Now showing 1 - 10 of 56
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Sustainability practices in tourism supply chain: Importance performance analysis

01-01-2018, Babu, Deepak Eldho, Kaur, Arshinder, Rajendran, Chandrasekharan

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide strategic recommendations for Indian hotel administrators for improving sustainability practices: environment, economic and social with respect to the supply chain members by analyzing performance dimensions and the importance attached to them. Design/methodology/approach: Importance performance analysis is a tool to analyze the perception of top-level, middle-level and first-level managers in hotels. Questionnaire is developed to collect the hotel manager’s perceptions. The snowball sampling method is used for data collection. Findings: The paper introduces specific sustainability practices, namely, environment, economic and social factors, at the interface of the tourism supply chain (TSC). This will allow the hotels to identify the importance and performance of various sustainability practices to achieve a long-term competitive advantage. The present work finds that the responding hotel managers have given highest importance to the sustainability practices within the organization and the hotel manager’s perception of sustainability practices in the TSC will vary with respect to the supply chain members. Research limitations/implications: The effort has been made to capture specific sustainability practices across the supply chain. The paper reinstates the fact that sustainability practices are not firm specific and should be practiced at the supply chain interface. The data for the study were taken from focal organizations perspective which is the hotels. Practical implications: Results provide the hotel administrators to develop appropriate strategies to improve their practices and functions by analyzing their strengths and weakness regarding their tangible and intangible assets. The identified sustainability practice attributes can act as a benchmark and drive the hotel industry toward possible cost-saving conditions by prioritizing the allocation of the resources while taking care of overall performance. Social implications: Results will help the hotel administrators to identify the better sustainability practices which will reduce the negative effects and protect the Mother Nature. Originality/value: The study included hotels/resorts from tourism locations: hill station, backwaters and coastal areas, specifically in the Indian context.

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The value of information sharing in a multi-stage serial supply chain with positive and deterministic lead times

01-07-2014, Kalpakam, S., C Rajendran, Saha, S.

In traditional supply chain inventory management, orders used to be the major information that firms exchanged. Information sharing among firms within a supply chain has been a cornerstone of recent innovations in supply chain management. Lee et al. (2000) considered a two-level supply chain, consisting of a manufacturer and a retailer, with non-stationary AR(1) end demand and showed that the manufacturer benefits significantly when the retailer shares its demand information. In our work, we extend the study to quantify the value (i.e., benefit) of information sharing (in terms of demand variance reduction and inventory reduction) to a multi-stage serial supply chain with the number of stages greater than two. The lead time at every stage is positive and deterministic. Base stock levels at each installation are calculated under two scenarios-no information sharing and complete information sharing. The dependency of the benefit of information sharing on parameters like demand correlation and lead times is presented. It is seen that as the number of stages in a serial supply chain increases, the demand variance and hence the bullwhip effect increases; so is the case with an increase in the demand correlation. In addition, a comparative study of a supply chain with stages having respective lead times in decreasing order and a supply chain with stages having respective lead times in increasing order has also been carried out in order to relatively analyze the benefits of information sharing at different stages across these two supply chain settings. It is possibly for the first time in the literature that the benefit of information sharing has been studied and quantified (in terms of the reduction in the total demand variation and the reduction in inventory) in a multi-stage serial supply chain with more than three stages with positive and deterministic lead times.

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An empirical study of total quality management in engineering educational institutions of India: Perspective of management

10-09-2010, Sayeda, Begum, C Rajendran, L Prakash Sai

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the adoption of quality management practices in engineering educational institutions (EEIs) in India from management's perspective. Design/methodology/approach: A questionnaire was developed based on a literature review of research in quality management and based on the responses of the pilot survey among the senior faculty/management. The psychometric properties of this instrument were examined using tests of reliability and validity. Correlation and multiple regression analyses were used to analyze the impact of the total quality management (TQM) dimensions on institutional performance (effectiveness). Findings: Findings highlight 27 critical factors/dimensions of quality management, which analyzed the relationship between TQM dimensions and institutional performance, which has been formulated using five dimensions. Positive and significant relationships among the TQM dimensions and institutional performance have been observed. Research limitations/implications: Results of the study are dependent on the profile and number of the respondents, i.e. on the perceptions of the management. Practical implications: The paper proposes a model for achieving institutional excellence from the macro perspective of the management. Two critical factors, i.e. healthy innovative practices and feeder institution partnership have been identified as key enablers in the paper. Institutional performance (effectiveness), as a holistic construct, has been measured by five measures of performance, institution reputation and image, infrastructure quality, faculty excellence, research and industry exposure and stakeholders' satisfaction. The instrument developed can be used as a self-assessment tool in continuously measuring the overall performance of the institution's processes and systems. Originality/value: The paper focuses on EEIs. It evolved a holistic framework for institutional effectiveness and formulated a comprehensive instrument with respect to management's perceptions on quality management issues. The paper also identified five critical factors to measure institutional performance and 27 dimensions of TQM in the context of EEIs. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

