Supply Chain Management Journal 2024 Volume 15 Number 1

Supply Chain Management Journal
2024
Volume 15
Number 1


PAPERS


Effectively Teaching Supply Chain Logistics By way of the anyLogistix simulator

Author
Abstract
Keywords
Published

ED LINDOO
email: elindoo@regis.edu
Regis University Denver, Colorado,
USA

Supply chains involve complex, multi-tiered networks of suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers. In fact, these supply chains are networks where organizations collaborate to convert raw materials into finished products and deliver them to customers. Effective supply chain management (SCM) integrates material, information, and financial flows, optimizing resources from suppliers to customers. Strategic decisions in SCM include locating distribution centers and designing service networks, while tactical issues cover inventory and transportation planning. Operative concerns address production scheduling and vehicle routing. Distribution and logistics management are vital in fulfilling customer demands, managing inventory, and controlling shipments. Distribution centers consolidate products for efficient dispatch to final destinations and can be self-managed or operated by third-party logistics providers. The costs of building and operating distribution centers vary widely, influenced by factors like size and location. To enhance SCM education, tools like anyLogistix enable students to simulate and analyze supply chain dynamics, focusing on key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure operational, customer, and financial performance. Simulation, combined with optimization, offers powerful insights into supply chain design and management, addressing the need for experiential learning in SCM. In this paper we present the complexities of teaching supply chain logistics and how the anyLogistix free simulator can be used in the classroom to facilitate this.

Supply-chain management, anyLogistix, Sustainability, Teaching Supply-chain Logistics, Supply-chain capabilities.

June 2024, pp 1-14


Electrification in Supply Chain: Benefits, Challenges and Perspectives

Author
Abstract
Keywords
Published

Mihaela ȘTEȚ
email: miha9s@yahoo.com
Technical University of Cluj-Napoca
ROMANIA

Logistics industry, responsible for transporting goods around the world, faces significant pressure to reduce its environmental footprint. The transition towards a more sustainable future necessitates significant changes within supply chains. Electrification, the replacement of fossil fuel-powered equipment with electric alternatives, presents a promising solution. This paper explores the multifaceted impact of electrification across various stages of the supply chain, highlighting the potential benefits of electrification, including reduced greenhouse gas emissions, improved air quality, and enhanced energy efficiency. Additionally, electrification can contribute to operational cost savings and noise reduction within warehouses and distribution centers. However, the path towards a fully electrified supply chain is not without its challenges. The paper will delve into these obstacles, such as the high upfront costs of electric vehicles and charging infrastructure, limited range anxiety for long-haul transportation, and the need for a robust and reliable electricity grid. Finally, there have presented the perspectives on the future of electrification in supply chains, the emerging technologies that hold promise for overcoming current limitations, alongside potential policy initiatives that can incentivize wider adoption. The paper concludes by emphasizing the crucial role of electrification in achieving a more sustainable and efficient supply chain network, the electrification’s potential to transform supply chains into more sustainable and environmentally responsible systems.

electrification, supply chain, sustainability, emissions reduction, energy efficiency, electric vehicles

June, 2024, pp 15 – 29


Advancing Value Chain Analysis and Data-Driven Decisions Regarding Sustainable Value Chains, Improving Supply Chains’ Performance by Valorizing LLMs and Intensifying Compliance

Author
Abstract
Keywords
Published

Theodor PURCĂREA
email: theodor.purcarea@rau.ro
Professor at the Romanian American University
Member of the Advisory Board of the Romanian Competition Council
President of the Romanian Distribution Committee
ROMANIA

Kept continuously alert by the current VUCA business landscape, supply chain professionals are under pressure to ensure sustainability and reliability integration in their supply chain network design, value network processes being optimized with the help of Gen AI, benefiting from implementing value networks by identifying innovative solutions. It is now the right time to advance value chain analysis, and transform the value chain along each step with the help of Gen AI, consequently improving performance including by valorizing LLMs and intensifying compliance. There is no doubt about the imperative of accelerating the supply chains’ transformation, further improving businesses’ sustainability and end-to-end consumer experiences, considering the role of data-driven decisions regarding sustainable value chains and Gen AI-managed supply chains, so as to advance on the path to innovation and sustainable growth.

