I n determining their operations strategy, a firm chooses whether to be responsive or efficient. For firms competing in a market with uncertain demand and varying intensity of substitutability for the competitor's product, we characterize the responsive or efficient choice in equilibrium. To focus first on the competitive implications, we study a model where a firm can choose to be responsive at no additional fixed or marginal cost. We find that competing firms will choose the same configuration (responsive or efficient), and responsiveness tends to be favorable when demand uncertainty is high or when product competition is not too strong. Intense competition can drive firms to choose to be efficient rather than responsive even when there is no additional cost of being responsive. In such a case, both firms would be better off by choosing to be responsive but cannot credibly commit. We extend the basic model to study the impact of endogenized production timing, multiple productions and product holdback (or, equivalently, postponed production). For all these settings, we find structurally similar results; firms choose the same configuration, and the firms may miss Pareto-improvements. Furthermore, through extensions to the basic model, we find that greater operational flexibility can make responsiveness look less attractive in the presence of product competition. In contrast to our basic model and other extensions, we find it is possible for one firm to be responsive while the other is efficient when there is either a fixed cost or variable cost premium associated with responsive delivery.

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Is recycling a means for meeting the increasing copper demand in the face of declining ore grades? To date, research to address this question has generally focused on the quantity, not the quality of copper scrap. Here, the waste input–output impact assessment (WIO-IA) model integrates information on United States (US) economy-wide material flow, various recycling indicators, and the impact of material production from diverse sources to represent the quantity and quality of copper flows throughout the lifecycle. This approach enables assessment of recycling performance against environmental impact indicators. If all potentially recyclable copper scrap was recycled, energy consumption associated with copper production would decrease by 15% with alloy scrap as the largest contributor. Further energy benefits from increased recycling are limited by the lower quality of the scrap yet to be recycled. Improving the yield ratio of final products and the grade of diverse consumer product scrap could help increase copper circularity and decrease energy consumption. Policy makers should address the importance of a portfolio of material efficiency strategies like improved utilization of copper products and lifetime extension in addition to encouraging the demand for recycled copper.

The manufacturing industry is undergoing transformation and upgrading from traditional manufacturing to intelligent manufacturing, in which Internet of Things (IoT) technology plays a central role in promoting the development of intelligent manufacturing. In order to solve the problem that low production efficiency and machine utilization lead to serious pollution emissions in the workshop caused by untimely transmission of information in all links of the production and manufacturing process to whole supply chains, this study establishes an intelligent production scheduling and logistics delivery model with IoT technology to promote green and sustainable development of intelligent manufacturing. Firstly, an application framework of IoT technology in production–delivery supply chain systems was established to improve efficiency and achieve the integration of production and delivery. Secondly, an integrated production–delivery model was constructed, which takes into account time and low carbon constraints. Finally, a two-layer optimization algorithm was proposed to solve this integration problem. Through a case study, the results show this integration production–delivery model can reduce the cost of supply chains and improve customer satisfaction. Moreover, it proves that carbon emission cost is a major factor affecting total cost, and it could help enterprises to realize the profit and sustainable development of the environment. The production–delivery model could also support the last kilometer distribution problem and extension under E-commerce applications.