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This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/01443579610113942. When citing the article, please cite: Dirk Pieter Van Donk, Peter Van Dam, (1996), “Structuring complexity in scheduling: a study in a food processing industry”, International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol. 16 Iss: 5, pp. 54 - 6.

To date, the literature has usually assumed that a universal approach to resilience is appropriate in which different resilience capabilities are equally important for all organizations independent of contextual characteristics. In contrast this study investigates if production process characteristics affect resilience capabilities in terms of redundancy, flexibility, agility and collaboration.

An in-depth exploratory multiple case study was carried out in eight companies across different industries. Data were gathered through multiple interviews with key informants in each company.

The authors find differences in, and trade-offs between, resilience capabilities and practices related to redundancy, agility and collaboration induced by the different configurations of production system characteristics: especially between discrete and process industries. Further, a major influential characteristic is the production strategy employed (make-to-stock or make-to-order) which stresses or limits collaboration and redundancy.

This is one of the first studies to explore the effects of production system characteristics as a major contingency factor on the resilience capabilities of an organization. As such it provides valuable insights into the development of a more nuanced contingency approach to how organizations can build resilience and employ specific practices that fit their situation.

The paper's purpose is to provide a motivation for investigating the relationship between supply chain management (SCM) and information and communication technology (ICT), to describe associated theoretical and practical problems and to introduce the papers of the special issue.

The paper is partly based upon a short literature review, including the papers of the special issue.

An important finding is that the relationship and integration of SCM and ICT in all papers of this special issue are strongly intertwined with managerial and organizational theory related issues.

The paper suggests three possible avenues for building theory in the joint field of SCM and ICT on the one hand and organizational theory on the other hand.

Implicitly the paper argues for a better use of organizational and managerial insights to increase the usage and implementation of ICT in the context of SCM.

The paper offers a research agenda for incorporating organizational theory to develop the integration of SCM and ICT.

While systems theory explicitly considers interactions as part of a system’s complexity, supply chain complexity (SCC) is mostly conceptualized and measured as a linear summation of several aspects. The purpose of this paper is to challenge the general understanding by explicitly investigating interactions between and across different types (detail and dynamic) and levels (plant, supply chain, environment) of SCC.

An exploratory multiple case study methodology is adopted drawing on in-depth semi-structured interviews with respondents from eight manufacturing plants in the food processing industry.

On the one hand, it is found that different types add and increase overall SCC. On the other hand, the study also shows the opposite: interactions between detail and dynamic complexity can reduce the overall SCC experienced. Additionally, the findings highlight the specific food processing characteristics such as the variability of quality and quantity of raw materials that underlie interactions between types and levels of SCC.

This study adds to theory by empirically showing that interactions across and between types and levels do not automatically increase, but might also reduce SCC. As such, the findings contribute new detail to the concept of SCC: aspects of complexity do not necessarily add up linearly. Additionally, this study is one of the first to demonstrate how specific contextual aspects from the food processing industry relate to SCC.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of supply chain integration in different contexts. More specifically, it aims to show that supply chain integration is only effective in buyer‐supplier relationships characterised by high supply complexity.

A survey‐based research design is developed to measure different dimensions or aspects of supply chain integration and supply complexity. Data were collected among manufacturers in The Netherlands and Spain.

This research shows that supply chain integration increases performance if supply complexity is high, while a very limited or no influence of supply chain integration can be detected in case of low supply complexity. The results also show that in high supply complexity environments the use of structured communication means to achieve supply chain integration has a negative effect on cost performance.

The limited sample size prohibits estimating and testing of more comprehensive models of the relationship between supply chain integration and performance. Specifically, the authors were not able to further investigate how different supply chain integration dimensions are inter‐related and mutually reinforce one another to improve performance.

The main managerial lesson is that, in contrast to what has been written in many books and other popular publications, high levels of supply chain integration are only necessary in environments characterised by high supply complexity.

This study helps to better understand context in supply chain management research. Specifically, it investigates the moderating effect of supply complexity on the integration‐performance relationship, a topic suggested by Bozarth et al. as a line for further research.

Organizations increasingly rely on cross-functional teams to deal with supply chain (SC) disruptions. These teams may use their broad range of connections and expertise to gather or scout relevant information, enabling them to develop integrative countermeasures and increase their organization’s resilience. Despite their potential, cross-functional teams often struggle to attain information scouting’s prospective benefits for effectively resolving disruptions. By drawing from group information-processing theory, this study aims to explore when and how cross-functional teams can realize information scouting’s full potential for ensuring their organization’s resilience.

