V. M. Rao Tummala

• Ph D Management Science
• Eastern Michigan University

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose a comprehensive and coherent approach for managing risks in supply chains. Design/methodology/approach Building on Tummala et al. 's Risk Management Process (RMP), this paper develops a structured and ready‐to‐use approach for managers to assess and manage risks in supply chains. Findings Supply cha...

This paper is an extension and further validation of Tummala and Schoenherr (2008) who developed a Supply Chain Management (SCM) implementation decision framework based on best practices identified in past literature. This manuscript reports and analyses the results of a survey among supply chain managers of a large international manufacturing comp...

Purpose – This paper aims to show the process of designing and measuring learning competencies in program development. Design/methodology/approach – The paper includes cross‐sectoral comparisons to draw on programmatic and pedagogical strategies, more commonly utilized in vocational education, and transfer the application of these strategies into...

This paper reports the process used by a US manufacturing company to assess supply chain risks within the context of an offshore sourcing decision. The case study company was faced with the objective of finding a new supplier for two of its major product lines. Five alternatives were considered: (1) sourcing finished goods from Mexico; (2) sourcing...

Effective supply chain management (SCM) can be achieved via a variety of initiatives. However, which initiative is chosen is a crucial decision because not every approach is suitable for all companies. This paper aims to facilitate this task by developing an implementation-decision framework for SCM initiatives based on best practices. In this fram...

The practice of electronic procurement has gained popularity over the last ten years, and so has the research on this emerging area. While first reports in the 1990s focused on general descriptions and best practices, more recent studies have dealt with specific and refined applications of this approach. Since some of the early electronic procureme...

The preparation of cost estimates for construction projects is not an easy job, because construction projects are subject to risks and uncertainties, particularly at the inception stage, when very limited information about the project is available. However, the cost estimates prepared at this stage are usually the most important to the client. Nowa...

The Hong Kong/Southern China area has been a low-cost manufacturing center. To seize the economic opportunities in the 21st century, Hong Kong must sustain its global competitiveness by further enhancing its manufacturing support competencies. Hong Kong needs strong manufacturing support infrastructures including transportation, information technol...

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine important operational issues related to strategic success factors that are necessary when implementing SCM plans in an organization. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire was distributed to top and middle management within a large manufacturing firm, specializing in producing consumer and build...

Effective supply chain management (SCM) can be achieved via a variety of initiatives. However, which initiative is chosen is a crucial decision because not every approach is suitable for all companies. This paper aims to facilitate this task by developing an implementation-decision framework for SCM initiatives based on best practices. In this fram...

This paper presents the results of a study that examines the success factors in developing and implementing supply chain management strategies for Hong Kong manufacturers. A survey was conducted recently in Hong Kong manufacturing industries to examine the importance and the extent to which the Hong Kong manufacturers practiced the strategies based...

In order to maintain competitiveness in a global market, more Hong Kong manufacturers are continuing the pursuit of quality management after being certified to ISO 9000. They strive for other quality management practices/approaches for continuous improvement such as the total quality management (TQM). Successful implementation of the TQM generates...

Preventive maintenance (PM) has long been recognized as a method to increase equipment reliability and availability. However, for equipment in complex plant installations like toll road/tunnel systems, to carry out PM on all components may not be feasible, or, may end up with excessive maintenance costs. This paper describes how a risk-based mainte...

In Hong Kong, as in many countries, the ISO 9000 standards have been used extensively in setting up quality assurance management systems. The ISO 9000 assures that a company is running well as to its status quo but it lacks a focus on further improvement. Therefore, more manufacturers are continuing the pursuit of total or strategic quality managem...

Based on company practices and costs of poor quality (COPQ) models formulated by others, an activity-based costing program is introduced in this article to identify the opportunities to develop and implement appropriate improvement projects to reduce the costs of poor quality and increase the quality of products and services. This program consists...

Vendor selection of a telecommunications system is an important problem to a telecommunications company as the telecommunications system is a long-term investment for the company and the success of telecommunications services is directly affected by the vendor selection decision. Furthermore, the vendor selection of a telecommunications system is a...

