Bart MacCarthy

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• Professor at University of Nottingham

Although many studies have proclaimed the potential benefits of blockchain technology for supply chain traceability, there are very few examples of successfully scaled blockchain traceability solutions. Here, we examine the challenges in adopting blockchain-based traceability solutions using the case of a complex globally fragmented industry—the fr...

Digital Supply Chain Surveillance (DSCS) is the proactive monitoring and analysis of digital data that allows firms to extract information related to a supply chain network, without needing the explicit consent of firms involved in the supply chain. AI has made DSCS to become easier and larger-scale, posing significant opportunities for automated d...

Business ecosystems have become the preferred operating mode in the digital economy, replacing vertical hierarchies and linear supply chains with a distributed and collaborative organizational model. Improvements through digital technologies allow for connectedness and data exchange beyond corporate boundaries, transforming the structure of busines...

Purpose Blockchain is increasingly being considered for applications in operations and supply chain management. However, evidence from practice is still scarce on why, where and how organizations seek to apply the technology in the supply chain across different industries. The study develops a comprehensive framework to enhance understanding of th...

Blockchain research in the supply chain management field is growing. The complexities of blockchain as a technology and its potential implications for business and digital ecosystems have expanded the spectrum of research areas that need to be investigated to further develop this emerging field. The increasing number of applications of the technolo...

There is now widespread appreciation of the critical role played by supply chains in the global economy. Supply chains are dominant concerns for many organisations, governments, policy makers, and consumers. A primary requirement in addressing many of the contemporary supply challenges is the need to ‘map’ a supply system. With notable exceptions,...

The Digital Supply Chain is a thorough investigation of the underpinning technologies, systems, platforms and models that enable the design, management, and control of digitally connected supply chains. The book examines the origin, emergence and building blocks of the Digital Supply Chain, showing how and where the virtual and physical supply chai...

Blockchain is a potentially disruptive technology that supports immutability, transparency, and traceability for digital transactions. Blockchain shows promise for tackling several challenges in managing contemporary supply chains. Blockchain technology requires collaboration, which has resulted in the formation of many consortia to advance its ado...

The continued advancement of computing and digital technologies is transforming markets, economics, businesses, and society. We discuss the characteristics and applications of three important developments that are generating transformative change in the management of supply chains and business operations—Cloud-based systems, Digital Platforms, and...

Advances in technology, rapid globalization, trade liberalization, and increased regulation have shaped supply chains in the last four decades. We examine the impact of digitalization on contemporary and future supply chains. Digitalization potentially enables a strong digital thread connecting and mirroring an entire physical supply chain. We prov...

In this chapter, we define and conceptualize the emerging practice of “Digital Supply Chain Surveillance (DSCS)” as the proactive monitoring of digital data that allows firms to track, manage, and analyze information related to a supply chain network using available data and information sources. DSCS has potential applications in risk management, s...

Supply chain traceability is a dominant concern for many industries, regulators, and policymakers. In the textile and apparel industries, social, environmental, and sustainability issues are frequent causes for concern, highlighting the need for effective traceability solutions. Blockchain technology has characteristics that make it attractive for...

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems support industrial organisations in managing their product portfolios and related data across all phases of the product lifecycle. PLM seeks to enhance an organisation's ability to manage its product development activities and support collaboration across organisational functions and business units, and be...

Supply networks need to exhibit stability in order to remain functional. Here, we apply a generalized modeling (GM) approach, which has a strong pedigree in the analysis of dynamical systems, to study the stability of real‐world supply networks. It goes beyond purely structural network analysis approaches by incorporating material flows, which are...

Buy-Online-Pickup-in-Store (BOPS) retail services have gained increasing popularity as they offer benefits for both customers and retailers in omni-channel retailing. However, using conventional retail stores to fulfil orders received online whilst also serving walk-in customers is challenging for retailers, particularly when a high customer servic...

Manufacturing supply networks are complex dynamic networks that play a crucial role in the economy. Nevertheless, there are so far only few studies that apply modern tools of network science and dynamical system theory to the analysis of these networks. Here, we provide a brief introduction to these types of networks highlighting their basic organi...

Supply networks are exposed to instabilities and thus a high level of risk. To mitigate this risk, it is necessary to understand how instabilities are formed in supply networks. In this paper, we focus on instabilities in inventory dynamics that develop due to the topology of the supply network. To be able to capture these topology-induced instabil...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate how organisational learning (OL) can occur through process improvement (PI) activities, leading to sustained improvements over time in the context of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Design/methodology/approach The authors study PI practices in six engineering-oriented SMEs via intervi...

