Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to update existing Kauffmann’s NK model to evaluate the manufacturing fitness of strategic business capabilities. The updated model is tested in a digital manufacturing (DM) setting to investigate the sequence for developing cumulative capabilities that can yield the maximum payoff.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors develop a grey–DEMATEL–NK fitness model and show its application, through a case study, to a DM firm in India.
Findings
The grey–DEMATEL–NK model helps evaluate multiple manufacturing capabilities and indicates that quality–flexibility–cost–delivery is the sequence that yields the maximum manufacturing fitness (competitive payoff) for a DM firm. This sequence helps the firm reorganise its internal business processes and is different from that used to develop cumulative capabilities in a traditional manufacturing setting (quality–delivery–flexibility–cost).
Originality/value
This study presents a pilot model for computing the cumulative capabilities payoff and prescribes a sequence for developing cumulative capabilities within a DM context.
COVID-19 pandemic have provided us an opportunity to retrospect, our traditional practices, operations, supply chain functions and their linkages with firm competitiveness. The recovery to the new normal of operational excellence is the challenging task ahead. The critical a question in post-pandemic recovery can be—How can the firms rebound to operational excellence and achieve the benchmarks of international competitiveness with the current uncertainties in both demand and supply sides? Trigger the thinking on the challenging issue, we had invited the scholarly articles, empirical studies, reviews and perspective papers based on the theme “Rebound to Higher Levels of Operational Excellence and Export competitiveness”. This work presents the editorial summary of the special issue and suggest pathways and possible research and managerial, policy level directives towards the Operational Excellence and Export competitiveness. The study utilizes three specific inputs- (a) Academic resources, (b) Industrial Discourse and (c) International trade and Government initiatives to present the directives for further research interventions. While, this multi-perspective consideration does not represent the comprehensive systematic literature review or the empirical research, but it enables us to explore the challenges, enablers and decision-making approaches for rebounding operational excellence towards export competitiveness.
Supplementary Information
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42943-021-00043-7.
Purpose
Blockchain has been considered a disrupting technology that can add value in various supply chains differently. The provenance framework matches the four blockchain capabilities of traceability, certifiability, trackability and verifiability to the five generic risks, namely, the financial risk, psychological risk, social risk, physical risk and performance risk. This will help in uncording which specific risk gets mitigated by the use of blockchain in a specific supply chain.
Design/methodology/approach
This study illustrates four supply chains, namely, pharmaceutical industry, fast moving consumer goods industry, precious metal and automotive industry, and maps the risks associated with them to the provenance framework wherein the applicability of blockchain is mapped. Fuzzy analytical hierarchical processing (F-AHP) is used to rank the risks in the supply chain.
Findings
Blockchain capabilities can elevate the provenance knowledge leading to assurance in terms of origin, authenticity, custody and integrity to mitigate the supply chain risks. Present work highlights the thrust areas across various supply chains and identifies the risk priority tasks aligning the contextual supply chain risks. This study has covered five major risk perceptions. This study contributes to the literature on blockchain, customer perceived risk, provenance and supply chain.
Practical implications
This methodology can be adopted to understand and market the application of blockchain in a supply chain. It brings the marketers and marketing perspective to the supply chain. Exhaustive risk perception can be included to get more comprehensive data on mapping the risks along different supply chains. Vertical extensions of this work can be consideration of other supply chains including dairy, fruits and vegetables, electronics and component assemblies to derive the comprehensive framework for mapping risk perceptions and thereby supply chain risk mitigation through blockchain technology.
Originality/value
This linkage between blockchain, perceived risk, applications in the supply chain and a tool to convince the customers about the blockchain applicability has not been discussed in the literature. Adopting the multi-criteria decision-making F-AHP approach, this study attempt to rank the risks and stimulate conversations around a common framework for multiple sectors.
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