Eco-Friendly Packaging in Supply Chain

--Suyog Dharmadhikari

The issue of packaging wastage is important because supply chain as an entity is facing a new challenge nowadays. Not only a company’s supply chain needs to ensure that right product is delivered at the right time and at right cost to the customers, but there is also an added responsibility of fulfilling the environmental requirements. With stricter regulations, scarce resource availability and more aware and demanding customers, the supply chain fraternity is slowly but definitely taking cognizance of the environmental aspects in day-today operations. The scope for eco-friendly packaging in India is very high. According to the data offered by the Indian Institute of Packaging, the total packaging waste in India is around 32 million metric tons per year. In developing countries, about 25-30% of packaging wastage occurs in supply chain due to the practice of shipping products in multiple boxes or in boxes far larger than their dimensions. Additionally, the products and supplies are packaged, unpackaged and re-packaged at each stage of the supply chain, generating more wastage and cost. This cost may range as high as up to 12% for product categories such as soft drinks to as low as 0.5% for pharmaceuticals. The success story of Wal-Mart augments the need for eco-friendly packaging. It uses ‘packaging scorecard’ system by offering preferred supplier status to suppliers who aim to reduce packaging waste by 5%. It offers a lesson to the supply chain community in India, where the disposal and biodegradability is a major issue, to focus on sustainable packaging.

© 2012 IUP. All Rights Reserved.

Measuring the Effectiveness of e-Procurement: A Case Discussion on MCL

-- Debendra Kumar Mahalik

Organizations constantly procure goods and services for their operation. There are various kinds of procurement, like traditional method and e-procurement. The traditional method of procurement requires significant investment in terms of resources, money, time and effort, and has several process limitations. On the other hand, e-procurement has an advantage over the traditional method in several aspects. This resulted in the transition from the traditional method to e-procurement in some, if not all organizations. Researchers and practitioners are always in the process of evaluating these systems, so as to ensure their effectiveness. This paper attempts to evaluate the effectiveness of e-procurement system with a case analysis of Mahanadi Coal Fields, Ltd., where e-procurement system has recently been installed using the Analytical Hierarchy method.

© 2012 IUP. All Rights Reserved.

Meta-Logistic Operators as Focal Organizations in Italian Logistic Platforms

-- Paolo Canonico, Ernesto De Nito, Gianluigi Mangia,
Marcello Martinez and Riccardo Mercurio

Logistic systems are more and more becoming key elements in building sustainable competitive advantage for business systems. In particular, logistic platforms (in Italian, interporti) carry out a highly central role in the Italian economic system, facilitating interconnections between various transport modalities and increasing the importance of ports’ ability to join overland routes with sea routes. Traditionally, literature has adopted a systemic perspective in which continuous interactions take place between actors and activities characterizing the system and determining success. In this sense, as Christopher (1992) claims, “real competition is not [any more] company against company, but rather supply chain against supply chain” (p. 14). The aim of the paper is to analyze the activities carried out within the logistic platform infrastructures, amongst which a leading role is played by a certain special typology of the actor, here defined as Meta-Logistic Operators (MLOs).

© 2012 IUP. All Rights Reserved.

e-Procurement Implementation: Critical Analysis of the Impact of Success Factors on Project Outcome

-- Prabir Panda and G P Sahu

Twenty-first century has seen the migration of many governance functions and services to the Internet. The terms like e-governance and m-governance are no longer unfamiliar words but are a political reality. The adoption of e-procurement by government entities to optimize and economize public procurements has been the buzzword of transparent governance. In fact, e-procurement has been touted as the panacea for issues like corruption and bureaucratic red-tapism. Literature is replete with studies which underline numerous benefits of migration of procurement functions to the Internet. However, e-Government Procurement (e-GP) has not taken off in India, though it is an integrated mission mode project as a part of the National e-Governance Project (NeGP) launched by the Government of India in 2006. A recent review of the e-procurement implementation by the Government of India brought out that the progress of e-procurement project implementation has been dismal. Against this backdrop, the study aims to identify the Critical Success Factors (CSF) for e-procurement project implementation. The research methodology followed included a detailed analysis of e-procurement CSFs reported in research literature and qualitative study of a few successful e-procurement implementations in India. The study concludes that the existing CSFs and their study models do not take the cultural and project context dimensions into account. Therefore, the existing body of knowledge does not aid managerial decision making. Finally, the paper brings out research gaps and suggests directions for future research.

© 2012 IUP. All Rights Reserved.

Suppliers’ Performance Evaluation and Ranking in a Supply Chain: An Analytical Hierarchy Process-Based Approach

-- Rajkumar Ohdar and Pradip Kumar Ray

Companies are now encouraging the outsourcing of their non-core activities, and are concentrating and allocating more resources on core activities that influence their dependence more on supplies. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a methodology for supplier selection and performance evaluation which depends on several criteria, including both quantitative and qualitative criteria. This paper presents how an Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP)-based model is formulated and applied to a real case study for supplier performance evaluation and ranking. Four key criteria have been identified in the supplier performance evaluation process, using Pareto analysis. The suppliers are ranked based on the priority weights calculated for each supplier. The three top ranked suppliers are selected and the weak criteria associated with these suppliers are also identified.

© 2012 IUP. All Rights Reserved.