With an increasing proportion of external spend allocated to a smaller number of suppliers in their supply base, car manufacturers rely more and more on the performance of key supply chain partners outside their own organisational boundaries, particularly for product innovation. The identification and selection of innovative suppliers for strategic...

We consider supplier development decisions for prime manufacturers with extensive supply bases producing complex, highly engineered products. We propose a novel modelling approach to support supply chain managers decide the optimal level of investment to improve quality performance under uncertainty. We develop a Poisson-Gamma model within a Bayesi...

The order-to-delivery (OTD) process in the volume automotive sector is important for automakers, dealers and customers. It affects the customer's experience with regard to receiving a vehicle that matches their requested specification in a reasonable time and the costs of the automaker in serving the market. OTD processes share similarities across...

Portfolio optimization involves the optimal assignment of limited capital to different available financial assets to achieve a reasonable trade-off between profit and risk. We consider an alternative Markowitz’s mean-variance model, in which the variance is replaced with an industry standard risk measure, Value-at-Risk (VaR), in order to better ass...

Purpose Supply chains evolve and change in size, shape and configuration, and in how they are coordinated, controlled and managed. Some supply chains are mature and relatively unchanging. Some are subject to significant change. New supply chains may emerge and evolve for a variety of reasons. The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of su...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate vendor managed inventory (VMI) for the supply of medicines between distributors and hospitals to identify factors that may affect VMI adoption. Design/methodology/approach Two contrasting VMI initiatives involving five organizations (three hospitals, one distributor and one manufacturer/supplier)...

Effective decision making can help organizations to manage complexity. Here we argue that considering decisions as units of organizational knowledge and providing a means for decision storage, retrieval and reuse can facilitate effective decision making. To enable the recording and retrieval of decisions, a conceptual model is presented that can be...

Effective decision making can help organizations to manage complexity. Here we argue that considering decisions as units of organizational knowledge and providing a means for decision storage, retrieval and reuse can facilitate effective decision making. To enable the recording and retrieval of decisions, a conceptual model is presented that can be...

Satisfying requests for specific vehicle variants in a timely manner may increase profit margins for the producer and dealers in the automotive sector and may reduce the need to incentivise customers financially to make a purchase. Open pipeline order fulfilment systems have emerged in this sector to allow dealers to fulfil a customer in a number o...

Effective decision making can help organizations to manage complexity. Here we argue that considering decisions as units of organizational knowledge and providing a means for decision storage, retrieval and reuse can facilitate effective decision making. To enable the recording and retrieval of decisions, a conceptual model is presented that can be...

The growth in product variety has been accelerating in almost all product categories over the last four decades. Providing high levels of variety and customisation is challenging for many producers. Here the range and diversity of order fulfilment approaches available to producers to respond are examined critically. A continuum of six fulfilment ap...

Open pipeline order fulfilment systems have emerged in sectors such as the automotive industry that offer a large number of product variants to the marketplace. In an open pipeline a customer can be fulfilled from anywhere in the system—by a stock product, by a product in the distribution system, by allocating a product in production or a product i...

Purpose The study seeks to classify retailer‐driven clothing supply networks to provide new insights on their structure and operation and examine whether or not differences are evident in the types of networks operated by different types of retailer. Design/methodology/approach A large‐scale empirical investigation is conducted of 73 supply networ...

Purpose – The world is changing – economically, technologically, politically, and socially. As an academic discipline, operations management (OM) is, almost by definition, close to practice. Are our OM research methods fit for purpose for the new age? This paper reflects on and develops the principal themes discussed in the “OM Methodology” Special...

There is an extensive literature on new product and process development (NPD). However, the analysis of decision-making and decision support requirements in this area is less well researched. The authors discuss decision making in the context of NPD and identify decision types and decision attributes relevant to the NPD context. They illustrate the...

The concept of the long tail in demand distributions has generated significant research interest because of its potential importance for producers, distributors and retailers. Studies to date have focused on information goods sold through internet channels. Here we study long tail effects in vehicle sales sold through conventional car dealerships....

Collaborative supply networks in the international clothing industry are of major economic significance in many countries, particularly in developing economies. The sector has gone through substantial changes in the past decade with the abolition of trade barriers and the increasingly dominant position of major retailers and brand owners in supply...

