kriging is used to reduce the optimization cost for high-fidelity aerodynamic calculations. Analysis of varying flight conditions, angle of attack, is made to assess robustness of design for particular mission. Two cases are compared: global optimization of 11 parameters and optimization divided into two consecutive sub-optimizations.

Surrogate modelling proves its usefulness for cutting computational time. Optimum design found by splitting problem into sub-optimizations finds better design at lower computational cost.

It is demonstrated, how surrogate modelling can be used for analysis of robustness, and why it is important to consider it. Intuitive split of wing design into airfoil and planform sub-optimizations brings promising savings in the optimization cost.

Methodology presented in this paper can be used in various optimization problems, especially those involving expensive computations and requiring top quality design.

Healthcare productivity is a growing issue in most Western countries where healthcare expenditure is rapidly increasing. Therefore, accurate productivity metrics are essential to avoid sub-optimization within a healthcare system. In this article, we focus on healthcare production system productivity measurement.

Traditionally, healthcare productivity has been studied and measured independently at the unit, organization, and system level. Suggesting that productivity measurement should be done in different levels, while simultaneously linking productivity measurement to incentives, this study presents the challenges of productivity measurement at the different levels. The study introduces different methods to measure productivity in healthcare. In addition, it provides background information on the methods used to measure productivity and the parameters used in these methods. A pilot investigation of productivity measurement is used to illustrate the challenges of measurement, to test the developed measures, and to prove the practical information for managers.

The study introduces different approaches and methods to measure productivity in healthcare.

A pilot investigation of productivity measurement is used to illustrate the challenges of measurement, to test the developed measures, and to prove the practical benefits for managers.

We focus on the measurement of the whole healthcare production system and try to avoid sub-optimization. Additionally considering an individual patient approach, productivity measurement is examined at the unit level, the organizational level, and the system level.

To avoid sub-optimization in wheat storage centers, one of the most strategic facilities, it is necessary to review and relocate them to be optimized regularly. The present study aims to propose an integrated method using geographic information systems (GISs) and an appropriate weighting algorithm for the relocation of wheat storage facilities.

To achieve the goal mentioned above, sustainability pillars in facility location and relocation are initially developed; afterward, a set of suitable criteria are obtained from various scientific resources. Then, the weight of each sustainable development pillar and its corresponding sub-criteria were identified through utilizing the best–worst method (BWM). By applying the obtained weights in the ArcGIS software package, various geographical layers were designed, and land-use planning, logistics planning and sustainable logistics planning are carried out in the regions. The regions are ranked based on the scores obtained in the processes, and the best regions are selected for sustainable relocation problem.

A case study including 430 regions (counties) in Iran is conducted to evaluate the efficiency of the suggested approach. The study results indicate that Iran possesses a superior state for establishing wheat storage centers in terms of infrastructural and social aspects. Also, it is established that 16% of counties are recognized as sustainable locations for relocating the wheat storage facilities.

There is no most suitable analysis of the wheat storage facilities, as well as their strategic position in the supply chain, and there is a lack of considering sustainability in wheat storage facility location, despite the particular importance of it to the supply chain.

This framework is applied in an Iranian wheat-bread supply chain to find the best sustainable facilities. It is noted that this algorithm can be applied in other strategic facilities by minor and some major changes.

Decision-makers can apply the proposed methodology to find the best relocation sites for wheat storage facilities as the main part of wheat-bread supply chain in order to prevent sub-optimization and improve the efficiency of their supply chain.

Current online business development redistributes last-mile logistics (LML) from consumer to retailer and producer. This paper identifies how empirical LML research has used and defined logistic performance measures for key grocery industry actors. Using a multi-actor perspective on logistic performance, the authors discuss coordination issues important for optimising LML at system level.

A semi-systematic literature review of 85 publications was conducted to analyse performance measurements used for effectiveness and efficiency, and for which actors.

Few empirical LML studies exist examining coordination between key actors or on system level. Most studies focus on logistic performance measurements for retailers and/or consumers, not producers. Key goals and resource utilisations lack research, including all key actors and system-level coordination.

Current LML performance research implies a risk for sub-optimisation. Through expanding on efficiency and effectiveness interplay at system level and introducing new research perspectives, the review highlights the need to revaluate single-actor, single-measurement studies.

