Several humanitarian organizations today find themselves thinly stretched in multiple protracted relief and recovery operations around the world. At the same time, the need for humanitarian relief and recovery operations is forecasted to increase dramatically in the next decades. Hence,...

This paper aims to understand how best performing companies strive to improve their service levels, under the assumption that not only inventory management, but also warehouse management plays a key role in achieving this goal. To explore this issue, a case-based analysis was conducted on six...

Innovation is by far one of the most important competitive priorities in the current business context. Companies increasingly rely on their supply base to support their innovation potential. As a consequence, the purchasing department might dramatically affect the firm's innovation capability....

While there is a growing body of evidence that Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tagging can be effective in improving inventory management in the retail store, retailers have little guidance on best practices for implementation. One important unresolved issue is whether tagging is equally...

Organizations undertake strategic supply chain initiatives through project implementation. However, selecting the right supply chain projects can be difficult due to high levels of organizational risk and technical complexity. Although the literature is rich in quantitative and qualitative...

An important decision problem during the layout phase of a cross dock is related to the arrangement of inbound and outbound operations within a terminal. Either one side of the terminal is exclusively dedicated to inbound and the other to outbound destinations (vis-à-vis policy) or inbound and...

In this paper we propose a model to generate an effective timetable for time definite parcel distribution companies operating a hierarchical hub-and-spoke network. The model, referred to as parcel distribution timetabling problem, provides the departure times from each serviced city and each...

Focus in healthcare has been heralded as the next frontier in improving its efficiency and efficacy (Herzlinger 2004). Focus takes several different forms, ranging from standalone specialty centers to a hospital that places a strategic emphasis on a clinical area. We adopt this latter...

The aim of this paper is to explore whether employees' perceptions towards perceived organisational support and participative decision-making vary by lean duration (i.e., the duration of lean production in operation), and whether managers’ perceptions towards propensity for participative...