Tim Gruchmann

• Professor
• Professor at University of Applied Science and Arts Dortmund

Engineering Change Management (ECM) is an integral part of Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), managing the changes in fit, form, and function of products to meet the customer needs for sustainability, quality, safety, and cost-effectiveness. A systematic literature review was conducted across five scientific literature databases, analyzing related...

Managers of food processing lines are demanded to increase productivity and efficiency. Due to product variations within the order backlog, it is difficult to identify local bottlenecks and develop appropriate solutions to address them. In addition, production managers require competencies to analyse the impact of changes within the production prog...

Recent challenges, including the semiconductor shortage, the Suez Canal blockage, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and the Huthi attacks in the Red Sea, have shifted the focus of top management toward ensuring continuity and building resilience in their supply chains (SCs). These threats manifest in supply shortages, manufacturing halts, and significan...

Purpose The COVID-19 pandemic showed that preestablished contingency plans and resilience practices were insufficient to cope with long-term and global disruptions. Companies thus struggled to develop capabilities that ensure their survivability during similar crises. Building on the adaptation-based view (ABV) of supply chain resilience, this stud...

Purpose – The ripple effect (i.e., disruption propagation in networks) belongs to one of the central pillars in supply chain resilience and viability research, constituting a type of systemic disruption. A considerable body of knowledge has been developed for the last two decades to examine the ripple effect triggered by instantaneous disruptions,...

Companies need to respond to changing market requirements with product and process improvements. In order to better meet the needs of consumers, technical changes must be made within the product lifecycle of products. This can, for example, change the product's shape, fit or function. Engineering Change Management (ECM) processes are an elementary...

Due to climate change, extreme weather events will increase in intensity, frequency, and duration in the future, negatively impacting logistics and transport systems. The threat of missing climate targets and a lack of climate adaptivity strategies in the transport sector leads to growing climate-related risks for transportation companies. The pres...

Driving assistants offer opportunities for innovation in transportation logistics by preventing accidents and improving workers' well-being. The related transition towards technological interaction, however, changes the spectrum of job tasks and the drivers' perceptions of their workplace. In this vein, driving assistants are not always viewed posi...

Experiencing more frequent, system-wide disruptions, such as pandemics and geopolitical conflicts, supply chains can be largely destabilized by a lack of materials, services, or components. Supply chain resilience (SCRES) constitutes the network ability to recover after and survive during such unexpected events. To enhance the understanding of SCRE...

The research on Supply Chain Resilience (SCRES) has gained momentum after organizations have experienced more frequent and severe disruptions, especially with COVID-19 and the Russia/Ukraine conflict. Due to its potential for new practices and capability building, SCRES requires dynamic capabilities (DC) to enable an organization to prepare for, co...

The implementation of Engineering Change Management (ECM) practices challenges companies as it impacts organizational, processual, and IT levels simultaneously. We analyzed the ECM implementation in a selected company from the medical device industry, answering the research question of which leading practices support their ECM process. We character...

Achieving a circular economy (CE) is considered one of the most significant challenges of our time, as environmental challenges and social discrepancies keep increasing. While companies need to transform their supply chains towards sustainability and circularity, implementing CE concepts into practice is not straightforward and requires technical a...

Purpose-Adopting new technologies to improve supply chain activities and processes is essential due to increasingly complex and dynamic business environments. Particularly in the pharmaceutical industry, high-quality standards must be met, requiring transparency and visibility in the supply chain. This research aims at investigating the implementat...

Purpose-While the literature on multitier supply chain management traditionally assumes that first-tier suppliers belong to the visible proportion of the supply base, intermediaries might limit focal firms' visible horizon already at this stage. High power asymmetries promoting centrality and complexity in the supply network are seen as a particula...

The tourism industry was seen as one of the main beneficiaries of globalization prior to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, while tourism is a major driver of economic growth and social well-being, a transformation of the industry towards more sustainable practices along the tourism supply chain (TSC) is needed to ensure that sustainab...

Logistics services support customer-relationship building in the supply chain and help the buying companies establish and maintain a sustainable competitive advantage. To empirically quantify the effect, we introduce the Sustainable Logistics Service Quality (SLSQ) scale and measure the impact of SLSQ on customer satisfaction and relationship quali...

Purpose: According to recent studies, many road accidents could be avoided using driving assistance systems. However, the introduction of increased levels of technology in workplaces is often met with opposition. The paper, therefore, analyzes the bus drivers' acceptance of assistance systems and provides recommendations for increasing acceptance....