In this paper, we formulate a risk management model for improving operation and maintenance activities in electricity transmission. The model is based on the five core elements of risk identification, risk measurement, risk assessment, risk evaluation, risk control, and risk monitoring and is applied to an actual case study of improving equipment a...

Hong Kong is facing severe competition and increasing rivalry from the East Asian countries. In order to face these formidable challenges and to seize the opportunities that are available in the global marketplace of the twenty-first century, Hong Kong manufacturing industries need to implement strategies to become globally competitive. In this pap...

The sampling distribution of the information content (entropy) of the priority vector of a consistent pairwise comparison judgment matrix, PCJM(n) using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is studied by Noble and Sanchez, where n is the number of criteria associated with the matrix. They concluded simulation experiments with sample size of 1000 an...

This paper presents an algorithm to schedule tasks in work orders for a manufacturing company in a job-shop environment. The algorithm is a modified form of simulated annealing, where each perturbation is guided by several factors, one of which is the cruciality of each day in the current solution state. This approach is found to be generally super...

Risk management processes (RMPs) are logically consistent and structured approaches to enumerating and understanding potential risk factors and assessing consequences and uncertainties associated with these identified risk factors. Based on this information, we can evaluate and choose the best course of action in order to cope up with the identifie...

Today’s growing concern in environment awareness forces manufacturers to strive for implementing competitive strategies in environmental management. With the introduction of ISO 14001 Environmental Management System (EMS) standard in 1996, many manufacturing companies are facing a decision problem of whether or not to implement the ISO 14001 based...

A survey is described which examines the current risk handling practices in evaluating capital development projects (transmission, generation and distribution) within the electricity supply industry world-wide. As risk perception is an important aspect of risk management, the attitudes towards and the barriers created by management to risk manageme...

Examines the involvement of all levels of employees in Hong Kong and China companies for ISO 9000 registration and maintenance. For convenience, the employee levels are divided into management, supervision, staff and operator level categories. The extent and the nature of involvement among these four levels of employees are studied and an appropria...

The quality history of individual parts from a critical operation can be modeled by a five-state Markov chain involving factory rework operation, customer inspection and field test, parts scrapped, parts defective but used-as-is by concession or re-graded for alternative applications, and defect-free parts satisfying customer requirements. We estim...

This paper examines and evaluates success factors to develop strategies for implementing concurrent engineering (CE) in Hong Kong electronics and plastic products industries. The success factors, benefits, and costs of CE implementation are considered, and a model based on the AHP methodology is formulated to assess their relative priorities. The r...

In this paper, we use Saaty''s Eigenvector Method and the Power Method as well as =1, 2, , 9, 1/2, 1/3, , 1/9} and -={1,2, ,9,1, 1/2, ,1/9} as the sets from which the pairwise comparison judgments are assigned at random to examine the variation in the values determined for the mean random consistency index. By extensive simulation analysis, we foun...

This paper reviews the viability of applying a risk management process to enhance capital investment decisions, when planning the construction of an extra-high voltage (EHV) overhead transmission line project that could be designed and built in the next 10 years by China Light & Power Company Limited, Hong Kong. Different project proposals will be...

This paper presents an integrated knowledge-based system (KBS) that assists project managers in identifying potential risk factors and the corresponding project risks. The knowledge acquired from previous experience is captured by the proposed project risk identification model which incorporates the work breakdown structure (WBS). The knowledge is...

Reviews and evaluates different quality tools that are commonly available in manufacturing and service industries and integrates them into an effective quality control and improvement system based on their characteristics and appropriateness when applying these tools. The study is based on the enhancement of the basic total control methodology (TCM...

This paper summarizes and compares the current practices, the benefits realized and the barriers faced in using risk management approaches based on the results obtained by conducting surveys in building services cost estimation, public transportation and electricity supply industries in Hong Kong. A few recommendations of overcoming the barriers in...

In recent years, project management has gained increasing recognition as an important discipline among some management academics in China. This paper reports the outcome of a survey-based study carried out on the contemporary project management practices in Pudong area of China. The aim is to investigate the contemporary Chinese management's unders...