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Distribution and equitable sharing of value from information sharing within serial supply chains

01-01-2014, Ganesh, Muthusamy, Raghunathan, Srinivasan, C Rajendran

This paper studies the incentive issues that arise when firms in a multilevel supply chain create value jointly by investing in information sharing. We consider three types of information sharing: 1) supply-chain-wide information sharing; 2) downstream information sharing; and 3) upstream information sharing. We showed that the value of information sharing is higher for the upstream firms than for downstream firms regardless of information sharing type. Furthermore, the value of information sharing for any firm is higher under downstream information sharing than upstream information sharing, and the incremental value of information sharing to a firm decreases when more downstream firms share information. Therefore, if there is a cost associated with information sharing, then upstream firms have an incentive to free ride on downstream firms' information sharing efforts. These results suggest that serious incentive misalignments may impede supply-chain-wide information sharing, even though it maximizes the value to the supply chain, and that a mechanism to distribute the overall surplus equitably may become essential. If a contract distributes the surplus according to each firm's incremental contribution to it, then firms that are in the middle levels of the supply chain receive a higher share than those that are in either end of the supply chain. That is, interestingly, neither the firm that possesses the information that is propagated throughout the supply chain by information sharing nor the most upstream firm realizes the highest value from information sharing obtains the maximum share of the surplus generated under such a contract. © 1988-2012 IEEE.

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Strategic action grids: a study on supply chain risk management in manufacturing industries in India

29-11-2018, Shenoi, V. Viswanath, Dath, T. N.Srikantha, Rajendran, C., Shahabudeen, P.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide strategic recommendations to supply chain managers of Indian manufacturing industries for a robust supply chain related to risk management by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and suppliers in manufacturing industries to ensure a robust supply chain risk management (SCRM). Design/methodology/approach: Importance-performance analysis (IPA) is utilized to identify and provide strategic recommendations to manufacturing industries for improving their supply chain performance by attaching due importance to risk constructs and appropriately choosing mitigation strategies. Findings: The investigation using the strategic action grids reveals that most of the means of risks are near the point of intersection of the grand means of the risk constructs and their impact on the supply chain, indicating that all the risks have the equal likelihood of occurrence. The mean importance of risk monitoring, risk avoidance (RA) and risk sharing surpass the mean performance for both OEMs and suppliers. Research limitations/implications: The study is executed with following limitations: the study assumes that the manufacturing industries across different sectors perceive similar risk. The sectors considered are automotive, heavy engineering, general engineering and home appliances. The Southern States of India are considered because of the dominant presence of many industries, especially automotive industries. However, it should be noted that these States form the manufacturing hubs where the lead organizations are functioning along with their major suppliers. Practical implications: By understanding the importance of SCRM dimensions and utilization of these dimensions, firms can mitigate the impact of risk on the supply chain. The detailed study of SCRM strategies highlights the importance attached to risk factors, mitigation strategies, and top management commitment. By the implementation of SCRM strategies, supply chain managers can improve the firm’s performance. Originality/value: The study involves empirically validated data on SCRM dimensions. The IPA is performed on the SCRM dimensions to investigate the importance attached to the factors of the dimensions and their performance.

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Discrete particle swarm optimisation algorithms for minimising the completion-time variance of jobs in flowshops

01-01-2011, Rameshkumar, K., C Rajendran, Mohanasundaram, K. M.

