Concise Chronological Road Map of Evolving Green Supply Chain Management Concepts: A Review

-- Samyadip Chakraborty

Supply chain management (SCM) has been traditionally linked with procurement of raw materials to an integrated manufacturing process for the conversion into finished products. Increasing awareness about the eco-friendly aspects of business and organizations has necessitated the imbibition of added connotations, referred to as green initiatives, to the existing definitional form of SCM. This new concept called Green SCM or GSCM throws light on the eco-friendly sustainability aspects of SCM operations and logistics on one hand and speaks about the reduced environmental footprints left behind by human activities on the other. This paper tries to portray the gradual development and a shifting trend towards imbibing green initiatives in the operational practices of organizations, so as to conform to the need of the hour and move towards a sustainable and eco-friendly business environment. This exhaustive review aims at recording and documenting the development and chronological evolution of GSCM concepts from its traditional SCM manifestation. The paper also tries to champion GSCM as a remedy to the increasing ecological footprint and ever increasing environmental concern involving SCM. The paper discusses the extension of GSCM from the traditional concepts, its definitional perspectives, implementation hurdles and also puts forth a long list of empirical evidences and literary arguments to justify the massive positive impact of GSCM on environmental management. The business sustainability, profitability and economic aspects have also been focused while discussing the management of reverse logistics and global value-seeking approach of GSCM practices.

© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.

Integrating Total Quality Management and Supply Chain Management: Similarities and Benefits

-- Faisal Talib, Zillur Rahman and M N Qureshi

Total Quality Management (TQM) and Supply Chain Management (SCM) have been considered to be the two most important strategic approaches for the organizations like manufacturing, services and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). They have become the prerequisite for success and competitive advantage in the global market. This paper compares and contrasts the issues of TQM and SCM related to their similarities, and identifies the potential benefits by integrating them through an extant review of literature. The paper adopted an extensive literature survey methodology on the concepts and themes of TQM and SCM to explore how definitions, origin, goals, practices, development stages, focus area, tools used and scope could benefit in their integration. Some potential benefits of TQM and SCM are also identified from the extant literature review and are listed. The literature review suggested that TQM and SCM strengthen the organizational competitiveness and improve customer satisfaction. Also, TQM is more focused on continuous quality improvement and participation while SCM emphasizes on supplier relationship and management, and timely delivery of products and services. This paper revealed eight potential benefits of TQM and SCM and are discussed in detail. The literature review further showed that there are many researches taken on TQM and SCM individually, dealing with different aspects and themes but a comparative study of present type are still in its nascent stage that integrates the two concepts. This paper could therefore, bring out some opportunities for managers and practitioners to integrate and implement TQM and SCM in their organizations more effectively to achieve maximum benefits.

© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.

Development and Validation of Performance Measures for Vendor Selection in Indian Manufacturing Industries

-- Sarode A D, Adarsh T G and Khodke P M

This paper develops and validates vendor selection in supply chain in the context of India that could be used by managers in assessing and improving their supply chain. Using a thorough synthesis of the supply chain literature, 10 measuresquality, cost, delivery reliability, service, capacity, flexibility and responsiveness, human factor, technology, innovation and other factors of supply chain and their 71 variables have been developed. Using the data obtained from a survey of 104 manufacturing industries in India, the identified performance measures are subjected to appropriate statistical tests to establish reliability and validity. Statistical computing package SPSS is used for the analysis of reliability and validity. The validated instrument of vendor selection measures developed here may be used by the manufacturing organizations to prioritize their management efforts to assess and implement vendor selection.

© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.

Multi-Criteria Decision Making in Dynamic Multi-Level Distribution System: A Dynamic Network Application

-- K K Kaanodiya and M Rizwanullah

In general, there exist conflicts between optimization of different objectives in a particular situation, i.e., when we consider a multi-objective and multi-level optimization problem. Two objective functions are said to be in conflict if the full satisfaction of one results in only partial satisfaction of the other. This paper describes the Multi-Criteria Multi-Level Dynamic Decision-Making (MCMLDDM) problem. It also tries to minimize a three-tier (Multi-level, which can be generalized) shipping cost supply chain system by LINGO software model and compares this result with the heuristic model. It is found that the results are optimal but the MCMLDDM model is efficient in practice because it involves two important aspects of any dynamic spatial-temporal decision problemhow to deal with uncertainty in dynamically changing input data and how to consider the importance of different criteria, depending on criteria satisfaction and respective phase (or iteration) of the decision process.

© 2010 IUP. All Rights Reserved.