In this paper, we attempt to investigate how the value chain is configured in several international supply networks and identify the implications that supply network configuration decisions bring to the operation of the network. The aspects of configuration investigated here including allocation of value chain activities including: research and dev...

Many different types of supply networks have been discussed in the literature. However, their relevance for SMEs has not been discussed in detail. This chapter briefly reviews supply network typologies and their relevance for SMEs. Analysis is presented of supply networks in the international clothing industry that has emerged over the last three d...

The structure and operation of supply networks have received considerable attention from both the business community and academic researchers in the last two decades as the pace of globalisation has accelerated. Supply networks in the international clothing industry have developed and evolved significantly over that period. This paper reviews diffe...

The Virtual Build-to-Order (VBTO) approach strives to allow a producer to fulfil customers with the specific product variants they seek more efficiently than a conventional order fulfilment system. It does so by opening the planning pipeline. Here the feasibility of modelling the VBTO system as a Markov process is investigated. Two system configura...

Mass customization has been viewed as desirable but difficult to achieve in the volume automotive sector. Here we consider flexibility in automotive order fulfillment systems to enhance the ability to satisfy customers with their desired vehicle variants within acceptable delivery lead times. Two types of flexibility are compared in a Virtual-Build...

Effective production planning, scheduling and control (PSC) is critical to any manufacturing business competing through responsive order fulfilment. With the current drive for businesses and supply chains to be responsive, a large scale empirical study was conducted with four cross-sector industrial partners to investigate the reality of PSC practi...

The clothing industry is one of the most mobile industries in the world. Global supply poses significant challenges in ensuring the right volume and mix of products within retail stores. Here we define a new concept – Global quick response (GQR) – which strives to combine the cost and scale efficiencies arising from sourcing globally with quick and...

The Virtual Build-to-Order (VBTO) approach strives to allow a producer to fulfil customers with the specific product variants they seek more efficiently than a conventional order fulfilment system. It does so by opening the planning pipeline. Here the feasibility of modelling the VBTO system as a Markov process is investigated. Two system configura...

Producers face significant challenges in fulfilling customer orders when product variety levels are high. Open pipeline concepts have developed in sectors such as the automotive industry where there are a high number of product variants, significantly long planning pipelines and differences in customer requirements and demands within a customer pop...

The structure and operation of supply networks have received considerable attention from both the business community and academic researchers in the last two decades as the pace of globalisation has accelerated. Supply networks in the international clothing industry have developed and evolved significantly over that period. This paper reviews diffe...

The paper presents the preliminary results of a RTD project devoted to the transfer of concepts and methods, originally developed in the industrial area, to the subject of healthcare services where a profitable application is envisaged. The approach is based on drawing out the analogies between supply chains, composed by a network of resources conn...

Detailed observational research, undertaken in two large and complex manufacturing businesses, identified ways in which work groups interface to employ knowledge to perform production planning and control activities. Eleven interfaces were observed and methods were established to classify them into types based on how knowledge is communicated and s...

The clothing industry is one of the most mobile industries in the world. In the last three decades clothing manufacture has migrated substantially from the developed to the less well developed economies. There have also been significant movements of parts of the clothing sector across newly industrialized, developing and under-developed economies....

1 Modern manufacturing supply networks are challenged by demands for flexible responses to demanding customers who require rapid delivery of customized products. Traditional methods of simulation and optimization do not capture enough of the complexity of information flow and agent behaviour to provide adequate means of meeting the challenges to un...

In this paper, we present a case-based reasoning (CBR) approach solving educational time-tabling problems. Following the basic idea behind CBR, the solutions of previously solved problems are employed to aid finding the solutions for new problems. A list of feature-value pairs is insufficient to represent all the necessary information. We show that...

Automotive producers are adopting multi-modal fulfillment models in which customers can be fulfilled by products from stock, by allocating as yet unmade products that are in the planning pipeline, or by building a product to order. This study explores how fulfillment is sensitive to several parameters of the system and how they interact with differ...

The business environment has never changed as fast and as radically as at present. Traditional capacity planning has limitations in today’s dynamic environments, particularly from a strategic perspective. Collaborative extended enterprises require strategic capacity planning (SCP), which focuses not only on economies of scale but also on coordinati...

