Monthly Archives: June 2007

Purchasing, Logisitcs and Operations Management — The Three amigos?

Posted on June 30, 2007 by | 8 Comments

Fawcett et al. (2005)* state that professional associations such as CSCMP, AST&L, WERC, ISM, APICS:

”…are entering the supply chain space from diverse directions, giving professionals a variety of eduational resources to chose from”.

In terms of academic disciplines, these organisations refer to logistics, purchasing and operations management. This trend does neither start or stop at professional organisations; academic journals, textbooks…and academics within logistics, purchasing and operations management have in the recent years all extended their domain of management and investication to include the supply chain.

The question is whether this ramification will break the functional silo mentality, that in my opinion may be a phenomena that resides in organisations, but is not necessarily created by them?!

Are these disciplines the Three Amigos?

…Blue shadows on the trail.
Little cowboy, close your eyes and dream…

Árni

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*Source: Fawcett, Stanley E. and Stephen M Rutner (2005), The state of Supply chain education, Supply Chain Management Review, Sept, v9 i6 p55(6)

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Posted in Supply Chain Management

Do ideas come out of thin air?

Posted on June 28, 2007 by | Leave a comment

Pushing the envelope — that is what we all dream of doing. The question is how. Here are few thoughts.

Digging into philosophy of science: For example, consider the difference of causal and functional explanations when investigating topics such as supply chain integration. Or questioning the use of research frameworks informed by positivism within logistics.

New empirical evidence: Collecting data from remote industries or a set of companies (read: supply chains) rather than one focal company, or even particular functions within the company.

New domain of application: Going beyond business logistics. A good example is humanitarian logistics.

Borrow from other disciplines. Same domain explained by concepts from other disciplines, such as strategy, organisation, economics (see this paper here or here)

Re-labelling: I don’t know where to start.

Music: A borderline issue, yes, but let’s face it, occasionally we all listen to music. More on that here.

Árni

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Posted in Socks and sandals

Are supply chains the creation of PowerPoint?

Posted on June 25, 2007 by | 1 Comment

The presentation program PowerPoint has had a great impact on the way we present ideas and as well as supporting evidence for our claims. The problem is that sometimes these ideas are — intentionally or unintentionally — presented as an existing practice.

Take the phrase “supply chains”, for example. Supply Chains are frequently depicted in PowerPoint presentations in a linear format with the focal company in the middle. In todays version of PowerPoint, a colorful representation of supply chains takes only few clicks. Microsoft Office ’95 and Office ’97 were launched during a period of time where supply chain management also started to become a widespread phrase.

Is there a relationship between the development of PowerPoint and the use of “supply chain” to explain business practices?

Árni

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Posted in supply chain, Supply Chain Management, Theory

New journal: Strategic Outsourcing: An International Journal

Posted on June 23, 2007 by | 10 Comments

Emerald is launching a new journal: Strategic Outsourcing: An International Journal. Outsourcing — or “outside resource using” as explained by Arnold (2000)* in EJPSM — is a frequent object of study for scholars that seek identity in Operations Management, Purchasing and Logistics, and has wide implications for the interorganisational setting.

The aim of this new journal is to “…foster and lead the international debate on outsourcing by providing a central, authoritative and independent forum for the critical evaluation and dissemination of research and development, applications, processes and current practices relating to the design, implementation and undertaking of strategic outsourcing.
It aims to be the only academic journal to provide a holistic and global perspective on outsourcing, regardless what sector or industry of application.“

Árni
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*Source: Arnold, U. (2000): “New dimensions of outsourcing: A combination of transaction cost economics and the core competencies concept,” European Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management (6), pp. 23-29.

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Posted in Academic journals, Academic publications, Outsourcing

Humanitarian logistics research

Posted on June 22, 2007 by | 1 Comment

Newsflash on humanitarian logistics research: the HUMLOG Group has finally launched a website. Events for practitioners as well as related to research at the group, upcoming conferences related to humanitarian logistics etc. will be announced there. Which doesn’t mean this blog would see less of this interesting topic :-)

Gyöngyi

PS. Happy midsummer weekend!

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Posted in Humanitarian supply chains

New book: Managing the Global Supply Chain

Posted on June 21, 2007 by | Leave a comment

Good news for students and educators alike, an old classic has been updated; Schary & Skjøtt-Larsen’s Managing the Global Supply Chain. Here’s the third edition: 

schary.jpg

Skjøtt-Larsen, Tage; Schary, Philip B.; Mikkola, Juliana H. and Kotzab, Herbert (2007): Managing the Global Supply Chain, 3rd edn., Copenhagen University Press, Denmark

Here’s what Martin Christopher had to say about the book:

“This book provides important insights into the challenges of managing the complex networks that typify modern supply chains. The authors address the strategic and managerial issues that supply chain managers face with a refreshing combination of relevance and rigour.”

Congrats to the authors!