Blockchain technology is provoking significant transformations in the logistics industry, creating a complex environment that challenges business change. This study endeavors to advance the research regarding blockchain-based logistics management by identifying tensions and paradoxes accompanying blockchain adoption for handling digital freight inf...

Kommen Sie mit auf eine spannende Reise zu attraktiven Reisezielen in Deutschland und seinen Regionen. Die deutschen Küsten, Berge und Städte werden jährlich von Millionen von Touristinnen und Touristen besucht. Doch welche touristische Position hat Deutschland im globalen Vergleich, wie ist das Reiseverhalten der Deutschen und wie gestalten sich d...

Businesses are increasingly exposed to dynamic market conditions due to changing legislation, societal values, and consumer preferences. While society and stakeholders hold companies accountable for respecting principles of sustainable development in their business conduct, it is essential to understand how individual, organizational, and supply ch...

The role of sustainability has made it a vital point to measure companies’ financial performances and sustainability practices along the overall supply chain. Logistics service providers (LSPs) are among the supply chain actors that need to consider sustainability practices to present a better sustainable service. Therefore, we studied LSPs in Egyp...

In many industrial countries, demographic changes towards an aging society go hand in hand with the need for ergonomic workplaces. Therefore, it is necessary to rethink workplace designs and work processes, particularly in industrial professions, such as logistics. As logistics activities are still characterized by a high amount of manual effort, t...

Subcontracting represents a popular business model in supply chains across industries. In the case of hidden subcontracting, subcontractors are beyond the visible horizon of the (focal) buying firm. Hence, buyers must rely on a cascading effect for diffusing practices such as compliance with labor standards through their supply networks. Motivated...

The motivations for clothing companies to implement dedicated certification schemes as sustainability practices has received limited attention in sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) research so far. Therefore, it is important to understand how different rationales for the implementation of certification schemes have developed in the past bec...

For years, the freight forwarding industry has been facing high levels of global competition. Accelerating this development, new and digital competitors are entering the market, striving to make freight logistics even faster, cheaper, and more predictable. Digitalization processes change traditional logistics businesses, leading to more efficient,...

Current trends related to increased sustainability requirements, the application of new digital technologies, and changes in consumer behavior have disrupted conventional food supply chains, entailing challenges for the last mile logistics and distribution of food products. The main aim of this study is to develop a toolset for exploring the sustai...

Within assembly network supply chains, supply disruptions can occur on every supplier-buyer link. Managing this network unreliability can help to reduce schedule instability and increases the overall efficiency of the supply chain accordingly. In this line, a stylised assembly network supply chain model is proposed with two suppliers and a single b...

Sustainable operations and sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) have become a highly relevant topic for scientific research and management, as well as policy-making practice. Despite surging growth in extant research, the need for theoretical and conceptual substantiation persists, and large opportunities for further research remain unexploit...

As a result of a conceptual simulation study proposed by Gruchmann and Rebs (2018), the bullwhip effect in automotive supply chains is not just detectable on a vertical supply chain level under demand uncertainties, but also on a horizontal supply chain level when production risks are present. Hence, it is important to validate these results by rea...

A sustainable economy fulfills societal needs in a fundamentally different way to the current economic system. Improvements to the efficiency of existing technologies or practices appear insufficient for achieving sustainable development within the planetary boundaries. Disruptive, systemic and transformational changes appear necessary in order to...

Purpose: The food industry and its distribution solutions often lie at the center of sustainability-related arguments. However, little is known about the dynamic role of business capabilities for sustainable transformations in the context of local food distribution. Accordingly, this study investigates how dynamic capabilities drive sustainable sup...

Supply chain effectiveness and general societal prosperity, as well as economic and ecological productivity will be highly affected in the next decades, entailing challenges for the supply chain and logistics sector. Thereby this sector plays a significant role within the transformation process of economic systems, yet the capacities of it remain u...

Die vorliegende Publikation erscheint im Kontext des Projektes „ADINA – Automatisierungstechnik und Ergonomieunterstützung für innovative Kommissionier- und Umschlagkonzepte der Logistik in NRW“. Die Förderung erfolgt im Rahmen der EFRE-Förderung NRW (2017-2020), Leitmarktwettbewerb Logistik.NRW. Die Projektbeteiligten sind das Institut für Logisti...

Regional impact scenarios of climate change show a high risk of supply deadlocks in respect to food security. Moreover, the impact of climate system on food security is induced by consumption systems due to shifting demand patterns within fast urbanization processes. Therefore, the transformational management of food supply chains shows an urgent d...