This paper examines and evaluates strategic and operational level success factors, benefits and costs to develop strategies of implementing concurrent engineering (CE) in the Hong Kong electronics industry. First several success factors to implement CE are identified based on literature review. Then an AHP model is formulated and used to assess the...

This article examines how a 14-step implementation strategy to achieve ISO 9002 certification was applied to Termbray Industries' two subsidiary factories in mainland China. The problems faced in developing and implementing the quality management system are discussed. These experiences indicate that a modified strategy is useful in addressing the p...

Evaluating project proposals with respect to safety and reliability objectives is extremely complex. Several tangible as well as intangible factors need to be considered. Also, most often these factors are difficult to measure objectively because of their nature and the lack of factual data and information. In addition, they involve uncertainties a...

Several AHP researchers have addressed the problem of computing the mean random consistency index( MRCI(n)). No one, to our knowledge, determined the sampling distribution of the random consistency index, (RCI(n)), of the pairwise comparison judgment matrix of dimension n. RCI(n) is the basis for defining the MRCI(n) and the consistency ratio, CR(n...

Describes the important contributions of quality gurus like Deming, Juran, Crosby, Feigenbaum, Ishikawa and Garvin which led to the evolutionary development of Strategic Quality Management (SQM). In addition, the core concepts of SQM, namely, customer focus, leadership, strategic quality planning, design quality, speed and prevention, people partic...

Develops a framework for planning, developing and implementing an effective quality management system to satisfy the ISO 9002 quality assurance standard for any medium-to large-size PCB (printed circuit board) plant in China. Suggests that the approach can equally be applied to plants which are not located in China as long as the management recogni...

In recent years, increasing numbers of Hong Kong companies have been successfully applying appropriate technologies to the development of new products or to incremental improvements of existing products and manufacturing processes within Hong Kong, as well as outside the territory in the special economic regions of South China. Project management p...

The risk management process (RMP) is a logically consistent and structured approach in exploring and understanding all potential risk factors, assessing the consequences of these risk factors and their uncertainties associated with these risk factors, and evaluating and choosing the best course of action in order to cope up with the identified risk...

In this paper, we find a closed-form expression for the largest eigenvalue of a three-dimensional random pairwise comparison matrix. This expression can give us all the corresponding distribution moments. In particular, the exact value of the mean and variance of the largest eigenvalue associated a three-dimensional random pairwise comparison matri...

Several authors have formulated regression models to forecast electricity consumption. Also, more recently, several authors have attempted to formulate artificial neural network models to forecast electricity consumption. The authors have attempted in this paper to formulate and estimate both regression and artificial neural network models to forec...

Since its inception in the early 1980s, the local area network LAN Technology has proven to be one of the most effective tools for solving communication problems. However, the task of configuring the optimal LAN for a certain application remains a difficult one, given the large number of components contained by the communication network. The decisi...

Three real life cases are considered in this paper to apply and compare the rankings obtained by the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and other Multicriteria Decision Making (MCDM) techniques such as Simple Additive Weighting (SAW), ELECTRE and Weighted Linear Assignment Method (WLAM). The results indicated that the AHP, SAW, and ELECTRE rankings d...

The approach of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) involves the structuring of any complex problem into different hierarchy levels to accomplish the stated objective of a problem. Using a method for scaling of weights of the elements in each of the hierarchy levels with respect to an element of the next higher level, a matrix of pairwise comparis...

The shape and scale parameters of the Weibull distribution are estimated by assuming a weighted squared-error loss function and minimizing the corresponding expected loss with respect to a given posterior distribution. These estimators are called minimum expected loss (MELO). The inverse square form of the weighting function is assumed to demonstra...

The estimators of reliability and parameters of certain lifetime distributions which are widely used in reliability, repairability, and maintainability are obtained by using a different form of loss function and minimizing the s-expected loss with respect to the posterior distribution. These estimators are called MELO estimators. The applications,...

In the sewage problem discussed only two states of nature theta //1 and theta //2 have been assumed. In actual practical applications of the proposed approach several states may be considered or for that matter a continuous spectrum may be assumed, without any significant change in procedure for revising the probabilities. Utilities have been assig...