The business environment is changing fast and radically. Traditional capacity planning has limitations in today's dynamic environments, particularly from a strategic perspective in the aerospace sector. This document sets out to identify the unique characteristics of the aerospace industry and compare the traditional views of capacity planning and...

There are strong competitive pressures on high volume automotive producers to develop order fulfilment systems that are responsive to customer needs and that deliver customer-focused variety to the marketplace. Order fulfilment in high volume automotive operations is complex, involving the participation of many internal functions and external partn...

This document presents a review of the practices and tools that are used in other (non-aerospace) industries, for the purpose of identifying best practices that might also be employed in the rapid generation of a proposal for aero engine products and services. Addressing the customer's perception of value, and its delivery process, this has implica...

Selected papers from the 18th International Conference on Production Research were presented, which shows developments in operations strategy, supply chain design, and production systems are presented. The digital revolution in product and process design is well advanced and digital technologies are commonplace in design, manufacture and new produc...

The business philosophy of Mass Customisation (MC) implies rapid response to customer requests, high efficiency and limited cost overheads of customisation. Furthermore, it also implies the quality benefits of the mass production paradigm are guaranteed. However, traditional quality science in manufacturing is premised on volume production of unifo...

Purpose For manufacturing enterprises, today's business environment is characterised by globally dispersed supply and manufacturing networks. In addition, the level of variety in products continues to increase in almost all sectors. Greater understanding of the management of product variety in international operations is required. Aims to discuss t...

Virtual-Build-to-Order (VBTO) is an emerging order fulfilment system within the automotive sector that is intended to improve fulfilment performance by taking advantage of integrated information systems. The primary innovation in VBTO systems is the ability to make available all unsold products that are in the production pipeline to all customers....

Catalogue Mass customizers are being imaginative in coping with the demands of high variety, high volume, customization and short lead times. These demands have encouraged the relationship between product, process and customer to be re-examined. A diversity of order fulfillment models are observed including some models with a single fixed decouplin...

The virtual enterprise is an ideal solution to the pace of change in modern markets, where increasingly well-informed customers demand high performance, customised products, with continuing downward pressure on prices and lead times. In meeting customer requirements of this kind, the level of investment demanded of an individual manufacturer may be...

The virtual enterprise is an ideal solution to the pace of change in modern markets, where increasingly well-informed customers demand high performance, customised products, with continuing downward pressure on prices and lead times. In meeting customer requirements of this kind, the level of investment demanded of an individual manufacturer may be...

High product variety is challenging for manufacturing enterprises that strive for operational efficiency whilst also satisfying customer demands for specific product variants. Here we consider innovative and flexible order fulfilment mechanisms that are emerging, particularly in the automotive sector. The concept involves reconfiguring products in...

The structured representation of cases by attribute graphs in a Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) system for course timetabling has been the subject of previous research by the authors. In that system, the case base is organised as a decision tree and the retrieval process chooses those cases which are sub attribute graph isomorphic to the new case. The d...

Agent-based modelling is gaining popularity for understanding the behaviour of complex systems involving interactions of many players or agents. In this paper an agent-based simulation modelling technique is applied to understand the long term implications of strategy decisions for an aerospace value chain. The industry has unique elements includin...

The structured representation of cases by attribute graphs in a Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) system for course timetabling has been the subject of previous research by the authors. In that system, the case base is organised as a decision tree and the retrieval process chooses those cases which are sub attribute graph isomorphic to the new case. The d...

With global markets and global competition, pressures are placed on manufacturing organizations to compress order fulfillment times, meet delivery commitments consistently and also maintain efficiency in operations to address cost issues. This chapter argues for a process perspective on planning, scheduling and control that integrates organizationa...

High product variety is challenging for manufacturing enterprises that strive for operational efficiency whilst also satisfying customer demands for specific product variants. Here we consider innovative and flexible order fulfilment mechanisms that are emerging, particularly in the automotive sector. The concept involves reconfiguring products in...

Purpose – Manufacturers across many sectors increasingly operate in high variety environments. Research evidence suggests that variety has a negative impact on performance. However, the research literature is limited on the enablers that allow variety to be managed effectively and efficiently at the “front-end” of an organisation and in quotation p...

Air transport has a considerable impact on tourism, trade and other aspects of society, and the industry that constructs and maintains aircraft is a major employer and wealth generator. Many nations have made substantial investments aimed at developing and retaining world- class aerospace design and manufacturing capabilities; if these resources ar...

