Alec Coutroubis-Dimetrios

Sustainability and sustainable practices has been the focus of importance for both manufacturers and customers within the global markets. Every manufacturer and supplier within the Supply Chain environments now strive hard to ensure they are part of this sustainable development goal to achieve better results and fulfill their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) principles. This is done mostly by business owners to meet up with customers’ expectation of sustainable society, including that of the food manufacturers and other small suppliers. They need to work hard and think of innovative strategies that could be employed to meet up with this popular challenge of sustainable society. This paper reviews current literature studies to analyse food processing suppliers who have adopted new technological advances and that of Industry 4.0 practices to achieve and fulfill better sustainable practices within their production and logistics activities in their supply chains. Through this research study we aim to bridge the interconnection between Industry 4.0 and that of sustainability practices within food manufacturing environments.

Research studies highlights that Industry 4.0 plays a vital role in different areas of manufacturing industries and requires constant research and improvements due to high demand to meet the global competitive markets in an efficient and economical method. The current industrialisation is facing great challenges in ensuring the sustainability balance of its social, economic and environmental dimensions while they strive to achieve the product demands in competitive market space. As part of achieving these high demands, different studies focus towards developing the understanding of industry 4.0 implementation practices to attain a sustainable manufacturing process that incorporates advanced technological tools for increasing efficiency, financial gains and competitiveness in the market. This paper aims to examine the interrelationship of sustainability practices, the key factors affecting sustainability within manufacturing, and finally the advancements of industry 4.0 and different technologies to achieve sustainable manufacturing that focuses on KPI’s of environmental and social dimensions.

Technological advances are constantly driving dramatic increase in effective sharing of information and material among the supply chain entities, since the development of industrial changes. Living in early decades of 21th century, the fourth industrial revolution has been emerged called “Industry 4.0”, being a hot topic for academic discussions. On the other side, demand chain management (DCM) is being highly considered as a transformed version of supply chain, looking the business chains through a customer-centric lens and aiming towards making pulls for new products in contrast to supply chain strategies. This paper seeks to explore the opportunities for expansion of Industry 4.0 within the context of demand-driven supply chains, due to the expected implications in this field. Reviewing the existing literature and industrial challenges, authors tend to shed some lights on the advantageous linkage between Industry 4.0 and demand chain, introducing a new concept called DCM 4.0. The results and findings would be utilized by scholars and practitioners aiming to discover the interrelationships within the same field.

Manufacturing companies are constantly confronting the challenges of competitive markets and lack of know-how of application of technology innovations within their environments. Industries are also getting very dependable to end users’ voice and satisfaction, therefore forcing them to seek appropriate organisational strategies with the aim towards creating a consistent customer experience and efficiency enhancement. The aim of this research is to investigate the impact of IT based strategies, innovative manufacturing and marketing practices within the mass customization operations. Therefore, the authors aim to pursuit the current state of mass customization within the manufacturing industries and the existing challenges particularly relevant to customer experience. The findings of this study would be utilised by researchers and practitioners who seek explore integrations between demand aspects of mass customisation practices with a particular focus to technological infrastructure.

The aim of this paper is to present an investigative study on the concept of Big Data and its challenges towards implementation in manufacturing SMEs. Big Data aims to facilitate the collaborative approach in SMEs through the creation of real time data visualisation to address key challenges to many of the market variations for every sector SMEs. Although, earlier research studies have highlighted the importance of Big Data from technological perspectives, this study focuses towards SMEs due to its feasibility and flexibility within the market space. This research aims to investigate the use of case study approach for the re-use, adoption and understanding of strategic future direction from the findings. The findings and early analysis from this paper could be referred by researchers when addressing the use of big data analytics within manufacturing SMEs. Finally, the paper provides a key strategic point towards the exploration of Big Data within SMEs

Due to variable customer expectations; it is required to highlight the existing gaps in “demand” patterns where the stakeholders observe the end consumers over a focused viewpoint. A systematic critical review is conducted to identify and address the literature gaps in a methodical manner. Given the lack of life-cycle analysis (LCA) in many manufacturing industries, the research presents the use of appropriate strategies for designing new eco-friendly products utilising engineering knowledge and R&D innovation. However, a comprehensive LCA would be carried out in future stages of the research to enable industrial designers to critique the performance and identify the potential environmental impacts associated with the product life-cycle. The research proposes to develop a novel framework for an effective linkage between supply-demand chain approaches and the new product development (NPD) processes considering innovative environmental practices. The results of this study can be utilised by researchers and practitioners researching within similar context.

This paper focuses towards examining the initial phases of new product development portfolio management supervising set of projects managed by a company. It also explores the selection of the most suitable projects from a series of candidates through a prioritisation criteria based on the available resources, the strategic objectives and the features of each product within the product life cycle. Utilising a mixed methodology, the research proposes to develop a novel framework named project portfolio management practice (PPMP) within small and mid-sized project-based manufacturing companies, therefore providing a system that helps them increasing their product sales volume by ten-percent and improving the NPD-SCM alignment with PPM. Indeed, more empirical sources should be selected, with the aim of expanding the visions within any given product development environment. This generalisation aims to cover other industries, including manufacturing, service and product based environments to identify the proper measures for any type of project.

In current global and competitive environments, innovation is considered as a key success factor towards growth and meeting customer demands and expectations within the product development processes. The research paper aims to explore the concept of sustainable new product development practices within demand-driven supply chain environments. It will investigate the early stages of the research study within this domain through the findings from literature focusing on demand chain and new product development and the use of sustainable practices within manufacturing. The researcher's focus is to further develop the understanding to propose a novel framework of NPD (New Product Development) to DCM (Demand Chain Management) to utilise the research findings. The study has identified the incorporation of NPD-DCM considering all the business ecosystem entities and the flow of information, finances and materials within the supply chain structure. The results of this study can be utilised by researchers and practitioners researching within similar context and environments.

The current economic pressures have been challenging manufacturing SMEs that play a complicated role in the Supply Chain (SC); and innovation in the manufacturing supply chain which requires new approaches and technologies. Additive Manufacturing (AM) is considered by research studies as pioneering and disruptive technology that can drive such a transformation. This paper is aimed at investigating in what measures can additive manufacturing techniques adopted as an opportunity for the supply chain in SMEs. Initially, the literature review looks into needs and challenges of SMEs in the SC identifying solutions and strategies. The research further analyses AM's impact on the supply chain, evaluating benefits and drawbacks that AM delivers in this context. IT aims to examine the use of strategic maps, analytical tools and suitable tactical paths to implement and integrate this technology within supply chain. The paper describes the potential effects of the open sources networks and hence argues that a gradual integration of AM with traditional technologies is a plausible way for small manufacturers. However, there are several innovative approaches, and this scenario is rapidly evolving. Material and machines costs reduction could deliver significant changes. Therefore, further and updated investigations from a supply chain perspective are recommended, especially looking at practical cases and examples for this study within this context.

Given the emerging industrial management strategies considering three pillars of sustainability in particular, there is a vital need to determine the differences of sustainability practices within both supply and demand distribution systems through global manufacturing environments providing with the successful global trade and logistics. This research paper aims to explore the interactions and advantages of sustainability applications within both supply and demand chain management. The research framework adopted consists of survey questionnaire method which is conducted within a global tyre manufacturing company. The research results and analysis justify the need for the application of ethical codes, supply chain transformation and the effective association of industry executives, professional bodies and the government. The research study also identifies that the vital incentive factors for the organisation towards sustainable supply demand chain (SSDC) are mostly the financial benefits of doing so and therefore, a positive mind-set shift towards greening practices is required.