Circular economy is increasingly recognized as a better alternative to the dominant linear (take, make, and dispose) economic model. Circular Supply Chain Management (CSCM), which integrates the philosophy of the circular economy into supply chain management, offers a new and compelling perspective to the supply chain sustainability domain. Consequently, there is increasing research interest. However, a review of the extant literature shows that a comprehensive integrated view of CSCM is still absent in the extant literature. This prohibits a clear distinction compared to other supply chain sustainability concepts and hinders further progress of the field. In response, this research first classifies various terminologies related to supply chain sustainability and conceptualizes a unifying definition of CSCM. Using this definition as a base, it then conducts a structured literature review of 261 research articles on the current state of CSCM research. Based on the review results, the researchers call for further studies in the following directions that are important but received little or no attention: design for circularity, procurement and CSCM, biodegradable packaging, circular supply chain collaboration and coordination, drivers and barriers of CSCM, circular consumption, product liabilities and producer's responsibility, and technologies and CSCM.

Protecting throughput from variance is the key to achieving lean. Workload control (WLC) accomplishes this in complex make‐to‐order job shops by controlling lead times, capacity, and work‐in‐process (WIP). However, the concept has been dismissed by many authors who believe its order release mechanism reduces the effectiveness of shop floor dispatching and increases work center idleness, thereby also increasing job tardiness results. We show that these problems have been overcome. A WLC order release method known as “LUMS OR” (Lancaster University Management School order release) combines continuous with periodic release, allowing the release of work to be triggered between periodic releases if a work center is starving. This paper refines the method based on the literature (creating “LUMS COR” [Lancaster University Management School corrected order release]) before comparing its performance against the best‐performing purely periodic and continuous release rules across a range of flow directions, from the pure job shop to the general flow shop. Results demonstrate that LUMS COR and the continuous WLC release methods consistently outperform purely periodic release and Constant WIP. LUMS COR is considered the best solution in practice due to its excellent performance and ease of implementation. Findings have significant implications for research and practice: throughput times and job tardiness results can be improved simultaneously and order release and dispatching rules can complement each other. Thus, WLC represents an effective means of implementing lean principles in a make‐to‐order context.

The last major performance breakthroughs in job shop control stem from the 1980s and 1990s. We generate a new search direction for designing job shop control policies, providing a key to delivery improvements. Based on a common characteristic shared by the most effective job shop control policies, we posit that control should have a specific focus during high load periods. A probability analysis reveals that substantial periods of high load are common, and even occur under assumptions of stationarity and moderate utilization. Subsequent simulations show nearly all tardy deliveries can be attributed to high load periods; and that the success of the best control policies can be explained by their ability to switch focus specifically during these periods, from reducing the dispersion of lateness to speeding up the average throughput time. Building on this, we demonstrate that for example small capacity adjustments targeted at handling high load periods can improve the percentage tardy and other delivery-related performance measures to a much greater extent than the best existing policies. Sensitivity analysis confirms the robustness of this approach and identifies a performance frontier reflecting the trade-off between capacity resources used and delivery performance realized. We conclude that a paradigm shift in job shop research is required: instead of developing single policies for application under all conditions, new policies are needed that respond differently to temporary high load periods. The new paradigm can be used as a design principle for realizing improvements across a range of planning and control decisions relevant to job shops.

Higher education plays an important role in furthering the sustainability agenda, as reflected in a growing body of literature. While there have been several recent reviews of this work, these have been limited in scope and do not explicitly discuss implementations of sustainability in higher education curricula. In response, this paper presents a comprehensive, systematic review of the literature on integrating sustainability into curricula at both an undergraduate and postgraduate level of study in one particular subject area-engineering. A total of 247 articles, of which 70 were case reports, have been analyzed. Twelve future research questions emerged from the analysis, including: the exploration of the knowledge and value frameworks of students and teachers; the exploration of stakeholder influence, including by accreditation institutions, industry partners, parents, and society; and, the use of competencies to evaluate implementations. It is hoped that answering these questions will help to enhance education such that engineers are prepared, engaged, and empowered to confront the environmental, social, and economic challenges of the 21 st century.

A lead time that is short, predictable, and reliable is an increasingly important criterion in supplier selection. Although many companies may achieve this through lean implementation, high-variety manufacturers, for example, small and medium-sized make-to-order companies, have found that lean's planning and control techniques do not apply. This article outlines a planning and control concept known as workload control (WLC) that integrates customer enquiry management, including a due-date setting rule, with order release control. Simulation is then used to assess its impact on shop performance. Results demonstrate that an integrated WLC concept can reduce the percentage of tardy jobs-so short lead times can be realistically quoted-while also reducing and stabilizing workloads. WLC can level demand and production over time when work is not standardized and it is not possible to synchronize flows on the shop floor. Results are shown to be robust to changes in routing characteristics, the mix of orders with due dates specified by the customer and proposed internally, and the strike rate (or order-winning probability). Hence, an integrated approach to WLC represents an important step toward achieving lean in make-to-order companies.

George Q (2019) A systematic review of China's belt and road initiative: implications for global supply chain management. International Journal of Production Research.

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E very production planning concept that incorporates controlled order release will initially withhold jobs from the shop floor and create a pre-shop pool. Order release is a key component of the Workload Control concept that aims to maintain work-in-process within limits while ensuring due dates are met. Order release includes two decisions: (i) a sequencing decision that establishes the order in which jobs are considered for release; and, (ii) a selection decision that determines the criteria for choosing jobs for release. While selection has received much research attention, sequencing has been largely neglected. Using simulation, this study uncovers the potential for performance improvement in the sequencing decision and improves our understanding of how order release methods should be designed. Although most prior studies apply time-oriented sequencing rules and load-oriented selection rules, analysis reveals that load balancing considerations should also be incorporated in the sequencing decision. But an exclusive focus on load balancing is shown to increase mean tardiness and, paradoxically, require high workloads. A new sequencing rule is developed that only balances loads when multiple orders become urgent. It avoids high mean tardiness and allows the shop to operate at a low workload level. At the same time, the percentage tardy is reduced by up to 50% compared to a purely time-oriented rule. The findings have implications not only for Workload Control but for any concept that features order release control, such as ConWIP and Drum-Buffer-Rope.