https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7072-1351
This special issue discusses the present and future of production in the Asia Pacific region, which drives the current world economy. When we classify the world into three regions, Europe and Africa, North and South America, and Asia and Pacific, each region occupies roughly one-third of Earth’s land. However, the population is highly concentrated in the Asia Pacific region, which accounts for more than 60% of the overall global population. The region incorporates more than 60 countries, ranging in size from a large country with a population of more than 1.3 billion to a small country with a population of only 10,000, featuring varied economic levels and cultures.
Based on the region’s massive working population, production in the Asia Pacific region has led to economic growth, and the GDP share of this region has increased from 20% to 30% in the past 40 years, almost equalling that of the other regions. Economic growth is expected to continue, not only in this region but also in the other regions.
Although the GDP share of this densely populated region is almost the same as that of the other regions, GDP per capita is still less than in the other regions, at about 40% of the level in the Europe and Africa region and about 20% of the level in the North and South America region. The economic power of the Asia Pacific region is still far different from that of the other regions. Therefore, to create a bright future, it is important to develop production systems that are based on the situation and features of the Asia Pacific region, consider the relationship with other regions, and lead to the acceleration of economic growth not only in the Asia Pacific region but also in other regions.
Considering the above background, this special issue was planned for selecting and presenting interesting and meaningful research papers that deal with current and future production, not only just productions but also services, in the Asia Pacific region. Then, the special issue would like to propose a bright future of production research in which the three regions strive to co-create new values.
The prepared call for papers by setting the deadline to submit on 30 September 2018 was announced through the web site of journal, and 49 papers have been submitted to this special issues. After the careful review of all the submitted papers, the following seven papers have been selected and included in this special issue.
A systematic review of China’s belt and road initiative: implications for global supply chain management by Matthias Thürer, Ivan Tomašević, Mark Stevenson, Constantin Blome, Steven Melnyk, Hing Kai Chan, and George Q. Huang.
This paper conducts a systematic review of the wider literature on China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which is one of the world’s largest infrastructure investment programme to identify the effect of the BRI on supply chain management (SCM). This paper first investigates how the BRI will impact global SCM using eight factors that affect on organisation’s manufacturing location decisions based on 137 articles. Then, it explores what this means for future research in four key areas: supply chain configuration, supply chain resilience, sustainable SCM, and cross border SCM.
An integrated DEMATEL-MMDE-ISM based approach for analysing the barriers of IoT implementation in the manufacturing industry by Rajdeep Singh and Neeraj Bhanot
This paper presents a detailed analysis of the barriers faced during the implementation of Internet of Things (IoT) within the manufacturing sector. With the help of databases this paper obtained a comprehensive list of 22 barriers initially by using Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) technique and narrowed down to 10 critical barriers by using Maximum Mean De-Entropy (MMDE) technique and the Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) technique. The results of this study are expected to highlight the most crucial barriers wherein the researchers and practitioners can focus their strategic efforts, and it will facilitate to address all of implicit issues while implementing IoT Techniques in the manufacturing industry.
Relational analysis model of weather conditions and sales patterns based on nonnegative tensor factorization by Sei Okayama, Haruka Yamashita, Kenta Mikawa and Masayuki Goto.
This paper proposes a model for the relationship between weather condition and sales pattern of food items. The analytical model takes into account the characteristics of each retailer. The models using the sales data, attempts to forecast the sales of wide variety of food items based on weather conditions The nonnegative tensor factorization is used to decompose the data into three matrices, i.e., product, date, and store features. The model is validated by using real data obtained from the retail stores.
Integrated decision support framework for distribution network design by Giuseppe Timperio, Sunil Tiwari, José Manuel, Gaspar Sánchez, Rafael Adrián García Martín, and Robert de Souza.
This paper deals with a problem of a hands-on practice-oriented decision support framework that can holistically address both distribution network design and transport optimisation problems from a practical angle in the field of supply chain management. The methods proposed consists of location decision model and transportation assets optimisation, and systems based on information and communication technology platforms. The method is applied to the case of PT Pos Indonesia, the national postal service provider of Indonesia, and the effects of the method are discussed. This paper will give effective practical insights for the readers of the field of supply chain management.
Moral hazard problem and collaborative coordination in supply chain with capacity reservation contract by Yasuhiko Takemoto and Ikuo Arizono.
This paper studies collaborative coordination in capacity reservation contracts for supply chains in the semiconductor industry using the game theory. In the traditional studies for capacity reservation contracts, it is usually assumed that the supplier is always forced to build sufficient capacity to cover the reservation amount of the manufacturer. This paper considers a practical situation in which the supplier may have an incentive not to comply with the reservation amount of the manufacturer. Then, this paper proposes a method of determining the contract parameters collaboratively in the capacity reservation contract such that the mutual agreement of the supplier and manufacturer is formatted.
Profit-oriented distributionally robust chance constrained flowshop scheduling considering credit risk by Min Liu, Xin Liua, Feng Chu, Feifeng Zheng, and Chengbin Chu.
This paper studies a stochastic flowshop scheduling problem in which only the mean and covariance matrix of uncertain payment probabilities and processing times are known. A new distributionally robust chance constrained formulation was proposed. An adapted sample average approximation (SAA) method and a heuristic approach, based on an approximated mixed integer second-order conic program (MI-SCOP), were developed and compared with computational experiments.
Variable stage-independent double sampling plan with screening for acceptance quality loss limit inspection scheme by Ikuo Arizono, Kazunori Yoshimoto, and Ryosuke Tomohiro.
This paper proposes the stage-independent double sampling plan with screening based on the concept of the acceptance quality loss limit inspection scheme under the consideration of the trade-off between average total inspection and average sampling frequency. The proposed procedures and the results of numerical example are effective insights for the readers of the field of inspection planning and control.
All of the above seven papers are sufficiently valuable and significantly interest many production researchers not only in Asia Pacific regions but also all over the world. The first and the second papers deal with interesting issues, China’s belt and road initiative and IoT barriers in China and India, the first and the second largest countries, respectively. Both of the issues interest researchers not only in the countries but also in other countries all over the world. The topics in the second and the third papers, IoT and machine learning are much interested topics in production research, and the papers inspire production researchers in their future research. The fourth and fifth papers consider supply chain design and coordination. Although a huge amount of papers on supply chain management, their ideas of decision support framework and moral hazard are expected to contribute to the research on supply chain. The sixth and seventh papers consider orthodox problems on production research, scheduling and sampling, and the papers propose the novel formulation and plan. The proposed formulation and plan contribute to the progress of production research.
Finally, we, all guest editors, sincerely appreciate all the authors who contribute and submit to this special issue, and we hope the selected papers will inspire many readers of International Journal of Production Research not only in Asia Pacific regions but also in Europe and Africa, North and South America regions, and contribute to the progress of production research.
ORCID
Ilkyeong Moon http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7072-1351