In this paper, a supply chain inventory model is developed in inflationary environment by incorporating some realistic features such as ramp type demand, deterioration, partial backlogging, inflation, and trade credit. Here, rate of deterioration is linear and partial backlogging rate is variable and dependent on the waiting time for the next replenishment. Depending on the trade credit period, three different situations arise. For each model the optimal replenishment policy is determined. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the proposed inventory model and sensitivity analyses of optimal solutions are given for each case of trapezoidal demand function.

Having a supply chain is an unavoidable fact and all companies should focus on if they wish to survive in the competitive business world. This paper ranks criteria influencing on behavior of a medicine manufacturer agent when its goal is to select the supplier agents to interact with across a pharmaceutical agent based supply chain. The pharmaceutical industry is important for countries due to the distinguished role of health in societies and Iran is not an exception too. Besides, the industry in this country is encountered with some limitations because of the situation imposed by sanctions. In this study, first, ten criteria were selected based on expert’s opinions, two categories of quantitative as well as qualitative criteria were chosen for ranking the criteria and then TOPSIS and PROMETHEE ? methods were applied to rank the criteria. According to the results of this survey, qualitative criteria were determined as important factors influencing on supplier selection.

Supply chain is a network of organizations that work together and performs various business functions such as procurement of raw materials, converting the raw material into semi-finished or finished goods and distributing the same to their ultimate customers. Presence of bullwhip effect in a supply chain is costly and degrades the performance of the supply chain. Reduction in bullwhip effect can improve the efficiency or profitability of a supply chain. The objective of this paper is to know the impact of imperfect Advance Demand Information (ADI) sharing on bullwhip effect in a four-stage serial supply chain and to evaluate the supply chain performance by conducting an experiment similar to the beer distribution game. The performance measures used are variance of orders placed by each stage, fill rate, total inventory at each stage and total holding cost of the supply chain. Results show that imperfect ADI improves the performance of the supply chain. The performance of the supply chain is also evaluated under order up to level (R, S) policy with safety stock and it is found that the performance of supply chain is better when inventory policy used.

This paper explains theoretical approach of the four theories of General system Theory (GST) developed by Yourdon (1989) [Yourdon, E. (1989). Modern Structured Analysis. Yourdon Press, Prentice-Hall International, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. Senge] while applying it in information technology and subsequently used by caddy (2007) [Caddy I.N., & Helou, M.M. (2007). Supply chains and their management: Application of general systems theory. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 14, 319–327.] in field of supply chain and management. JIT philosophy in core activities of supply chain i.e. procurement, production processes, and logistics are discussed through general system theory. The growing structure of the supply chain poses the implication restrictions and requires a heavy support system, many times a compromise is done while implementing JIT. The study would be useful to understand the general trends generated naturally regarding the adoption of the JIT philosophy in the supply chain.

The world is increasingly witnessing food insecurity and deteriorating individual and global livelihoods. This study sought to assess the effectiveness of contract farming in the form of command farming in achieving sustainability of maize supply chain in Zimbabwe. A descriptive approach was adopted where a sample of 35 agricultural experts were randomly selected to respond to questionnaires. The researchers also relied on interviews with farmers, the results of which were triangulated with quantitative data to improve the dependability of results. The study shows a positive and significant relationship between command farming and sustainability of the maize supply chain in Mazowe district of Zimbabwe. The study, therefore, recommends the government to invest more in command agriculture to improve productivity and sustainability in the maize sector. It further recommends investment in joint contract farming with agricultural firms and government to improve farming business to sustain the country’s agricultural sector.

This paper considers an inventory control policy for a two-echelon inventory control system with one supplier-one buyer. We consider the case of deteriorating items which lead to shortage in supply chain. Therefore, it is necessary to decrease the deterioration rate by adding some specification to the packaging of these items that is known as active packaging. Although this packaging can reduce the deteriorating rate of products, but may be increases the cost of both supplier and buyer. Because of the complexity of the mathematical model, a genetic algorithm has been developed to determine the best policy of this inventory control system.

Today, supply chains have been widely welcomed by industry researchers and the results of applying it may increase throughput, reduce cost, increase speed to meet customers’ needs and create competitive opportunities. This paper identifies a scientific method, which operates efficiently and effectively manages supply chain operations. In this paper, a computer simulation model is analyzed for analyzing the supply chain and the results are examined, accordingly. Using Taguchi design of experiment and running the proposed model under L27 scenarios, a two-objective optimization was performed on the estimated response surfaces, leading to a 60% increase in productivity and 40% reduction in waiting time.

Supply chain is one of the most important parts of industrial and economic problems. Measuring relative performance of supply chain is often tedious task since there is a need to deal with the multiple performance measures associated with members of supply chain, which integrate and coordinate the performance overall production system. Traditional approaches for measuring relative efficiency of supply chain cannot be applied directly for evaluating the relative efficiency of supply chains. This is because some measures linked to supply chain members cannot be simply classified as “outputs” or “inputs” of the supply chain. We present different models, which directly evaluate the performance of the supply chain as well as its members, while considering the relationship among the members. The modeling processes are based on the concept of non-cooperative and cooperative games. In this paper, we propose network data envelopment analysis for measuring relative performance of supply chain, which considers the system by distinct processes or stages, each one with its own inputs and outputs and with intermediate flows among the stages. The proposed method reduces computations to determine the relative efficiency of overall supply chain and efficiency of each the supply chain members.

Globalization, intensification of governmental and non-governmental organization & apos; s provisions and squeeze and the demand of clients about concerning environmental affairs have motivated many organizations to start considering Green Supply Chain management in order to facilitate environmental and economic functions. Administration of green supply chain management unifies the management of supply chain with environment requirements during the functioning of levels of supply chain. This paper aims to identify green supply change management & apos; s factors in order to facilitate implementation of green supply chain management in rail industry. Thus, the effective factors of green supply chain management establishment are extracted and the method of interactions between sub-scales is studied by DEMATEL technique. The result specifies that reduction of production loss sub-scale is the most effective factor on other agents. In addition, the effective elements peered out by fuzzy TOPSIS that the scale of loss management stands on the first ranking and improvement of production process and interior environment management scales stand on the second and the third level and other scales follow them.

In the current global economic scenario, inflation plays a vital role in deciding optimal pricing of goods in any business entity. This paper develops a two-echelon (manufacturer-buyer) supply chain model taking into account inflation and time value of money. The present value of the total cost of the supply chain is derived when the manufacturer produces a number of lots, the sum of which is equal to the buyer’s total demand over a finite time horizon and the manufacturer’s each production lot is delivered to the buyer in n shipments. The optimal solution of the model is obtained for a numerical example after some adjustments (required to exhibit feasibility) in the derived solution. Sensitivity analysis is also carried out in order to examine the effects of changes in model-parameters on the optimal solution.