مجله مدیریت تولید و عملیات
سال سیزدهم شماره 4 (پیاپی 31، زمستان 1401)

In the modern corporate economy, the vital point is to convert land resources into wealth and to have a particular and significant role in creating economic, social, and environmental outcomes. Therefore, corporate sustainability is considered a new management style in balancing social, economic, and environmental aspects. The new approach to the issue of sustainability can be used by private and public organizations as a solution for better decision-making to improve business by increasing flexibility and adaptability. Meanwhile, since the tourism industry has cultural, economic, and social benefits, it can achieve a competitive advantage, cost management, profitable financial performance, and finally customer satisfaction by paying special attention to the stability of the system. This study aims to investigate the level of customer satisfaction over time in the framework of system stability in four- and five-star hotels in Yazd province using the system dynamics approach.

Design/methodology/approach:

 In this study, an integrative approach of the fuzzy Delphi method and system dynamics has been used. First, the model variables were identified by the Fuzzy Delphi method, and then the obtained variables were modeled by the system dynamics approach.

The results of the analysis of the presented scenarios indicated that the system is highly sensitive to the number of brands, and with the increase in the number of brands, if a hotel does not improve its performance, it will severely lose its customers, as well as the best investment in terms of liquidity. Investing in advertising is significant, because advertising, in addition to introducing the product, affects the formation of customer expectations and leads to the introduction of the organization, indirectly; this in turn increases the number of customers. Therefore, practical functions have been considered in the fields of sales and corporate products and service organizations. Due to the development of a new model, basic functions can be also considered.

Research limitations/implications: 

The most important limitations of this study included the limited number of four and five-star hotels under investigation, the confidentiality of hotel financial statements, the lack of customer satisfaction evaluation systems in hotels, and the lack of familiarity with most managers with system sustainability issues.

Practical implications:

 The tourism industry has remarkable cultural, economic, and social benefits; it can achieve a competitive advantage, cost leadership, profitable financial performance, and finally customer satisfaction by paying special attention to the sustainability of the system. On the other hand, since hotel management is the beating heart of the tourism industry, it can create a competitive advantage by empowering employees, while making them aware of the importance of environmental issues and attracting their participation in the implementation of environmental policies. By creating a competitive advantage, hoteliers can reduce the total price of their services and attract the attention of a new range of environmentally friendly customers and tourists from all over the world through superiority, fame, credit, and distinction. The mentioned factors will lead to profitability and improvement of financial performance and ultimately increased customer satisfaction.

Social implications:

 Recognition of the sustainability of systems in the three aspects of economic, social, and environmental factors, not only leads to better operational results, but also decreases capital costs, improves company performance, and social factors such as social benefit activities, creates and maintains employment, improves the health and safety of employees, and improves social responsibility and social audit.

Originality/value:

 In this study, a dynamic model is developed based on the mutual and dynamic effects of economic, social, cultural, and managerial factors. It also allows hotel managers to manage their investments in different installments according to liquidity.

Cross-docking deals with the goals of lean supply chain management. It is a distribution strategy. In this structure, goods are shipped from inbound to outbound trailers on the same day or overnight without putting them into storage. Cross-docking can realize transport efficiencies at reduced material handling and storage costs by eliminating the storage and order-picking activities from the main warehouse operations. These advantages make cross-docking an interesting logistic strategy that can give companies considerable competitive advantages. This paper aims to introduce cross-docking, its characteristics and its problem types, comprehensively. The focus of this study is on distinguishing research gaps.

Design/methodology/approach: 

Systematic review is "review research by explicit, rigorous and accountable methods". Reviews and their findings can vary on many aspects of the 'dimensions of different'. One such review is the 'review of reviews'. A systematic review of primary research is the second level of research analysis. A review of reviews (sometimes called 'overview' or 'umbrella' review) is a tertiary level of analysis. It is a systematic map and/or synthesis of previous reviews. The 'data' for such reviews of reviews are previous reviews rather than primary research studies. This can be an efficient method for examining previous research. In this paper, cross-docking literature systematic review (review of reviews method) has been discussed by introducing, clustering cross-docking decision problems, and drawing future research directions.

Bibliography, cross-dockings, and classified characteristics of cross-docking based on the decision levels (strategic, tactical and operational levels) were the major findings of this study. Also, the cross-docking problem types were addressed and the gaps in the field of cross-docking were determined. This study highlighted two frequent gaps that would need to be filled by focusing on the research areas of taking deadlines for the trucks into account and dealing with uncertainty.

Research limitations/implications:

 Book chapters and conference papers were excluded from this research. Reviewed papers were published in a certain period and the English language.Practical implications: Today firms use different types of distribution strategies. Cross-docking with eliminating the storage and order-picking activities from the main warehouse operations is an interesting logistics strategy. products with predictable, high cubic volume flow, and perishable products are ideal candidates for cross-docking. Cross-docking is nowadays used by many companies and industries such as the retail industry, automotive industry, telecommunications and electronics industries.