Gyöngyi

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Posted in Education & Management Development, Supply Chain Management

Now: EurOMA 2007

Posted on June 18, 2007 by | Leave a comment

EurOMA 2007 is now being held in Ankara (Turkey). The programme has a lot of interesting bits and pieces, you just need to click on each session and have a glance at the groovy titles of the papers! Logistics “orchestration” and supply chain “harmonisation” are music in my ears :-)

Also others sound very interesting, e.g. a Delphi study on sustainable supply chain management, putting CSR “from the periphery to the centre”, lots of cross-country comparisons, risk management issues (e.g. “crisis and revival at Nissan”), tracks on new product development in supply chains, service operations tracks (even a paper of “the servitisation of manufacturing”) etc.

And most nicely, after having two “humanitarian logistics” tracks at Nofoma 2007, EurOMA also closes with a tribute to the field; Luk van Wassenhove giving a speech on “supply chain management in the context of humanitarian disasters“.

Gyöngyi

PS. EurOMA stands for the “European Operations Management Association“.

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Posted in Conferences, Humanitarian supply chains, Supply Chain Management

Introducing the wall

Posted on June 18, 2007 by | Leave a comment

A new development of our blogging site is “The Wall“. Here you can find CFPs for special issues, upcoming conferences, and information on upcoming doctoral courses. Journal editors, guest editors, conference organisers, course organisers etc. are more than welcome to send in information and links to their courses to be posted on “the wall” to either of us “bloggers“.

Gyöngyi

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Posted in Conferences, Education & Management Development, Supply Chain Management

Learning 2.0

Posted on June 17, 2007 by | 1 Comment

User-defined content, interaction instead of information, access whatever whenever… sounds familiar? This was “Web 2.0“. The concept is now also revolutionalising learning (or if you want it, education). Skype, iTune, YouTube, webcasts, podcasts, blogs (yeah), all this technology can be used for learning purposes. The Economist this week even had a feature on “Mandarin 2.0“, downloading lectures and listening to dialogues on iPod, printing out characters, skyping in a group with your lecturer with or without a webcam. The crucial question is, how can we use learning 2.0 in SCM education?

Lamentably, I don’t even know a single e-book focusing on SCM, nor any good online course for self-learning. No publishing house seems to be interested in the idea, either. Also, we preach customisation and modularisation (check out Mikkola and Skjøtt-Larsen’s 2004 article in Production Planning and Control on the topic) but haven’t yet implemented Árni’s idea of “chapters on demand“, i.e. the ”create your own course book” principle. And, though virtual inventories, transportation brokerages etc. have been discussed in length in SCM literature, I’m still waiting for a virtual community for supply chain education to appear. BUT, there are now series of supply chain webinars available, and the rest of learning 2.0 is certainly on its way. Which is one more good reason for the topic of next year’s Educators’ Day at Nofoma: E-Learning in Global Education.

Yet I might want to end this with another question: are students really customers? What’s the point of university education if we only provide what the “customer” (or user of learning 2.0) wants? This runs into the same problems as benchmarking, reinforcing existent structures instead of setting new ones. To live with Kenth Lumsden’s words, SCM education should push the envelope, keep up with, but also set the trends, induce innovation, change the way industry is currently operating etc. Educators are NO “prostitutes”, after all :-)

Gyöngyi 

PS. InterOrganisational is introducing a new page for announcements of CFPs, conferences and doctoral courses – “the wall“. The announcement of a first – you’ll laugh – virtual course for doctoral students can be found there already.

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Posted in Conferences, Education & Management Development, Supply Chain Management

“The Beauty of Measurements” — to be published in European Business Review

Posted on June 15, 2007 by | Leave a comment

This paper by Jan Stentoft Arlbjørn, Per Vagn Freytag & Torben Damgaard (all at Department of Entrepreneurship and Relationship Management, University of Southern Denmark) The Beauty of Measurements, forthcoming in the European Business Review

Here is the abstract:

Purpose: There is a clear focus upon increasing research output, improving research quality and securing closer interaction between universities and the private market of businesses. Research should be evaluated according to usefulness and relevant criteria, where increased competition between universities and business schools for research grants should be established, such that the greatest number of publications, with the highest impact factors and most citations trigger most funding. Measurements and rankings have become hot topics for universities and business schools – this paper discusses possible measurements and ranking impact for research and education.

Methodology/approach: This paper discusses development trends in research and education based upon available research literature and analyses a brief questionnaire-survey completed by professors from 13 different European countries, which includes quantitative and qualitative features.

Findings: There is a clear trend towards publishing research in high-ranked journals and developing student financed MBA programmes. However, there is a conflict between the political objectives of trying to connect universities and business schools with industry, while supplying further incentives to fund research grants through, for instance publications and citations.

Research limitations/implications (if applicable): Given a continued policy of furthering research merely for publication in high-rankling journals, the consequence may be a widening gap between research output and its practical relevance.

Originality/value of paper: The paper provides novel data and evidence for the issue of European research development.

An interesting dilemma revealed here; academics striving for relevance along with rigor in their research whilst the reward structures of universities may make this journey rather challenging.

Árni

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Posted in Education & Management Development, Research & Methodology