No established scientific guidelines exist for solving LML optimisation in the grocery industry. For managers, it is important to thoroughly consider efficiency and effectiveness in LML execution, coordination and collaboration among key actors, avoiding sub-optimisations for business and sustainability.

The study contributes to current knowledge by reviewing empirical research on LML performance in the grocery sector, showing how previous research disregards the importance of multiple actors and coordination of actors, efficiency and effectiveness.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a rolling horizon procedure (RHP) to deal with the large‐scale and strongly NP‐hard problem on cooperative lockage‐timetables and service‐policies of the five locks in the Three Gorges Project.

RHP based approach is composed of a series of periodical short‐time sub‐optimizations instead of global optimization. Each of the sub‐optimizations is modeled by a mixed‐integer‐programming and solved by a branch and bound algorithm with terminal penalty.

The RHP method is found to be effective and efficient. The size of the rolling horizon is positively correlated to the total weighted area of ships.

Precision of short‐time predictions is the main limitation.

This procedure promotes the navigation capacity of the Three Gorges Project and proposes a solution to the lockage‐scheduling problem of the Three Gorges Project.

Examines output determination in a sample of 50 small engineering firms with up to 100 employees in the Hampshire, Sussex, Dorset and Wiltshire region during 1992‐1997. Face‐to‐face interviews using a personal, open, unstructured approach were conducted in all firms with selected follow‐up discussions during the five‐year period. The findings indicate disconcerting problems of output determination within the sample. As a result of non‐optimum approaches to output determination displayed by the firms, financial returns will inevitably tend to remain disappointing for the small engineering firm. Seeks to provide all those interested in the promotion of business activity in the small firm sector, such as industry itself, higher education, government departments, the advisory bodies, consultants and local authorities, with a clearer appreciation of the real motivations and weaknesses behind output decision making.

In this article, a practical design methodology is proposed for discrete sizing optimization of high-rise concrete buildings with a focus on large-scale and real-life structures.

This framework relies on a computationally efficient approximation of the constraint and objective functions using a radial basis function model with a linear tail, also called the combined response surface methodology (RSM) in this article. Considering both the code-stipulated constraints and other construction requirements, three sub-optimization problems were constructed based on the relaxation model of the original problem, and then the structural weight could be automatically minimized under multiple constraints and loading scenarios. After modulization, the obtained results could meet the discretization requirements. By integrating the commercially available ETABS, a dedicated optimization software program with an independent interface was developed and details for practical software development were also presented in this paper.

The proposed framework was used to optimize different high-rise concrete buildings, and case studies showed that material usage could be saved by up to 12.8% compared to the conventional design, and the over-limit constraints could be adjusted, which proved the feasibility and effectiveness.

This methodology can therefore be applied by engineers to explore the optimal distribution of dimensions for high-rise buildings and to reduce material usage for a more sustainable design.

The objective of this paper is to present how two Swedish companies work, or plan to work, with sourcing decisions. The aim is furthermore to analyze if their decision process, or parts of it, can be used as a base for building a rightsourcing decision model. In this paper rightsourcing is defined as; “the process to actively apply in‐and outsourcing strategically to be competitive now and in the future”.

Since the business environment is dynamic and the global aspects are increasing, companies tend to focus on what they do best‐their core competence. The concept of outsourcing has, therefore, been growing rapidly during the last decade. Many companies seem to have a vague understanding about the risks and benefits of outsourcing, except from a general idea that it will reduce cost. Many companies hence experience that sourcing decisions are complex and the need for a model supporting sourcing decision exist within many corporations. This is accomplished through a literature overview and a multiple case study.

The results indicate that a model for sourcing decisions ought to include, or be based on, following aspects, e.g. the companies overall strategy, the companies core competence, both qualitative and quantitative data and risk analysis. The sourcing process also ought to be made with a process approach, avoiding functional sub‐optimization. The results also indicated that financial evaluation and documentation of the decision is important.

The multiple case study was conducted in one mechanical company and one engineering company from Sweden. The fact that the study only included two studies could affect the possibility to generalize the result.

This paper offers help to companies that consider sourcing decisions.