Production and Operations Management

A number of factors, including developments in Internet‐based commerce and third‐party logistics, have led many companies to consider engaging in direct sales. Such a company may at once be both a supplier to and a direct competitor of any existing reseller partners (e.g., land‐based retailers), which can result in “channel conflict.” This can have momentous implications for distribution strategy.

To generate managerial insights into this important issue, we develop a model that captures key attributes of such a setting, including various sources of inefficiency. We examine these in detail and identify a number of counterintuitive structural properties. For instance, the addition of a direct channel alongside a reseller channel is not necessarily detrimental to the reseller, given the associated adjustment in the manufacturer's pricing. In fact, both parties can benefit.

Finally, we examine ways to adjust the manufacturer‐reseller relationship that have been observed in industry. These include changes in wholesale pricing, paying the reseller a commission for diverting customers toward the direct channel, or conceding the demand fulfillment function entirely to the reseller. The latter two schemes could be mutually beneficial in that they achieve a division of labor according to each channel's competitive advantage.

Managers realize that they should avoid complex green supply initiatives when they do not have the capabilities to implement them. However, they have little guidance on how these capabilities can be developed. This paper provides an initial analysis of the role of supply management capabilities in green supply. We argue that the implementation of green supply is better explained by focusing on the development and deployment of an organization's specialized internal resources, rather than by the more usual focus on external environmental pressures on a firm. Further, we argue that capabilities appropriate for green supply are developed by a proactive corporate environmental stance and by a more strategic purchasing and supply management approach.

We test our model using data from a two‐phase survey of 70 operating units within UK public limited companies. Our results indicate support for our conjecture that supply management capabilities are jointly developed by a proactive corporate environmental approach and a strategic purchasing and supply process. Our study results should be useful to business strategists, regulators, and researchers interested in the predictors of corporate green behavior. They should also assist future researchers in many branches of environmental management who are seeking to explore the role of the internal capabilities of firms in supporting environmental management.

Call centers are an increasingly important part of today's business world, employing millions of agents across the globe and serving as a primary customer‐facing channel for firms in many different industries. Call centers have been a fertile area for operations management researchers in several domains, including forecasting, capacity planning, queueing, and personnel scheduling. In addition, as telecommunications and information technology have advanced over the past several years, the operational challenges faced by call center managers have become more complicated. Issues associated with human resources management, sales, and marketing have also become increasingly relevant to call center operations and associated academic research.

In this paper, we provide a survey of the recent literature on call center operations management. Along with traditional research areas, we pay special attention to new management challenges that have been caused by emerging technologies, to behavioral issues associated with both call center agents and customers, and to the interface between call center operations and sales and marketing. We identify a handful of broad themes for future investigation while also pointing out several very specific research opportunities.

The ISO 9000 series of quality management systems standards and the more recent ISO 14000 environmental management systems standards have generated much controversy among practitioners. Although ISO 9000 has become a de facto requirement for many firms, its effects are poorly understood, and similarly the value and domain of applicability of ISO 14000 have been questioned. This paper reports on an exploratory study into the global spread of ISO 14000. We interviewed practitioners worldwide to identify factors that they believe explain differences between national ISO 14000 certification counts. We then collected quantititive data for these factors and, using regression analysis, we found that exports, environmental attitudes (combined with economic development), and ISO 9000 certification count were significant. The fact that ISO 9000 appears as an important factor explaining diffusion of ISO 14000 certifications suggests that the drivers behind the two have significant overlap. This indicates that, although ISO 14000 is an environmental standard, many of the factors driving national certification patterns are not at all environmental in nature, and that ISO 14000 therefore needs to be studied from a broader perspective than from a purely environmental point of view.

We use a simulation model called ‘SISCO’ to examine the effects in supply chains of stochastic lead times and of information sharing and quality of that information in a periodic order‐up‐to level inventory system. We test the accuracy of the simulation by verifying the results in Chen et al. (2000a) and Dejonckheere et al. (2004). We find that lead‐time variability exacerbates variance amplification in a supply chain, and that information sharing and information quality are highly significant. For example, using the assumptions in Chen et al. (2000a) and Dejonckheere et al. (2004), we find in a numerical experiment of a customer‐retailer‐wholesaler‐distributor‐factory supply chain that variance amplification is attenuated by nearly 50 percent at the factory due to information sharing. Other assumptions we make are based on interviews or conversations with managers at large supply chains.

We study the impact of emissions tax and emissions cap‐and‐trade regulation on a firm's technology choice and capacity decisions. We show that emissions price uncertainty under cap‐and‐trade results in greater expected profit than a constant emissions price under an emissions tax, which contradicts popular arguments that the greater uncertainty under cap‐and‐trade will erode value. We further show that two operational drivers underlie this result: (i) the firm's option not to operate, which effectively right‐censors the uncertain emissions price; and (ii) dispatch flexibility, which is the firm's ability to first deploy its most profitable capacity given the realized emissions price. In addition to these managerial insights, we also explore policy implications: the effect of emissions price level, and the effect of investment and production subsidies. Through an illustrative example, we show that production subsidies of higher investment and production cost technologies (such as carbon capture and storage technologies) have no effect on the firm's optimal total capacity when firms own a portfolio of both clean and dirty technologies, but that investment subsidies of these technologies increase the firm's total capacity, conditionally increasing expected emissions. A subsidy of a lower production cost technology, on the other hand, has no effect on the firm's optimal total capacity in multi‐technology portfolios, regardless of whether the subsidy is a production or investment subsidy.

