Operations Planning in Carsharing Systems

Shared mobility systems such as carsharing provide significant social and environmental benefits by reducing the number of vehicles used in the urban transport network. The carsharing systems are facing many challenges from the design to operation stages. In the design and strategic management level, it is important to find the best location for the stations, a minimum number of vehicles and a minimum number of operating staff, and in the operation stage, the most important problem is to relocate the vehicles moved by the members among the network to maximize the satisfied demands while the system is still economical. Effective and efficient optimization technology that can respond to user's demand is one of the necessary components for a successful carsharing system. The authors survey the related operations research models in the academic literature proposed to model different aspects of carsharing systems from a strategic and operational point of view to find the gaps and propose opportunities for new research.

Supplier Selection Improvement Process in an XYZ Company Through DMAIC

The existing supplier selection process of an XYZ company will be defined and mapped to understand the process characteristics and capabilities and then it will be analyzed to identify non-value-added activities. Corrective actions will be recommended to improve the supplier selection process for the company using DMAIC technique. It will aid in developing a competitive supplier base out of bulk suppliers available in the market that will result in competitive advantage over its peers and achieving the quality, cost, and service enrichment goals.

A Hybrid Approach Based on SERVQUAL, SERVPERF, and IPA for Measuring Transit Service Quality

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the public perception of the quality of service in the public transit system in Montreal using a combination of analyses and surveys. The results are used to make recommendations to improve the STM and its perception. General guidelines of SERVQUAL with some additional questions that are more specific to the current social environment of the city are presented. A survey was conducted by asking 250 international graduate Concordia students to rate a series of statements based on the importance of the issue and how much they agreed with the statement, the results were analyzed using three methods: SERVQUAL, SERVPERF, and IPA. The improvement of timetable synchronization between different metro lines and buses is crucial, as well as the education of STM employees in terms of dealing with different ethnicities, languages, and backgrounds are found. The chapter is a rare outside look at the STM and how users perceive the quality of the service, as opposed to the usual internal studies done by the organization itself.

A Balanced Scorecard Framework for Measuring Sustainability Performance of Business Organizations

Sustainability is about meeting the needs of today without compromising the needs of future generations. It involves focus on three main dimensions, economic, environmental, and social, for achieving overall performance. Majority of the companies are adopting sustainability for business growth and boosting their corporate image for long term competitiveness, thereby receiving financial benefits as well. Sustainability is a concept that has come into picture a few years back and presently making a big mark in every field. A balanced scorecard framework is proposed for measuring sustainability performance of business organizations. Four main dimensions are considered, namely organization, process, core, and learning. Each of these dimensions comprises of various indicators obtained from global reporting initiative (GRI) and corporate social responsibility reports. The application of the sustainability scorecard is performed via multi criteria decision making technique called analytical network process (ANP). A numerical study is provided.

Benchmarking Sustainability Performance of Suppliers Using ISO 14001 and Rough Set QFD-Based Approach

Supply chain management plays an important role in design, development, manufacturing, etc. and has key impact on company's overall environmental performance. Recently, green supply chain management has gained great interest from researchers and practitioners. Consideration has been given to consider environmental factors in entire supply chain starting from procurement, production, transportation, consumption, and post-disposal of products to make the whole product life cycle green. And those companies implementing ISO 14001 are controlling and minimizing risks not only internally but also externally with their suppliers. In this chapter, the authors are benchmarking sustainability performance of suppliers using ISO 14001 and rough set QFD. For this objective, firstly they identify the requirements for green supply chain planning on the basis of ISO 14001. Then, they evaluate the suppliers on the basis of these requirements using a QFD-based approach. To handle the uncertainties arising due to lack of or limited data, rough set theory is used. The results show that the proposed approach can effectively handle imprecise information and facilitates selection of green supply chain initiatives in a structured way.

Location Planning of Electric Vehicles Charging Stations

In this chapter, the authors address the problem of location planning of recharging stations for electric vehicles. This involves determining the best locations for charging stations in order to ensure that vehicles are charged enough for rendering a service when needed. The problem objective is to maximize the flow coverage for the electric vehicles through optimizing the number of recharging stations and their specific type at each station. Flow coverage is referred to as the ratio of car flows that are covered with regard to a special budget level. It also tries to minimize the locating cost related to these infrastructures. A genetic algorithm-based approach is proposed. Numerical application is provided, and results compared against branch and cut algorithm. The proposed approach performs better.

Multi-Tier Supplier Selection Using Total Cost of Ownership and Data Envelopment Analysis

Quality management across multiple tiers is vital to minimize cost of quality in global supply chains. In this chapter, the authors address the problem of supplier selection in multi-tier global supply chains with the purpose of overall quality management. A hybrid approach based on total cost of ownership (TCO) and network data envelopment analysis (DEA) is proposed. The TCO looks beyond the quoted cost to cover additional true costs related to the entire purchasing cycle. The cost categories included are quoted price, manufacturing costs, quality costs, design costs, logistics costs, after sales service, and social/environmental costs. Network DEA is used to rank the suppliers based on the TCO cost categories. The advantage of network DEA is its ability to investigate intermediate linkages between different stages of the supply chain. The results of network DEA are efficient suppliers and improvement targets for inefficient suppliers for improving overall quality in global supply chains. A numerical application is provided.

Security Framework for Supply-Chain Management

In recent times, cyber-attacks have been a significant problem in any organization. It can damage the brand name if confidential data is compromised. A robust cybersecurity framework should be an essential aspect of any organization. This chapter talks about the security framework for cyber threats in supply chain management and discusses in detail the implementation of a secure environment through various controls. Today, a systematic method is used for handling sensitive information in an organization. It includes processes, people, and IT systems by implementing a risk management method. Distinct controls dedicated to different levels of domains, namely human resources, access control, asset management, cryptography, physical security, operations security, supplier relations, acquisition, incident management, and security governance are provided. Companies, contractors, and any others who are part of the supply chain organization must follow this security framework to defend from any cyber-attacks.

Impact of Cloud Computing on Green Supply Chain Management

Almost every market in the world aims to go globally as wide as possible. It is important to understand the need for information and internet merged together in order to achieve such goal. Cloud systems are the new way of delivering and managing information to different parts in the world in a secure manner. However, not many organizations have moved to cloud. The rely of green supply chain management systems on cloud is not as popular as expected and not increasing fast enough. There is a trust issue raised against cloud and the adoption to it. Cloud can bring different benefits to green supply chain management systems such as the low cost of running, speed of dealing with information, and information availability which can have significant impact on energy savings. Organization contribution in the process of moving to cloud is important to attach any knowledge database to take competitive advantage.

An Integrated AHP-QFD-Based Compromise Ranking Model for Sustainable Supplier Selection

Sustainability in industrial organizations has become a predominant concept in the 21st century due to environmental regulations, economic importance, and social obligations. In this context, sustainable supplier selection plays an epochal role for taking strategic business decisions. So, a systematic approach is required to deal with the sustainable factors. By integrating the three pillars of sustainability, namely economic, environmental, and social factors, this chapter presents an integrated model for supplier selection from a sustainability perspective. The proposed framework combines analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and quality function deployment (QFD) methods to deal with the sustainable criteria. Finally, suppliers are ranked using VIse Kriterijumska Optimizacija kompromisno Resenja (VIKOR) method. The proposed framework is used to analyze a case study of a dairy company, but it can also be implemented for sustainable supplier selection in any industries. The study brings an artefact for managers to effectively analyze suppliers with the integrated decision-making model.