Social implications:

Cross-docking results in smaller volumes of more visible inventories that are delivered faster and more frequently. Several other advantages of cross-docking are addressed in the literature compared to traditional distribution centres. Some advantages are reduced cost (warehousing costs, inventory-holding costs, handling costs, labour costs), shorter delivery lead time (from supplier to customer), improved customer service, reduced storage space, faster inventory turnover, fewer overstocks, and reduced risk for loss and damage.

Originality/value:

 Due to the advantages and extensive applications of cross-docking, in this paper a "review of reviews" was performed, and after introducing cross-docking terminals and their problem types, distinguish research gaps were determined for the future research study. Therefore, researchers were suggested to concentrate on the addressed gaps in their models to get closer to real-life constraints.

This paper aims to propose a systematic view of how Circular Supply Chain Management (CSCM) captures and evolves the state-of-the-art advances in this field. Multiple analyzes have been performed with two tools of VOSviewer and open-source R-package ‘bibliometrix”. Also, a network and bibliometric analysis of the Co-Occurrence, Co-Authorship, and Co-Citation has been made on CSCM using bibliometric and scientometrics methods on the literature available on the Web of Science and Scopus databases.

Design/methodology/approach:

 Bibliometric, network structure, and descriptive analysis have been used to investigate publications on the subject of circular supply chain management. For this purpose, a systematic review has been performed using the Prisma review protocol. After defining the research objectives and questions, the relevant keywords for the sources and database and search codes have been used for an online search. Then, the initial search has been conducted. The next step involved screening the study results. 116 published articles have been selected from Scopus for analysis. The potential papers were then downloaded in CSV format for bibliometric analysis and synthesis. The final data for this research has been selected from 2010 to 2021. All the data was exported in CSV format to the Bibliometrix and Vosviewer software for data analysis. Also, Co-Authorship, word Co-Occurrence, and Co-Citation analysis have been generated using VOSviewer.

This study analyzed the annual publication trends, the most productive authors, the most cited articles, the most productive affiliations, the most important journals, the most productive countries, and keywords. Collaboration, co-occurrence, co-authors, co-citation, and historiographical analysis were also performed in this study. Findings indicated that "Perona, M" and "Mina, H" with six and five articles were the most productive authors in the development of this field. Also, Geissdoerfer's article was the most cited article with 231 citations, and it can be considered a pioneering work in the field of CSCM development. Farooq's article was also the most cited local article. Govindan et al.'s (2020) article were the most important in co-citation analysis. Great Britain and Italy were the most productive countries with 70 and 66 publications. Cambridge University was the most productive university in England. The "Journal of Cleaner Production" and "Sustainability" were the most visited journal with 24 and 8 articles. The most dominant keywords were "circular economy" and "circular supply chain". The main keywords shared in the most advanced cluster were "circular economy", "circular supply chain", and "supply chain". The main common keywords in cluster 2 included "supply chain management" and "circular supply chain management", and the main common keywords in cluster 3 included "sustainability, and “closed loop supply chain". Also, major cooperated countries included Great Britain, Italy, and China. Strong cooperation between Iran and Denmark, China and Australia, and Britain, and India was also observed. A significant number of articles were written by Iranian researchers, and the number of citations received by foreign researchers was higher. The authorship of the articles included two, one, and three authors, respectively. The results indicated the existence of the development of CSCM with quantitative modeling approaches, proficient algorithms, optimization techniques, and integrated multi-criteria decision-making techniques. Also, CSCM research must identify enablers, drivers, Critical Success Factors (CSF), obstacles and barriers, innovative frameworks, and circular business models.

Research limitations/implications:

 The papers were merely reviewed in the form of scientific and English language journal articles. Other datasets and conference papers, reports, and books can be considered for future study, but they were not included in the structural literature review.

Practical implications: 

CSCM is rapidly developing in supply chain sustainability and can operate as a guide for companies. To apply CSCM, three questions need to be answered:  i) which business/supply chain models should companies choose (closed loop or circular)?; ii) how does it cover supply chain operations to achieve a zero-waste perspective?; and iii) how does the company redesign its supply chain and implement a circular supply chain?

Social implications: 

The application of the results of this study and circular supply chain indicators have positive effects on the sustainability and circular economy.

Originality/value:

 This research is one of the early attempts to analyze the structure of social networks in CSCM using bibliometric and scientometric methods. In previous studies relevant to CSCM, mainly the structured literature review, content analysis, and integrated framework have been used, and few studies have addressed CSCM using bibliometric analysis. In this paper, the R-software was used for the first time as a tool for bibliometric data statistics (open-source R-package tool ‘Bibliometrix’ supplemented by VOS viewer, which is used for clustering and data visualization). Also, the results of the analysis of the two software were compared.