This study investigates a retailer's incentive for sharing private demand information with a supplier who may encroach the retail channel by imposing a fixed entry cost. Although conventional wisdom suggests that a retailer should withhold her private demand observations to maintain an information advantage over the supplier, we obtain a different conclusion by demonstrating that the retailer may prefer to voluntarily share the demand information in anticipation of supplier encroachment. The intuition is that in face of the threat of supplier encroachment, sharing low demand information may prevent the supplier from establishing a direct selling channel, which will reduce downstream channel competition. This strategic effect of information sharing is new and only becomes dominant when there is an intermediate entry cost for encroachment and a high channel substitution rate. In contrast, when there are deviations from these conditions, the supplier's equilibrium encroachment decision is consistent and irrespective of the retailer's decision to share information, which makes withholding the demand information more beneficial to the retailer. The change of information sharing structure in the channel also leads to some unintended payoff implications, as the supplier's and channel's payoffs exhibit non‐monotonic relations to the entry cost or channel substitution rate.

Có sự tồn tại các ràng buộc về vốn trong nhiều kênh phân phối. Chúng tôi nghiên cứu một kênh bao gồm một nhà sản xuất và một nhà bán lẻ, trong đó nhà bán lẻ gặp ràng buộc về vốn. Nhà bán lẻ có thể tài trợ cho hoạt động kinh doanh của mình bằng cách vay tín dụng từ thị trường ngân hàng cạnh tranh hoặc từ nhà sản xuất, miễn là nhà sản xuất sẵn sàng cho vay. Khi chỉ có một loại tín dụng (hoặc tín dụng ngân hàng hoặc tín dụng thương mại) khả thi, chúng tôi chỉ ra rằng tài trợ bằng tín dụng thương mại thường tính một mức giá bán sĩ cao hơn và do đó trở nên kém hấp dẫn hơn so với tài trợ bằng tín dụng ngân hàng cho nhà bán lẻ. Khi cả hai loại tín dụng ngân hàng và tín dụng thương mại đều khả thi, điểm cân bằng duy nhất là tài trợ bằng tín dụng thương mại nếu chi phí sản xuất tương đối thấp, nhưng ngược lại, là tài trợ bằng tín dụng ngân hàng. Chúng tôi cũng nghiên cứu trường hợp cả nhà bán lẻ và nhà sản xuất đều gặp ràng buộc về vốn và chỉ ra rằng, để cải thiện hiệu quả tổng thể của chuỗi cung ứng, ngân hàng nên tài trợ cho nhà sản xuất nếu chi phí sản xuất thấp nhưng nên tài trợ cho nhà bán lẻ trong trường hợp khác. Phân tích của chúng tôi cũng cho thấy rằng khu vực cân bằng của tài trợ bằng tín dụng thương mại thu hẹp lại khi biến động cầu hoặc mức vốn nội bộ của nhà bán lẻ tăng lên.

In the Industry 4.0 era, automation and data analytics emerge as the major forces to enhance efficiency in operations management (OM). Disruptive technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robotics, blockchain, 3D printing, 5G, Internet‐of‐Thing, digital twins, and augmented reality, are widely applied. They potentially will bring a radical change to real world operations. In this study, we first explore several major disruptive technologies, examine the corresponding OM studies, and highlight their current applications in the industry. Then, we discuss the pros and cons associated with the use of these technologies and uncover the potential human–machine conflicting areas. After that, we propose measures which may be able to achieve human–machine reconciles in the coming Industry 5.0 era. A concept of “sustainable social welfare” which includes worker welfare, privacy, etc. is proposed and the roles played by policy makers are also discussed. Finally, a future research agenda, which covers topics in both the Industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0 eras, is established.

Nghiên cứu này điều tra vai trò của tín dụng ngân hàng và tín dụng thương mại trong chuỗi cung ứng với nhà bán lẻ gặp khó khăn về vốn và phải đối mặt với sự không chắc chắn trong nhu cầu. Chúng tôi đánh giá lượng đặt hàng tối ưu của nhà bán lẻ và giới hạn tín dụng cũng như lãi suất tối ưu của các chủ nợ trong hai kịch bản. Trong kịch bản tín dụng đơn, chúng tôi nhận thấy nhà bán lẻ ưa chuộng tín dụng thương mại nếu thị trường tín dụng thương mại cạnh tranh hơn so với thị trường tín dụng ngân hàng; nếu không, sự ưu tiên của nhà bán lẻ đối với một loại tín dụng cụ thể phụ thuộc vào mức độ rủi ro mà nhà bán lẻ sẽ phân bổ tín dụng thương mại và tín dụng ngân hàng cho các khoản đầu tư rủi ro khác. Trong kịch bản tín dụng kép, nếu thị trường tín dụng ngân hàng cạnh tranh hơn so với thị trường tín dụng thương mại, nhà bán lẻ sẽ vay tín dụng ngân hàng trước, sau đó mới đến tín dụng thương mại, nhưng sẽ chuyển sang vay tín dụng thương mại trước tín dụng ngân hàng khi nguồn vốn nội bộ của nhà bán lẻ giảm. Ngược lại, nếu thị trường tín dụng thương mại cạnh tranh hơn, nhà bán lẻ chỉ vay tín dụng thương mại. Chúng tôi cũng chứng minh phân tích rằng hai loại tín dụng này là bổ sung cho nhau nếu vốn nội bộ của nhà bán lẻ thấp nhưng trở thành thay thế cho nhau khi vốn nội bộ gia tăng, và sau đó xác thực dự đoán này thực nghiệm dựa trên một bảng dữ liệu của 674 doanh nghiệp ở Trung Quốc trong giai đoạn 2001–2007.