Unpredictable natural and man-made disasters highlight importance of humanitarian supply chain (HSC) to serve people and affected areas. The main challenges of applying effective relief operations are creating “swift trust” and “coordination” between aid organizations. Implementation of Industry 4.0 facilitates coordination and swift trust within HSC performance. The study intends to assess the readiness status of swift trust and coordination between stakeholders as well as to recommend the most suitable Industry 4.0 tools for improving relief operations. Firstly, a comprehensive set of critical success factors for implementing Industry 4.0 tools are introduced. The factors are categorized into limited groups using Exploratory Factor Analysis. In the next step, hierarchy fuzzy expert system is designed for assessing the readiness status of swift trust and coordination as well as to suggest the most suitable Industry 4.0 tool for enhancing HSC performance within given case study. The framework was applied for three aid organizations to address the pandemic disease in Iran. The outcome denotes that the organization has the highest readiness in logistic and transparency while information quality received the lowest readiness value. In addition to that, the organization should invest on the development of Industry 4.0 enablers including “Internet of Things and Big Data Analytics”. The study extends organizational information process theory within HSC for reaching competitive advantage by information processing. The study suggests theoretical and practical implications by introducing a comprehensive set of critical success factors for implementation of Industry 4.0 and providing practical advice for enhancing HSC performance.

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Assessing the role of industry 4.0 for enhancing swift trust and coordination in humanitarian supply chain

This paper uses the differential game approach to construct a model of cooperative emission reduction involving the government, manufacturing firms, and retail firms under different power structures. It is found that the dominant player receives more subsidies; the development of a mechanism for horizontal technology R&D among enterprises can reduce the financial pressure on the government to implement compensation strategies and improve the effectiveness and performance of supply chain emission reduction; and the government can develop differentiated subsidy schemes to achieve Pareto optimality in the supply chain and environmental performance based on different game strategies and revenue-sharing agreements by enterprises.

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Government Participation in Supply Chain Low-Carbon Technology R&D and Green Marketing Strategy Optimization

Against the backdrop of cap-and-trade regulations, we construct a low-carbon supply chain in which a seller holds the manufacturer’s equity. We investigate the impact of the seller’s equity holding and the cap-and-trade regulations on the supply chain members’ optimal decisions, profits and coordination in the cases of information symmetry and asymmetry. We find that, regardless of whether there is information asymmetry or symmetry, the manufacturer always benefits from an equity holding, while the seller can only earn higher profits through equity holding if the percentage of equity holding and the level of consumer low-carbon awareness are both sufficiently high. Both the seller and the manufacturer prefer the information asymmetry scenario when the manufacturer’s efficiency in emission reduction is below a particular threshold. In addition, equity holding can incentivize the manufacturer to share its information with the seller. Equity holding is beneficial for emission reduction and market demand but is not always beneficial for improving the supply chain’s total profit and reducing the supply chain’s total carbon emissions. Finally, with a transfer payment contract, a decentralized supply chain can obtain the same optimal profits as in the centralized supply chain scenario, and both the manufacturer and seller can earn higher profits than before.

Effect of equity holding on a supply chain’s pricing and emission reduction decisions considering information sharing

A decision framework for incorporating the coordination and behavioural issues in sustainable supply chains in digital economy

Reverse supply chain management with dual channel and collection disruptions: supply chain coordination and game theory approaches

In this study, we investigate the role of decision-making and coordination related to carbon reduction within humanitarian supply chain. Accordingly, a two-stage supply chain consisting of a single manufacturer and a single retailer has been designed, within which three strategies for carbon emission reduction have been considered, namely direct procurement of carbon emission right, investment in fixed carbon reduction targets, and investment in reducing carbon emissions per unit product. The game model under decentralized decision-making, centralized decision-making, and coordinative status has been established. The influences of both consumer carbon sensitivity coefficient and carbon trading price on investment decision based on carbon emission reduction within supply chains, as well as the optimal decision of supply chain operations, are all discussed in this paper. Our study shows that the choice of supply chain carbon reduction strategies depends on carbon trading price and fixed emission reduction target, both the wholesale price and selling price of products are positively correlated with carbon trading price, and both optimal production volume of supply chain and optimal expected profit of supply chain operations are negatively correlated with consumer carbon sensitivity coefficient. The price discount contract may realize coordination within a supply chain, but the value of discount price depends on respective negotiation ability.

Guo Fuli

Papers

Reducing carbon emissions in humanitarian supply chain: the role of decision making and coordination