The complexity of the term sustainability is encouraging both policy makers and industry, to expand their methodology of solving environmental, social, and economic issues. In the field of applied science, sustainability-related research is thematic and policy driven; therefore involving the widest possible range of stakeholders is of importance. H...

In food supply chains, products and services are continuously expanded and adapted according to changing customer demands. As concerns for environmental and social issues within societies grow, sustainable business practices in supply chains are coming to the fore. Altogether customers’ growing demand for local food has led to an increased importan...

The design of logistics and transportation systems has long-term effects on the sustainability performance of the supply chain and its operational costs. Competing objectives coupled with deep uncertainty involved in the decision-making problem make it inherently challenging. While optimizing facility locations under certain conditions has been ext...

To face the challenges of a sustainable development, advanced capabilities are needed to fertilize sustainable corporate development on the level of operations management. Thus, this chapter describes the approach of participatory systems mapping (PSM) to fill knowledge gaps for required dynamic capabilities (DCs) in the field of sustainable supply...

Die Bereiche der Automatisierungstechnik und Ergonomieunterstützung tragen dazu bei, die Arbeitsfähigkeit der Logistikbeschäftigten zu erhöhen sowie die Attraktivität der entsprechenden Arbeitsplätze zu verbessern und wirken somit dem Fachkräftemangel gezielt entgegen. Die Verbesserung der Arbeitsergonomie unterstützt weiterhin den präventiven Gesu...

Purpose – Although research has been conducted on logistics social responsibility (LSR) on the one hand, and sustainable consumption on the other hand, the interlinkages between LSR and sustainable consumption still lack conceptualization and empirical evidence. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to study empirically the interplay between logi...

Societal, economic and ecological prosperity will be highly affected in the next decades due to socio-demographic developments and climate change. The design of more sustainable logistics business types can address such challenges to build more resilient supply chains. Therefore, the discussion with regard to transformational potentials of logistic...

Green Logistics is no longer just a temporary fashion, but a topic that has been discussed by experts for many years. What is new is, on the one hand, the increased social and political awareness and, on the other hand, the transfer of green core statements to entrepreneurial problems. Not least the economic crisis that began at the end of 2008 rei...

Das vorliegende essential enthält eine Reihe von Tools, welche sich im Rahmen des dreijährigen, BMBF-geförderten Projekts „Innovative Logistik für Nachhaltige Lebensstile (ILoNa)“ als besonders hilfreich für die praktische Umsetzung einer Nachhaltigkeitsstrategie von Logistikunternehmen herausgestellt haben. Eine Besonderheit liegt dabei in der kon...

Purpose So far, most of the literature on logistics social responsibility (LSR) has prioritized the examination, classification of and adaption toward positive LSR practices instead of investigating necessary logistics service providers’ capabilities to implement LSR strategies. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to contribute to theory by an...

Consumer attitudes toward consuming and buying locally produced food are well studied. By contrast, the topic of consumer preferences for local food, with a special emphasis on the role of norms, still lacks empirical evidence. To study the influence of norms and morals on the intention to buy local food products, a quantitative study (N = 327) foc...

Within assembly network supply chains, supply disruptions can occur on every supplier-buyer link. Managing this network unreliability can help to reduce schedule instability and increases the overall efficiency of the supply chain accordingly. In this line, a stylised assembly network supply chain model is proposed with two suppliers and a single b...

NaWiKo Synthese Papier der Projekte RegioTransKMU und ILoNa (bei de Projekte wurden mit den Mitteln des Bundesministeriums für Bildung und Forschung unter den Förderkennzeichen 01UT1406B und 01UT1403A gefördert)

Addressing the root causes of schedule instability, particularly the unreliability of suppliers’ production processes in a supply network, can help to curtail short-term demand variations and increase the overall supply chain efficiency. Hence, we introduce a stylized automotive supply chain with two suppliers and a single original equipment manufa...

To improve food security a conceptual integration beyond the scope of production in the agricultural sector due to examination of critical supply chain system compartments and levels of services (“integrated food production and supply systems”) is proposed. For creating systematic results, a platform integrating various perspectives of experts has...

Within automotive supply chains, instability of order schedules of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) creates inefficiencies in suppliers’ production processes. Due to the market power of the OEM, first tier suppliers are not always able to influence the scheduling behavior of their customers. However, addressing the root causes of schedule in...

Purpose – Purpose of the explorative study is to provide a structured analysis of the interlinkage of logistics services and consumer decisions so that those Supply Chain configurations can be selected which support best sustainable lifestyles. Design/methodology/approach – The authors conducted a two-stage approach by a) knowledge production with...