Emerging technologies have become one of the main concerns of societies of today. Governments and societies are well aware that their economic future and survival in today's changing world are tied to new technologies, especially artificial intelligence technology. This paper aims to help managers, practitioners, and policymakers in prioritizing the implementation of artificial intelligence technology in applications such as transportation, health, security, education, and research.

Design/methodology/approach:

After a relatively complete follow-up in the field of artificial intelligence research, the criteria for prioritizing emerging technologies have been calculated and weighted by the Friedman method. Then, the application areas have been identified by the thematic analysis method. Finally, using the COPRAS multi-criteria decision-making technique, the application areas of artificial intelligence have been ranked.

This research resulted in a model and indicated that the three areas of economics, transportation, and governance were given more priority for the application of artificial intelligence technology, respectively.Research limitations/implications: Designing mechanisms to monitor advances in emergent technology and artificial intelligence to improve the proposed model and update the model were the most important suggestions. Another suggestion was to identify the gap between the theoretically developed model and practice.

Practical implications: 

This paper provides a reliable prioritization of the applied areas using scientific criteria appropriate to the country. This provides a scientific-operational package, and policy-making by creating a logical relationship between theory and practice. If such a document is presented in policy and legislative circles, this prioritization can be one of the most important tools for decision-making and rescuing from political and strategic dilemmas.

Social implications: 

 Improving the quality of human life by implementing artificial intelligence in various usages of daily life, and facilitating social availability to the important types of possibilities are the most important achievement of this research.

Originality/value: 

Since no model has been found to prioritize the implementation of artificial intelligence technology in applications, the proposed model closes such a gap. The paper provides appropriate tools both to practitioners and policymakers who intend to decide and deploy artificial intelligence.

Selecting the appropriate methodology for information systems development is a controversial issue among many organizations. This paper aims to investigate the effects of organizational culture factors on the adoption of information systems development methodologies and to create a conceptual and practical model for the selection of development methodologies with an organizational culture approach.

Design/methodology/approach:

 Using the models of Denison, Ke, and Wei and based on the experts’ viewpoints, a unified research model was created, and then the research hypotheses have been examined using statistical analysis. After measuring the organizational culture in the studied company, i.e., Mobarakeh Steel Company, the correlation between the sub-criteria was determined using the DEMATEL technique, and by using the network analysis method and Super decision software, the appropriate methodology has been selected among 14 common methodologies.

Findings indicated that the significant and positive effect of most cultural factors on the selection of development methodologies, and with the change and improvement of some sub-criteria such as cultures of change, participation, and team building, organizations are ready and willing to use developed, flexible and comprehensive methodologies with an agile approach (DSDM, SCRUM). As a result, low-risk, structured, and program-oriented methodologies will be more appropriate options (SSADM, STRADIS).

Practical implications:

 Identifying cultural factors and investigating their influence on the organization provided a basis for proposing a conceptual and practical framework and a guideline to help managers in selecting appropriate business information systems development methodologies.

Originality/value:

 By identifying cultural factors and new influencing indicators in the process of selecting development methodologies, a conceptual model, framework, and guidelines were proposed to help managers and developers in organizations to select the appropriate system development methodologies.

This paper aims to study the effect of inertia on the performance of the EWMA control chart for attribute characteristics and to investigate the effects of inertia properties on control charts with attribute characteristics

Design/methodology/approach: 

By calculating the inertia criterion, the effectiveness of the control chart can be measured in identifying changes and how one can reduce the inertial properties of the control charts. MATLAB software has been used to conduct simulation studies. The effect of inertia on the performance of an exponentially weighted moving average control chart and modified exponentially weighted moving average control chart for observations caused by correlated processes based on Poisson distribution has been investigated.

After calculating and analyzing the results, it was determined that the modified exponential moving average control chart performs better than the exponential moving average control chart based on the Poisson distribution in the worst-case signal resistance. Also, by decreasing the parameter λ, the inertia value of the control charts increased.Research limitations/implications: Other control charts that follow different distributions can be used, or the effect of inertia on the performance of control charts in multivariable processes can be considered as a subject for further study.

Practical implications: 

After analyzing the positive properties of inertia, it is possible to increase productivity in production processes. This research purposed new indicators to evaluate the performance of control charts in terms of inertial properties.

Social implications: 

In the field of manufacturing industries, it is possible to increase productivity by examining the appropriate characteristics of inertia. On the other hand, regarding the use of control charts for monitoring chemical and petrochemical processes and evaluating the inertia index, it is possible to reduce the variability of the process in long term, which will have an impact on environmental issues.

Originality/value:

 Measuring the inertia of the exponentially weighted moving average control chart when the observations are independent and follow the Poisson distribution, in addition to measuring the inertia of the exponentially weighted moving average control chart in the presence of correlated observations distinguishes this research from previous studies.