Critique on papers related to supply chain management

1. IEE 6570: IndependentResearch
Critique on Papers Related to Supply Chain Management
Submitted by: -
Trushart Prakash Wagh
Department of Industrial and Entrepreneurial
Engineering and Engineering Management

2. Table of Contents
Title Page No.
Synopsis.............................................................................................................................................. 1
Critique............................................................................................................................................... 6
References ………………………………………….……………………………………………….7

3. Table of Images
Title Page No.
Proposed framework to evaluate the Supply chain performance....................................................... 3

4. Supply Chain Management
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Synopsis:
Supply Chain Management effectively deals with transportation of goods and services,
which can often consist of raw materials and inventory for further processing and finished goods
after the said process. Supply-chain management has been defined as the "design, planning,
execution, control, and monitoring of supply chain activities with the objective of creating net
value, building a competitive infrastructure, leveraging worldwide logistics, synchronizing
supply with demand and measuring performance globally."[1]
The paper titled “Factors affecting the implementation rates of energy and productivity
recommendations in small and medium sized companies” talks about diversification of rates of
energy and goods consumption in certain areas of energy generation or it’s modification (such as
boilers, motors, compressors and HVAC systems). Various data sources comprised this study
which included paper and allied products, metal industries, industrial and commercial machinery
production etc. Each of these industries provide a varying range of solutions contributing to the
simplification of the entire supply chain.
To measure the performance of the supply chain in place, this study used a logistic
regression model to predict the probability of certain categorical variables. This, incidentally,
resulted into a continuous variable which is a linear representation of the continuous categorical
variables. In other words, plotting the said function can be easily read and verified using existing
mathematical models.
This study, however, does not emphasize greatly on incorporating the recommendations
provided by the end customers which are the very last link in the entire supply chain. Also,
companies can implement the most suggested recommendations at the very nominal rate of 40%.
Incorporating the Voice of Customer (VOC) can also make way for other continuous
improvement initiatives like Production Part Approval Process (PPAP) which can extensively
investigate the quality of goods and services of any third-party vendors while consolidating voice
of customer in the process.
The paper titled “Evidence of APQP in quality improvement: An SME case study”
discusses the APQP (Advanced Product Quality Planning) strategy and how it can very well
work in small to medium sized industries.
APQP is a condensed PPAP strategy which combines the most important elements of
PPAP without the need for investing additional resources to fulfill redundant tasks in the PPAP
process.
APQP research to date has been largely confined to development of new products, and
more recently in organizational measurement systems. Due to growing importance of supply
chain management issues in the global market environment, large firms are heavily dependent on
small- to medium-sized enterprises for the provision of high quality products and/or services at
low costs. [3]

5. Supply Chain Management
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When the primary aim of the supply chain is to procreate development which can be
sustained further, there is an urgent need for sustainability to be incorporated into the supply
chain.
Supply chain sustainability is a business issue affecting an organization’s supply chain or
logistics network in terms of environmental, risk, and waste costs. There is a growing need for
integrating environmentally sound choices into supply-chain management. Sustainability in the
supply chain is increasingly seen among high-level executives as essential to delivering long-
term profitability and has replaced monetary cost, value, and speed as the dominant topic of
discussion among purchasing and supply professionals. A sustainable supply chain seizes value
creation opportunities and offers significant competitive advantages for early adopters and
process innovators. [4]
Many companies are limited to measuring the sustainability of their own business
operations and are unable to extend this evaluation to their suppliers and customers. This makes
determining their true environmental costs highly challenging and reduces their ability to remove
waste from the supply chains. However much progress has been made in defining supply chain
sustainability and benchmarking tools are now available that enable sustainability action plans to
be developed and implemented. [4]
One of the key requirements of successful sustainable supply chains is collaboration. The
practice of collaboration — such as sharing distribution to reduce waste by ensuring that half-
empty vehicles do not get sent out and that deliveries to the same address are on the same truck
— is not widespread because many companies fear a loss of commercial control by working with
others. Investment in alternative modes of transportation — such as use of canals and airships —
can play an important role in helping companies reduce the cost and environmental impact of
their deliveries. Collaboration platforms are emerging because of the fear of a loss of commercial
control and competitive advantage by working closely with other companies.[4]
Companies looking to implement sustainable strategies down its supply chain should also
look upstream. To elaborate, if a company is able to choose between various suppliers, it can for
example use its purchasing power to get its suppliers in compliance with its green supply chain
standards. In managing suppliers, companies must measure that inputs from suppliers are of high
quality, and the usage of water and energy is minimised leading to less pollution, defects and
over production. They also must audit their supplier base and make sure that they are improving
the supply chain metrics. [4]
The paper titled “A comprehensive multidimensional framework for assessing the
performance of sustainable supply chains” explains a framework developed by authors to
evaluate the sustainability of the said supply chains.
Sustainability and supply chain management (SCM) have each been the subject of
considerable research over the last several decades. Both of these concepts have been defined in
a multitude of different ways. Sustainability is commonly de- fined as using resources to “meet
the needs of the present in a way that the future generations’ ability to meet their own needs will
not be compromised”.[5]