Multisource, multi-informant data were collected from 80 cross-functional teams exposed to SC disruptions in a realistic SC management simulation.

The results show that a cross-functional team’s ability to effectively use information scouting for ensuring its organization’s resilience is contingent upon the degree to which the team’s members share information and align decisions internally (i.e. internal integration). The findings further reveal that this moderating role of internal integration is strengthened when the cross-functional team faces a volatile environment in which multiple SC disruptions are likely to occur (i.e. higher SC vulnerability).

This study contributes by advancing a more complete perspective on how a cross-functional team may contribute to its organization’s resilience. Specifically, the present research reveals how the benefits of a cross-functional team’s information scouting for dealing with SC disruptions are critically dependent upon internal conditions within the team, as well as external conditions related to its organization’s overall SC (i.e. beyond individual dyadic relationships).

Critical infrastructures (CIs) for essential services such as water supply and electricity delivery are notoriously vulnerable to disruptions. While extant literature offers important insights into the resilience of CIs following large-scale disasters, our understanding of CI resilience to the more typical disruptions that affect CIs on a day-to-day basis remains limited. The present study investigates how the interorganizational (supply) network that uses and manages the CI can mitigate the adverse consequences of day-to-day disruptions.

Longitudinal archival data on 277 day-to-day disruptions within the Dutch national railway CI were collected and analyzed using generalized estimating equations.

The empirical results largely support the study’s predictions that day-to-day disruptions have greater adverse effects if they co-occur or are relatively unprecedented. The findings further show that the involved interorganizational network can enhance CI resilience to these disruptions, in particular, by increasing the overall level of cross-boundary information exchange between organizations inside the network.

This study helps managers to make well-informed choices regarding the target and intensity of their cross-boundary information-exchange efforts when dealing with day-to-day disruptions affecting their CI. The findings illustrate the importance of targeting cross-boundary information exchange at the complete interorganizational network responsible for the CI and to increase the intensity of such efforts when CI disruptions co-occur and/or are unprecedented.

This study contributes to our academic understanding of how network-level processes (i.e. cross-boundary information exchange) can be managed to ensure interorganizational (supply) networks’ resilience to day-to-day disruptions in a CI context. Subsequent research may draw from the conceptual framework advanced in the present study for examining additional supply network-level processes that can influence the effectiveness of entire supply networks. As such, the present research may assist scholars to move beyond a simple dyadic context and toward examining complete supply networks

This paper aims to provide a starting point to discuss how social enterprises can drive systemic change in terms of social impact through operations and supply chain management.

This paper reviews existing literature and the four papers in this special issue and develops a conceptual framework of how social enterprises and their supply chains create social impact and further enable systematic change.

Our paper finds that social impact and systemic change can be shaped by social enterprises at three different levels of analysis (organization, supply chain and context) and through three enablers (cognitive shift, stakeholder collaboration and scalability). Such dimensions are used to position current literature and to highlight new research directions.

This paper proposes a novel understanding of operations and supply chain management in social enterprises intended as catalysts for systemic change. Based on this premise we distinguish different practices and stakeholders to be considered when studying social impact at different levels. The conceptual framework introduced in the paper provides a new pathway for future research and debate by scholars engaged at the intersection of social impact, sustainable operations and supply chain management.

Risks can easily disrupt the demand–supply match targeted by sales and operations planning (S&OP). As surprisingly little is known of how organizations identify, assess, treat and monitor risks through tactical planning processes, this paper zooms in on the S&OP set-up and process parameters to explore how risks are managed through S&OP.

A multiple case study analyzes the S&OP processes of seven organizations in the process industry, drawing on 17 in-depth interviews with high-ranking representatives, internal and external documents, and a group meeting with participating organizations.

The study finds that organizations proactively design their S&OP based on their main risk focus stemming from the planning environment. In turn, such designs proactively support organizations' risk identification, assessment, treatment and monitoring through their S&OP execution. Reactively, a crisis S&OP meeting – making use of the structure of S&OP – can be used as a risk-treatment tool, and S&OP design can be temporarily adapted to deal with emerging risks.

This study is among the first to empirically elucidate risk management through S&OP. S&OP design, execution and adaption are identified as three interconnected strategies that allow organizations to manage risks. The design enables risk management activities in the monthly execution of S&OP. The reactive role of S&OP in risk management is particularly novel.