Owing to the heterogeneity between functional units and resource scarcity, manufacturing firms have been struggling with intra-organizational coordination for productivity and innovation. Traditional organizational structures, such as linear-functional and matrix, may cause responsibility division and independent goals (
Recently, firms have begun to handle the design, manufacturing, and maintenance of capital goods through a consolidated mechanism called the integrated product-service system. This new paradigm enables firms to deliver high-reliability products while lowering the ownership cost. Hence, holistic optimization models must be proposed for jointly allocating reliability, maintenance, and spare parts inventory across the entire value chain. In the existing literature, these decisions are often made fragmentally, thus resulting in local optimality. This study reviews the extant works pertaining to reliability-redundancy allocation, preventative maintenance, and spare parts logistics models. We discuss the challenges and opportunities of consolidating these decisions under an integrated reliability-maintenance-inventory framework for attaining superior system availability. Specific interest is focused on the new product introduction phase in which firms face a variety of uncertainties, including installed base, usage, reliability, and trade policy. The goal is to call for tackling the integrated reliability-maintenance-inventory allocation model under a nonstationary operating condition. Finally, we place the integrated allocation model in the semiconductor equipment industry and show how the firm deploys reliability initiatives and after-sale support logistics to ensure the fleet uptime for its global customers.
Given that group technology can reduce the changeover time of equipment, broaden the productivity, and enhance the flexibility of manufacturing, especially cellular manufacturing, group scheduling problems (GSPs) have elicited considerable attention in the academic and industry practical literature. There are two issues to be solved in GSPs: One is how to allocate groups into the production cells in view of major setup times between groups and the other is how to schedule jobs in each group. Although a number of studies on GSPs have been published, few integrated reviews have been conducted so far on considered problems with different constraints and their optimization methods. To this end, this study hopes to shorten the gap by reviewing the development of research and analyzing these problems. All literature is classified according to the number of objective functions, number of machines, and optimization algorithms. The classical mathematical models of single-machine, permutation, and distributed flowshop GSPs based on adjacent and position-based modeling methods, respectively, are also formulated. Last but not least, outlooks are given for outspread problems and problem algorithms for future research in the fields of group scheduling.
A project-oriented organization is a hybrid form of organization where a functional hierarchy is augmented with structures to manage projects strategically across the organization. Six project-oriented organizations from diverse industries that emphasize innovation in their strategies were selected for this study. We use the three pillars of institutional theory — regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive — and institutional entrepreneurship to analyze interview data from executive and project, program and portfolio management personnel in the project-oriented organizations to investigate how innovation is facilitated through external influences and internal responses. Our findings indicate that processes and new structures provide effective ways for innovation and, while individuals are important, processes are more effective than individuals at enabling innovation. We put forward some lessons for practice that emerge directly from the findings, including suggestions on improving allocation of resources, a need to focus on processes, reconceptualization of “failure”, and dedicated investment in market knowledge, customer knowledge, performance metrics and flexible governance structures.
Project management teams are critical in the implementation of megaprojects, but their evolution throughout the project lifecycle has not been clearly explained. This paper explores the organizational evolution of megaproject management teams through a longitudinal retrospective case study of the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macao Bridge (HZMB) project. The organizational evolution is examined in terms of management objectives, management content, and organizational structure. The organizational evolution of the HZMB project management team exhibits stage differentiation with the coexistence of turbulence and stability. Changes in the external environment are the driving force for organizational evolution, whereas a flexible organizational strategy is critical in promoting this evolution. Basing on the HZMB case study, this paper summarizes six critical measures that facilitate the organizational evolution of megaproject management teams. Our findings add value to megaproject management theory and provide a better understanding of the dynamics and complexity of megaproject organizational management.
With fierce competition in the global high-speed railway (HSR) market, international reputation has become essential for enterprises to venture into overseas markets. However, few studies have been performed on the international reputation of HSR enterprises. This study aims to reveal the formation mechanism of HSR enterprises’ international reputation by developing a theoretical framework. The researchers identified five factors and proposed a hypothetical path model based on a comprehensive literature review. After the pilot study, questionnaires were distributed to practitioners in the international HSR industry for data collection. The path model was validated based on partial least-squares structural equation modeling. Eight of the nine paths are statistically supported. Researchers have structured a theoretical framework for the international reputation of HSR enterprises from two perspectives: Being good and being known. Subsequently, a strategic framework was developed to provide targeted promotion strategies for HSR enterprises. The findings of this study contribute to existing international reputation theories using the theoretical model and provide beneficial guidance for HSR enterprises to improve their international reputation through a strategic framework.