In this paper, the problem of scheduling in the permutation flowshop scheduling problem is considered with the objective of minimising the completion-time variance of jobs (CTV). Two particle swarm optimisation algorithms (PSOAs) are proposed and analysed. The first PSOA is inspired from the solution construction procedures that are used in ant colony optimisation algorithms. The second algorithm is a newly developed one. The proposed algorithms are applied to a set of benchmark flowshop scheduling problems, and performances of the algorithms are evaluated by comparing the obtained results with the results published in the literature. The performance analysis demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms in solving the permutation flowshop sequencing problem with the CTV objective. © 2011 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

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Mathematical models for green vehicle routing problems with pickup and delivery: A case of semiconductor supply chain

01-01-2018, Madankumar, Sakthivel, Rajendran, Chandrasekharan

In this paper, we consider a special case of vehicle routing problem that addresses the routing problem in a semiconductor supply chain. This paper proposes two Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) models for solving the Green Vehicle Routing Problems with Pickups and Deliveries in a Semiconductor Supply Chain (G-VRPPD-SSC). The first MILP model considers the basic G-VRPPD-SSC problem, and the objective is to find the set of minimum cost routes and schedules for the alternative fuel vehicles in order to satisfy a set of requests which comprise pickup and delivery operations, without violating the product and vehicle compatibility, vehicle capacity, request-priorities and request-types, and start/completion time constraints. The second model extends the first model in order to handle the scenario of having different fuel prices at different refueling stations, and the objective is to minimize the sum of costs of operating alternative fuel vehicles, which include both the routing cost and the refueling cost. To relatively evaluate the performance of the proposed MILP models, we consider the Pickup and Delivery Problem in a Semiconductor Supply Chain (PDP-SSC) without the presence of alternative fuel vehicles, and we present the corresponding MILP model. Our model is compared with an MILP model present in the literature. Our study indicates that the proposed model for the PDP-SSC gives better lower bounds than that by the existing work, apart from performing better than the existing work in terms of requiring less CPU time. In all cases, the proposed three MILP models preform quite good in terms of the execution time to solve the generated problem instances.

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A novel particle swarm optimisation algorithm for continuous function optimisation

27-02-2012, Rameshkumar, K., C Rajendran, Mohanasundaram, K. M.

Particle swarm optimisation (PSO) algorithms are applied in a variety of fields. A good quality solution for a problem depends on the PSO parameters chosen for the problem under study. In this paper, a continuous particle swarm optimisation algorithm is proposed to solve the unconstrained optimisation problems. This paper proposes a novel and simple variation of the PSO algorithm by introducing dynamic updating of velocity without any parameters, such as inertia weight and constriction coefficients that are commonly used in the traditional PSO algorithms. The proposed algorithm is applied to well-known benchmark functions which are commonly used to test the performance of numeric optimisation algorithms, and the results are compared with the existing PSO algorithms. It is found that the proposed algorithm gives superior results in terms of speed of convergence and the ability of finding the solutions of excellent quality. Copyright © 2012 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

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A mixed integer linear programming model for the vehicle routing problem with simultaneous delivery and pickup by heterogeneous vehicles, and constrained by time windows

01-02-2019, Madankumar, Sakthivel, Rajendran, Chandrasekharan

In this work, we consider the Vehicle Routing Problem with Simultaneous Delivery and Pickup, and constrained by time windows, to improve the performance and responsiveness of the supply chain by transporting goods from one location to another location in an efficient manner. In this class of problem, each customer demands a quantity to be delivered as a part of the forward supply service and another quantity to be picked up as a part of the reverse recycling service, and the complete service has to be done simultaneously in a single visit of a vehicle, and the objective is to minimize the total cost, which includes the traveling cost and dispatching cost for operating vehicles. We propose a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model for solving this class of problem. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed MILP model, a comparison study is made between the proposed MILP model and an existing MILP model available in the literature, with the consideration of heterogeneous vehicles. Our study indicates that the proposed MILP model gives tighter lower bound and also performs better in terms of the execution time to solve each of the randomly generated problem instances, in comparison with the existing MILP model. In addition, we also compare the proposed MILP model (assuming homogeneous vehicles) with the existing MILP model that also considers homogeneous vehicles. The results of the computational evaluation indicate that the proposed MILP model gives much tighter lower bound, and it is competitive to the existing MILP model in terms of the execution time to solve each of the randomly generated problem instances.

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An improved ant-colony algorithm for the grouping of machine-cells and part-families in cellular manufacturing systems

01-01-2013, Megala, N., C Rajendran

In the present study, we address the machine-cell design and part-family formation problem in cellular manufacturing systems. The objective of the study is to group machines into machine-cells and parts into part-families such that the grouping efficacy is maximised. We propose an improved ant-colony optimisation (IACO) algorithm to obtain machine-cells and part-families. The performance of the algorithm is tested by using benchmark datasets available in the literature. The grouping efficacy obtained by the proposed algorithm is compared with the grouping efficacies obtained by the existing approaches present in the literature. The comparative analysis shows that the proposed IACO performs very well in maximising the grouping efficacy. Copyright © 2013 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.