Value Chain Analysis; Supply Chains’ Agility and Adaptability; Supply Chains’ Sustainability and Reliability Integration; Gen AI-Managed Supply Chains; Data-Driven Sustainable Value Chains; Sustainable-Resilient-Responsive Supply Chains’ Development

June, 2024, pp 30 – 36


A Pressing Issue in Higher Education: Developing AI Literacy, Getting Students Ready for the Gen AI-Driven Workforce, Considering Supply Chains’ Social, Economic, and Environmental Impact at Each Stage of E2E Process in SCM

Author
Abstract
Keywords
Published

Costel NEGRICEA
Ioan Matei PURCAREA

e-mail: matei.purcarea@rau.ro
Romanian-American University
ROMANIA

Within today’s context of our home planet and of accelerated digital transformation is the right time to harmonize our beliefs regarding how things should be done, coming together to address the challenge about what’s likely to occur, and improve our economic, social and environmental interdependence management, and consequently the new risks to manage. Going on this way it is important to succeed in dealing with misperceptions and reduce the impact of potential risks of AI that is impacting literacy, making minor adjustments over time, and hoping we’ll do the good thing. Developing AI literacy involves a better understanding of how Gen AI impacts on both professors, and students: ensuring the balance between its use and human interaction in finding solutions’ process, maintaining an essential perspective on its strategic implementation, managing Gen AI-driven information burden, helping the growth of students’ original thinking, and getting them ready for the Gen AI-driven workforce, considering Gen AI value chain and supply chains’ social, economic, and environmental impact at each stage of E2E process in SCM. As they are expected more impressive developments along with the ChatGPT remarkable impact on innovation in the AI industry, it is recommendable to better understand how this language model based on neural network architecture requiring numerical data as input can open its full potential, and supply improved advice by better clarifying user’s particular situation. Without doubt, in the Gen AI value chain there are significant opportunities, such as the novel type of neural network architecture inspired by neuroscience and known as liquid neural networks (LLN) which are using dynamic connections between neurons, proving the ability to integrate new information while in progress, being useful including in logistics. And as the large language models (LLM) revolution, driven by the neural networks, cannot be incorporated in thin client (a device with limited computing capacity) layers, these LLN were seen as an opportunity (in context in which LLM models become a key resource which cannot keep up with the inputs coming its way). It is considered that is still too soon to make a judgment about the likely result of the Gen AI use in higher education, small experiments being still in progress, like those with AI tutor powered by ChatGPT and avoiding the so-called AI hallucinations. And as a lot might still change, it is worth mentioning the preoccupation of the Romanian-American University to be among the first institutions in Romania to integrate such technologies as AI Tutor in education, a first action in this sense having already taken place

Higher Education; AI Literacy; Gen AI-Driven Workforce; Gen AI Value Chain; Supply Chains’ Social, Economic, and Environmental Impact; LLM; LLN; AI Tutor Powered by ChatGPT

June 2024, pp 37 – 48


Resilience and Sustainability of Global Supply Chains: An Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) Application

Author
Abstract
Keywords
Published

Gokhan KIRBAC
Gokce GURBUZ
Safak KARASU
email: g.kirbac@iku.edu.tr
Istanbul Kültür University
TURKEY


The Covid-19 pandemic, which emerged in Wuhan, China at the end of 2019, has deeply affected social life, states, transportation, ways of doing business, production and service businesses, and the whole world in general. Countries have introduced sanctions, quarantines and restrictions in many areas in order to manage these effects and the crisis period. In addition to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on human health, production processes in millions of businesses have been stopped, and many businesses such as shopping malls, hotels, restaurants, and sports centers have been closed. As a result of all these events, many areas such as consumer expenditures, unemployment, investments and foreign trade were seriously affected.
The Covid-19 pandemic, which has seriously affected almost all sectors all over the world, has also deeply affected the supply chain processes. Supply chain management is a set of activities that are found and applied at different levels in every business of a certain size. The concept of “chain” in supply chain processes essentially represents the flow of manufactured products on the ring of a chain throughout the entire life cycle. Therefore, the role of supply chain processes is very great at every stage, starting from materials such as raw materials and semi-finished products, and delivering the final product to the end consumer. Therefore, it can be said that the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic, which is one of the biggest global crises we have faced in the last century, on supply chain management is an important research topic.
Under normal conditions, even the slightest disruption in the supply chain causes great losses for businesses that produce on a large scale, while businesses have faced very difficult situations while managing their supply chain and logistics processes during the pandemic process. As a result of supply and demand shocks in different sectors, a great complexity has arisen regarding stock management. Problems were experienced in the supply and logistics of raw materials and semi-finished products required for the continuation of existing production. However, as the impact of the pandemic increased, the availability of the workforce in the field and production facilities, the way of working and travel opportunities were also adversely affected.
The lack of information transparency in complex supply chain structures and the fact that businesses are not informed about alternative suppliers and production diversity risks, apart from their main suppliers, are behind the inability to diversify supply chain processes at the desired level and create resistant supply chain structures today. Here, in order to establish resilient supply chains, first of all, it is necessary to diversify the value chain activities with transparency, traceability and information access in the supply chain processes.
Finally, businesses have realized more clearly that they need to transform their structures to become more resilient to ensure sustainability in their supply chain processes due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In fact, by providing this situation, businesses will have solidified their operational efficiency.

Production Management, Operations Management, Supply Chain Resilience, Sustainability of Supply Chain Management, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)

June 2024, pp 50 – 64