6. Supply Chain Management
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The many players in a supply chain (e.g., suppliers, focal firm, distributors, customers,
etc.) greatly increase the complexity of incorporating sustainability into SCM. This is, in part,
due to the large number of potential interactions between the players in the supply chain. This
complexity is also due to the inherently multidimensional nature of sustainability, which
encompasses the “triple bottom line” of economic, environmental, and social aspects as a
minimum. Moreover, the fact that these issues and interactions must be considered over time
adds further complexity to the subject. [5]
These challenges highlight the fact that it is difficult to determine if a sustainable state
has been reached. Measuring progress toward, or away, from sustainability is often the best that
can be achieved. Thus, one of the difficulties of measuring SSCM performance is that supply
chains can simultaneously move away from sustainable conditions in some aspects and move
toward sustainable conditions in others. Supply chains can, therefore, move further away from an
ideal sustainable state even if most performance indicators are exhibiting improvements. To
better understand these interactions, more research on the potential conflicts and trade-offs
between sustainability goals, objectives, and indicators in sustainable SCM is needed. [5]
Figure 1: - Proposed framework to evaluate the Supply chain performance
This paper makes several contributions to the literature. It provides one of the first
comprehensive multidimensional frameworks for assessing performance in Sustainable Supply
Chain Management (SSCM). The developed framework is based on context-dependent
sustainability factors (i.e., enablers and inhibiters) that may be dynamically functioning in a
Sustainable Supply Chain. The framework thus provides an integrated, multidimensional ability
to stochastically address any number of characteristics that may be involved in managing
sustainable supply chains. Accordingly, given the requirement and importance of considering
and employing nondeterministic characterization of Sustainable Supply Chains functions (i.e.,
discussed earlier), the proposed framework significantly extends the existing literature in that it
is the first probabilistic framework capable of accommodating n sustainability characteristics. It,
therefore, proposes an approach that is more realistic in assessing performance in Sustainable
Supply Chain Management. [5]

