Present and future of supply chain and operations management: special issue from the 5th P&OM World Conference

Citation

Durach, C.F. and Paiva, E.L. (2018), "Present and future of supply chain and operations management: special issue from the 5th P&OM World Conference", International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, Vol. 48 No. 10, pp. 974-975. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPDLM-11-2018-364

Present and future of supply chain and operations management: special issue from the 5th P&OM World Conference

This special issue contains a selection of papers presented at the 5th Production & Operations Management World Conference. As Guest Editors, we are pleased and thankful that Professor Alex Ellinger, Editor of International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management (IJPDLM) offered to host a special issue for the celebration of this historic multicultural conference. The conference took place in Havana, Cuba in September 2016, with the theme “Joining P&OM forces worldwide: present and future of operations management.” The conference is a combined initiative by the three academic associations of EurOMA, POMS and JOMSA. The theme of the conference represents the spirit of the P&OM World Conferences, aiming to encourage the P&OM World to join together during yet another challenging time of global change as embodied by increasing protectionism, urgent need for more social and environmental sustainability and workplaces and supply/customer networks being fundamentally transformed by new digital technologies. The almost 400 participants from Europe, North America, Latin America, Africa and Oceania as well as 20 keynote speakers from Europe, America and Asia discussed and proposed ways to help us face a world of such fundamental changes. Attendees participated in 123 parallel sessions during the three days of the Conference in the Havana International Convention Center.

In total, 602 papers were submitted to the conference, with 377 papers being selected for presentation after a rigorous double-blind review process. Two independent Conference reviewers assessed each of the papers on multiple assessment criteria giving scores from 1 to 3. All authors of the selected papers were eligible to apply for this Special Issue of the IJPDLM. From the 51 papers applying, we selected all papers that received an average score from both Conference reviewers of more than 2.5. As Guest Editors for this special issue, we invited the authors of this initial selection to submit their full papers. As a result, seven papers were submitted. These papers then entered a double-blind review process with two anonymous IJPDLM reviewers for each paper providing their feedback. All papers in this process underwent at least two rounds of revisions, before three of them were finally selected for this special issue. We believe that these three manuscripts appropriately represent the breadth of current research in the OM/SCM discipline and also reflect upon the theme of the conference. The papers combine theoretical discussions of current pressing themes with rigorous methodological procedures, including qualitative and quantitative approaches.

The first article by Marin-Garcia, Alfalla-Luque and Machuca, titled “A Triple-A supply chain measurement model: validation and analysis,” builds on data from 309 manufacturing plants from the High Performance Manufacturing international research database and on a rigorous review of the literature. The authors provide a clarified understanding of the Triple-A supply chain concept variables (i.e. a supply chain that shows properties of agility, adaptability and alignment) and dimensions, and propose composite measures for the Triple-A supply chain variables. While the concept of Triple-A supply chains has been the focus of a stream of SCM research ever since Lee’s (2004) article, this is the first article that proposes a synthesized scale measurement for SC agility, adaptability and alignment based on previous literature. This effort is a fundamental prerequisite for converging the measurements and definitions of Triple-A supply chain variables that will synthesize the discussion and stimulate future empirical analyses of Lee’s theoretical framework.

The second article “Cost estimation accuracy in supply chain design: The role of decision-making complexity and management attention” by Asmussen, Kristensen and Wæhrens reports insights gathered from a longitudinal case study on decision-making processes with regards to supply chain design changes. The authors analyze ten supply chain design decisions and the cost estimation ability of decision makers. The results reveal how different supply chain characteristics increase decision-making complexity. If this complexity is not readily recognized and matched by appropriate strategies for information search and analysis, the risk of cost estimation errors increases. Further, the paper reveals the importance of management attention for cost estimation accuracy. In particular, management attention, based on conflicting goals, induces behavior that improves cost estimation ability. This article carries implications for future research on supply chain design, hidden cost and decision makers engaging in complex supply chain changes.

The third article “Implications of product centric servitization for global distribution channels of manufacturing companies” by Aminoff and Hakanen research works the trend of servitization and its impact on manufacturers’ B2B distribution in terms of its offering, manufacturer–distributor relationships, distributor–end customer relationships and manufacturer–end customer relationships. The theoretical framing of the study builds on service-dominant logic, which explains the exchange of services as a fundamental component and development step of business and society. The authors analyze and elaborate this framework with data collected from an in-depth case study to provide new theoretical insights in the form of multiple propositions.

We would like to take the opportunity to thank the IJPDLM reviewers for their considerable efforts to improve and progress the papers that have been selected for this special issue. We are equally indebted to the organizing committee members, the special session organizers and the many people that helped to make this an unforgettable academic event. We, the Guest Editors, hope that you find the contributions in this special issue interesting and perceptive.