Social infrastructure has become an important element for measuring national economic development and social benefits that are usually financed in the form of government grants, private investment, and public‒private partnerships (PPPs). However, social infrastructure PPPs have attracted considerable public debate due to their low profitability and complex operational demands. This study aims to answer the question, “are PPPs still an answer for social infrastructure?”, from the perspectives of the body of knowledge, application status, and prospects. Initially, an iterative search and review procedure and a scientometric analysis were performed to systematically screen the literature and to structure the body of knowledge of the social infrastructure PPPs literature. Furthermore, the application status and trends were analyzed to further explore the studied countries/regions, application sectors, and research topics. Results show that PPPs still have valuable application potential for delivering social infrastructure despite their mixed results across different topics. Six main research themes and the corresponding research trends were also identified, namely, financing and economics viability, risk management, performance management, contract and relationship management, governance and regulation, and facilitating and hindering factors. These findings offer practitioners and researchers a comprehensive overview and constructive guidance on social infrastructure PPPs.
In this study, we investigate a forest-based solution representation for split delivery vehicle routing problems (SDVRPs), which have several practical applications and are among the most difficult vehicle routing problems. The new solution representation fully reflects the nature of split delivery, and can help reduce the search space when used in heuristic algorithms. Based on the forest structure, we devise three neighborhood search operators. To highlight the effectiveness of this solution representation, we integrate these operators into a standard tabu search framework. We conduct extensive experiments on three main SDVRPs addressed in the literature: The basic SDVRP, the multidepot SDVRP, and the SDVRP with time windows. The experimental results show that the new forest-based solution representation is particularly effective in designing and implementing neighborhood operators, and that our new approach outperforms state-of-the-art algorithms on standard datasets.
The large-scale online supermarket is a newly emerging online retailing mode which brings great convenience to people. Online supermarkets are characterized by having large amounts of daily orders with potentially multiple items, diverse delivery times, and a high order-split rate. Multiple shipments for one order caused by order splitting result in high cost and disturbance and a large number of discarded consumable packages at online retailers and customers, causing severe damage to the environment. Accordingly, research on split-order consolidation fulfilment is critical for the advancement of the practice and theory in the context of highly complex online retailing. This paper first analyzes the characteristics and the challenges associated with the split-order consolidation problem that online supermarket is confronting and summarizes the new operational process of split-order consolidation fulfilment. Then, a time–space network optimization model is built, and its corresponding solution algorithm is presented to solve the questions of where and when to consolidate the split orders. Finally, the computation results of the numerical experiments are provided to verify the effectiveness of the algorithm, and a sensitivity analysis of the relevant parameters is performed. This work highlights the effect of order consolidation processes and fulfilment methods on the order fulfilment decision-making for online supermarkets. The purpose of this article is to help pave the way for more effective online supermarket management and order implementation.
Logistical activities have a significant global environmental impact, necessitating the adoption of green logistics practices to mitigate environmental effects. The COVID-19 pandemic has further emphasized the urgency to address the environmental crisis. Operations research provides a means to balance environmental concerns and costs, thereby enhancing the management of logistical activities. This paper presents a comprehensive review of studies integrating operations research into green logistics. A systematic search was conducted in the Web of Science Core Collection database, covering papers published until June 3, 2023. Six keywords (green logistics OR sustainable logistics OR cleaner logistics OR green transportation OR sustainable transportation OR cleaner transportation) were used to identify relevant papers. The reviewed studies were categorized into five main research directions: Green waste logistics, the impact of costs on green logistics, the green routing problem, green transport network design, and emerging challenges in green logistics. The review concludes by outlining suggestions for further research that combines green logistics and operations research, with particular emphasis on investigating the long-term effects of the pandemic on this field.
The incorporation of disruptive innovations into the transportation industry will inevitably cause major upheavals in the transportation sector. However, existing research lacks systematic theories and methodologies to represent the underlying characteristics of future urban transport systems. Furthermore, emerging modes in urban mobility have not been sufficiently studied. The National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) officially approved the Basic Science Center project titled “Future Urban Transport Management” in 2022. The project members include leading scientists and engineers from Beijing Jiaotong University, Beihang University, and Beijing Transport Institute. Based on a wide range of previous projects by the consortium on urban mobility and sustainable cities, this project will encompass transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary research to explore critical issues affecting future urban traffic management. It aims to develop fundamental theories and methods based on social and technological developments in the near future and explores innovative solutions to implement alongside these emerging developments in urban mobility.