Corus, the international metals group, is a large and complex business competing in a dynamic market place. With the pressures on the company to manage its business effectively and responsively, there is a continuing need to re-evaluate business structures. This article looks at the impact of such restructures on production planning, scheduling and...

This document describes value chain concepts and value chain analysis for applications in the aerospace industry, particularly the aero-engine industry. Discussion is made regarding the value chain first proposed by Porter in the mid 1980s for strategy development and how this has evolved to become a framework for value chain formation and for coll...

Mass Customization (MC) is not a mature business strategy and hence it is not clear that a single or small group of operational models are dominating. Companies tend to approach MC from either a mass production or a customization origin and this in itself gives reason to believe that several operational models will be observable. This paper reviews...

The configurator is a family of software systems that typically provides the customer with an interface to show the product range, enables customer-driven product configuration and may allow the ordering of configured product. In this paper, the author explains how a product configurator can help with demand management. A configurator can be an imp...

Virtual-build-to-order (VBTO) is a form of order fulfilment system in which the producer has the ability to search across the entire pipeline of finished stock, products in production and those in the production plan, in order to find the best product for a customer. It is a system design that is attractive to Mass Customizers, such as those in the...

Whenever vehicle manufacturers (VMs) ask their marketplace about the purchasing experience, invariably they find that customers would prefer to receive their vehicles in a shorter time than the VM is able to deliver and that they would prefer not to compromise on the vehicle's specification. The arrival of the Internet and integrated information sy...

For over 3 decades there was a belief that computer-based solutions would "solve" complex industrial scheduling problems, yet most manufacturing organizations still require human contributions for effective scheduling performance. We present a new model of scheduling for the development and implementation of effective scheduling systems within manu...

This document presents a preliminary description of approaches to model factors, themes, scenarios and value chains in the aerospace sector. Three key activities are described: (1) development of a detailed map of the factors that impact on the aerospace business environment and their interrelationships ; (2) an initial set of business scenarios an...

The concept of Mass Customization (MC)—producing customized goods for a mass market—has received considerable attention in the research literature in recent years. However, the literature is limited in providing an understanding of the content of MC strategies (the organizational structures, process technologies, etc., that are best in a particular...

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Much mass customisation is tailored for niche groups and a significant proportion is B2B, with the expectation of repeat business. The authors discuss strategies for mass customisation.

This paper presents a new hyper-heuristic method using Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) for solving course timetabling problems. The term hyper-heuristics has recently been employed to refer to heuristics that choose heuristics rather than heuristics that operate directly on given problems. One of the overriding motivations of hyper-heuristic methods is...

Only a limited amount of research has been reported on factors influencing international location decisions for contemporary manufacturing operations. In this paper a comprehensive set of factors that may influence international location decisions is identified from an analysis of the existing literature. Results are presented from a Delphi study t...

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The importance of understanding international network configurations and the key factors that companies should think about when setting up facilities across national borders are discussed. Firms intending to set up facilities or relocate their activities in foreign countries may fail to recognise the important aspects that need to be considered in...

Mass customization excites interest across both the research community and business and industry. However there are issues and question marks over what it means and how it may be realized. More evidence of practice is required to understand the implications of adopting a mass customization strategy. This chapter presents five case studies from a ra...

Identifies the need for a formal procedure to generate a reference state when conducting qualitative simulation studies. A procedure for generating a reference state is presented and justified. The procedure considers output performance indicators, steady state conditions, system capacity and model validity. Its application is illustrated using a s...

Performance measurement systems need to be designed holistically, ensuring they are in line with, and represent, business objectives. The authors challenge some commonly held assumptions about business performance measures. To start one thinking about one's business planning, scheduling and control (PSC) process in a new way, we have provided a PSC...

The principal application domain for statistical process control (SPC) charts has been for process control and improvement in manufacturing businesses. However, the number of applications reported in domains outside of conventional production systems has been increasing in recent years. Implementing SPC chart approaches in non-standard applications...

The chapter introduces the concept of product key value attributes (KVA) for understanding Mass Customization (MC). The customization potential and desirability of product attributes may be explained in this light. The concept provides a basis to understand the spectrum of MC strategies and the challenges that MC poses operationally. A number of co...

This paper presents a new hyper-heuristic method using Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) for solving course timetabling problems. The term Hyper-heuristics has recently been employed to refer to 'heuristics that choose heuristics' rather than heuristics that operate directly on given problems. One of the overriding motivations of hyper-heuristic methods i...