Increasing globalisation, diversity of the product range and increasing customer awareness are making markets highly competitive, forcing different supply chains to adapt to different stimuli on a continuous basis. The necessary level of 'compatibility' among all the upstream and downstream players in a supply chain must be achieved to meet the strategic objectives of the supply chain. A mismatch between the objectives and capabilities of different players not only leads to the inefficient use of scarce resources but also affects the successful attainment of the strategic objectives for the supply chain. This paper briefly reviews some of the technical papers published to evaluate the performance of a single player or a supply chain over a chosen set of performance metrics. The paper then proposes a spreadsheet-based tool to address the issue of 'strategic fit' for a supply chain. The spreadsheet identifies the bottleneck areas in achieving the strategic fit between the supply chain's goals and the different players' capabilities. The spreadsheet also gives information regarding the time and monetary resources required to remove and/or reduce the mismatch, thereby serving as a valuable aid for strategic decision making.
Student learning is primarily a function of teacher centric and institution centric processes. For sustained gains in student learning, it is important to have a feedback mechanism between 'teaching' and 'assessment', which we have addressed through the adoption of continuous improvement (CI) philosophy. In this paper, through assessment of student performance, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the application of CI theory for teacher centric processes particularly in attaining student learning related goals by the adoption of plan, do, check and act (PDCA) cycle to one of the quantitative methods courses that we teach. The demonstration of the application of CI theory for teacher centric processes could be easily extended to other facets of student learning not explicitly considered in this research paper for the holistic treatment of the issue of student learning.
Customer preferences for variety in the product(s) with improved customer service and lower prices are forcing the supply chains to overhaul the current practices from design to operational level. Postponement or delayed differentiation of the products is one such strategy, primarily deployed in mass customisation settings. Life cycles are shrinking not only for individual products but for product families as well. In this context, supply chain responsiveness becomes one of the crucial factors that need to be effectively managed to succeed in the present day competitive markets. Our model, that considers inventory costs and the supply chain responsiveness costs would aid a supply chain manager to make informed decisions with regard to the ideal location for the point of differentiation (POD), while striking the right balance between holding costs and the supply chain responsiveness costs. We also make use of a dimensionless parameter called the 'coefficient of inverse responsiveness' that not only facilitates the introduction of responsiveness related costs into the model but also improves the scalability and simplifies the analysis and interpretation of the results. Based on the strategic model developed, we offer some context-specific counter-intuitive managerial insights with respect to the sensitivity of the location of the POD in a supply chain.
Healthcare quality improvement professionals will be able to use the proposed modified QFD chart in association with stacked Pareto chart for effective quality assurance.
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