Supply chain management in manufacturing environment

Citation

Jain, V.K. and Jain, P.K. (2012), "Supply chain management in manufacturing environment", Journal of Advances in Management Research, Vol. 9 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/jamr.2012.42609baa.001

Supply chain management in manufacturing environment

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Journal of Advances in Management Research, Volume 9, Issue 2.

This special issue is dedicated to the publication of the selected papers of the 3rd International and 24th All India Manufacturing Technology Design and Research (AIMTDR) Conference held at Andhra University College of Engineering, Visakhapatnam, during 13-15 December, 2010. We have selected five papers for this special issue, which were re-reviewed by the experts in the subject areas. In addition, we have included one more paper on humanitarian supply chain that has come from the regular submissions to this journal.

The manufacturing sector in the present era is witnessing a cut throat global competition, a shortened life cycle, and ever increasing product variety demands, rapid advancements in process technology and fast pace of developments in the information technology (IT). To stay competitive and profitable, the industry has to be responsive to the dramatically changing world in which, emerging economies, new ideas and philosophies of doing business, technical advancements and ever changing needs of customers pose serious challenges to its survival. This special issue on Supply Chain Management (SCM) in Manufacturing Environment consists of five papers out of which two are on scheduling while the remaining three are on the SCM. In such an environment, planning and scheduling functions need to be addressed with much greater rigor and precision in order to achieve the effective utilization of the limited resources. To bridge the gap between theory and practice, there is an acute need to develop effective and efficient scheduling approaches that consider real-time information concerning the shop floor for efficient utilization of manufacturing system.

First paper of this special issue deals with single machine scheduling which analyzes the progressive results of supervised learning algorithm tested with the production data, and finally an efficient production scheduling is proposed for machine learning. The second paper elaborates the scheduling in a flexible job shop environment using a multi-objective genetic algorithm. Implementation and effectiveness of the genetic algorithm is demonstrated with the help of numerical problems.

Integrated management of material and information flow with supplier and customers located all over the world, in order to improve operating efficiency, is referred to as SCM. SCM encompasses the management of wide range of activities from procurement of raw material to the delivery of finished goods. To gain a competitive advantage, the manufacturers are striving for the policy of supply chain which has ability to withstand the jolt of transport disruptions. Due to the revolutionary changes in IT, manufacturing systems are free from geographical boundaries. The implementation of IT in manufacturing enterprises, which was initially based on the product design and part functional applications, has now developed into an integrated management system (IMS) that serves the whole enterprise.

Third paper discusses the issues related to the quality function deployment in aligning the competitive strategy with SCM. The methodology has been demonstrated with the help of an example. The fourth paper reports the impact of IT on company's health through a case study. Here, the authors adopted the system dynamics methodology as a modeling and analysis tool to investigate the SCM problems of an organization. The fifth paper of this special issue provides some insight into the daunting task of conflict discovery and therefore proactive handing of the potentially negative occurrences in the supply chain. The sixth paper provides insight into the humanitarian supply chains.

The guest editors would like to thank the authors for their original contributions and their prompt reply to the reviewers’ comments. Without the expert advice and diligent reviews by the reviewers, this special issue would not have been realized. We would also like to thank the editor-in-chief (Prof Surendra S. Yadav, IIT, Delhi) and executive editor (Prof Ravi Shankar, IIT, Delhi) of the Journal of Advances in Management Research (JAMR) for giving us this opportunity to be guest editors of this special issue of JAMR.

V.K. Jain and P.K. JainGuest Editors