7. Supply Chain Management
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The multidimensional framework developed in this research makes a number of
important contributions. It explicitly addresses the requirement highlighted in the literature for
the development of stochastic theories, models, and frameworks for assessing sustainable supply
chain performance. Such approaches are essential as stochastic models and/or frameworks are
capable of accommodating the complexities as well as the uncertainties inherent in sustainable
supply chain performance modeling. Furthermore, the developed framework provides a
straightforward method for comprehensively assessing the performance of sustainable supply
chains overtime. It explicitly addresses the need underscored in the literature for sustainability
measurement tools that focus on the long-term, and hence, cumulative effects of the factors
involved. [5]
Accordingly, the proposed framework provides a genuine foundation for evaluating the
performance of sustainable supply chain while the cumulative impact of all the involved factors
in all the entailed periods is taken into account. Lastly, by considering as many SSCM
characteristics as may be involved, the proposed framework can be employed as a practical tool
by decision-makers who aim to effectively highlight and/or manage the required reference
points, when identifying the available opportunities and challenges for improving their
sustainable supply chain performances. [5]
The developed framework may also provide opportunities for making performance
comparisons between various sustainable supply chains, provided that the entailed required data
are collected, allocated, and reported in the same way across all the sustainable supply chains
under comparison. Most importantly, the framework presented in this paper can accommodate
any number of sustainability measurement characteristics and include both positive and negative
indicator values. [5]
Another paper titled “A framework for sustainable performance assessment of supply
chain management practices” sheds some light on the factors of reproducibility and repeatability
and how it ties itself to the performance evaluation of a sustainable supply chain management.
This paper has performed it’s classifications on two requirements as given below:-
a. Exhaustiveness: it should not have too few fields; otherwise, some elements of
assessment will not have been taken into account.
b. Non-redundancy: Fields should not be duplicated; there should not be more of them than
necessary.
The three dimensions of the sustainable development triptych are: environmental
performance, social responsibility, and economic contribution. We have built a model which can
be used to assess the sustainable performance of a SCM practice in each of these dimensions,
broken down more specifically into fields and sub-fields. The ‘‘fields’’ correspond to the main
challenges of each dimension, while the ‘‘sub-fields’’ are subsets of these big challenges in the
socioeconomic sphere – not to be confused with indicators which measure impacts on the sub-
fields.[6]
With the growing interest in sustainable development, new tools are appearing. These
tools introduce sustainability but none of them proposes a homogenous assessment of all three
dimensions, and none is applicable to supply chain management as a whole. Thus, even though
sustainable performance assessment in SCM is increasing, there is insufficient integration and

8. Supply Chain Management
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maturity in this respect in the socio-economic sphere. We seek to fill this gap by providing a
framework for sustainable performance assessment of SCM practices. The framework introduces
and reinforces the notion of simultaneous assessment of the three sustainable dimensions.[6]

9. Supply Chain Management
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Critique: -
After reviewing the above discussed papers, it was evident that some form of evaluation
system structure was needed to be in place to measure the performance of these sustainable
supply chains. However, in order to process some output through the evaluation structure, we
need to have a form of an input. And this input was provided by the “Voice of Customer
(VOC)”.
The VOC gave us important insights about the feedback customers experienced while
travelling through the said company’s supply chain. This, in turn, gave us valuable input on the
losses of goods and resources which were hiding in plain sight in the said supply chain. As these
flaws were exposed, there was a need to prioritize working out these flaws out of the system.
Thus, there dawned the necessity of an evaluation system to be set up for sustainable supply
chain growth.
The developed structure must have the ability to handle uncertain problems along with
the capability to predict the impacts of the respective solutions on the supply chain in the long
run. The performance of the supply chain should be measured for a suitable period of time
according to goods and the time they take to move through the supply chain.
Considering a lot of factors while keeping in mind a sustainable supply chain, two basic
assumptions should be kept in mind as specified above which are repeatability and
reproducibility. These two assumptions need to be satisfied every time a product is intended to
go through the supply chain.
The proposed framework can also be applied by a company in order to highlight those
SCM practices that impact its sustainable performance more positively, depending on its
objectives. The use of multi-criteria approaches on the framework could enable one to choose the
most suitable SCM practices to be used in a given context, or to classify SCM practices
according to companies’ contexts and objectives. [6]

10. Supply Chain Management
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References: -
[1]. Supply chain management. (2017, June 06). Retrieved June 09, 2017, from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_chain_management
[2].Alhourani, F. and Saxena, U. “Factors Affecting the Implementation Rates of Energy and
Productivity Recommendations in Small and Medium Size Companies”, Journal of
Manufacturing Systems, Vol. 28, 2009.
[3]. Mittal K. and Kaushik P. “Evidence of APQP in quality improvement: An SME case
study” International Journal of Management Science and Engineering Management, 7(1):
20-28, 2012
[4].Supply chain sustainability. (2017, June 11). Retrieved June 18, 2017, from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_chain_sustainability
[5].Payman A, Mohamad Y., Cory S. “A comprehensive multidimensional framework for
assessing the performance of sustainable supply chains” Applied Mathematical
Modelling 40 (2016) 10153–10166
[6].Emilie B., Valérie G. “A framework for sustainable performance assessment of supply
chain management practices” Computers & Industrial Engineering 76 (2014) 138–147