Xing Zhang, Yan Zhou, Fuli Zhou and Saurabh Pratap
The sudden outbreak of COVID-19 has become a major public health emergency of global concern. Studying the Internet public opinion dissemination mechanism of public health…
Abstract
Purpose
The sudden outbreak of COVID-19 has become a major public health emergency of global concern. Studying the Internet public opinion dissemination mechanism of public health emergencies is of great significance for creating a legalized network environment, and it is also helpful for managers to make scientific decisions when encountering Internet public opinion crisis.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the analysis of the process of spreading the Internet public opinion in major epidemics, a dynamic model of the Internet public opinion spread system was constructed to study the interactive relationship among the public opinion events, network media, netizens and government and the spread of epidemic public opinion. The Shuanghuanglian event in COVID-19 in China was taken as a typical example to make simulation analysis.
Findings
Research results show three points: (1) the government credibility plays a decisive role in the spread of Internet public opinion; (2) it is the best time to intervene when Internet public opinion occurred at first time; (3) the management and control of social media are the key to public opinion governance. Besides, specific countermeasures are proposed to assist control of Internet public opinion dissemination.
Originality/value
The epidemic Internet public opinion risk evolution system is a complex nonlinear social system. The system dynamics model is used to carry out research to facilitate the analysis of the Internet public opinion propagation mechanism and explore the interrelationship of various factors.
Details
Keywords
Fuli Zhou, Xu Wang and Avinash Samvedi
Driven by motivation of quality enhancement and brand reputation promotion, automotive industries try to improve product quality and customer satisfaction by performing quality…
Abstract
Purpose
Driven by motivation of quality enhancement and brand reputation promotion, automotive industries try to improve product quality and customer satisfaction by performing quality pilot programs continuously. The purpose of this paper is to develop a dynamic model to select the improvement quality pilot program from competitive candidates based on dynamic customers’ feedback.
Design/methodology/approach
An extended dynamic multi-criteria decision-making method is developed by embedding dynamic triangular fuzzy weighting average operators into fuzzy VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) method, and the novel evaluation indicator “ζ” is introduced to reflect prioritization performance.
Findings
The two evaluation indicators (Q and “ζ” ) assist quality managers to identify the best program with respect to multiple conflicting criteria and the best choice based on these two indexes shows high conformity. Besides, ranking sequences obtained by “ζ” can avoid the dilemma that there are several candidates with top priority calculated by comprehensive group utility value Q.
Practical implications
The dynamic MCDM method has been applied into the quality improvement procedure in Chinese domestic auto factories and contributes to highly efficient promotion.
Originality/value
Few dynamic models on pilot program selection for quality improvement based on dynamic customers’ feedback, this study deals with the dynamic promotion by an extended fuzzy VIKOR method and presents a case application.
Details
Keywords
Fuli Zhou, Ming K. Lim, Yandong He and Saurabh Pratap
The increasingly booming e-commerce development has stimulated vehicle consumers to express individual reviews through online forum. The purpose of this paper is to probe into the…
Abstract
Purpose
The increasingly booming e-commerce development has stimulated vehicle consumers to express individual reviews through online forum. The purpose of this paper is to probe into the vehicle consumer consumption behavior and make recommendations for potential consumers from textual comments viewpoint.
Design/methodology/approach
A big data analytic-based approach is designed to discover vehicle consumer consumption behavior from online perspective. To reduce subjectivity of expert-based approaches, a parallel Naïve Bayes approach is designed to analyze the sentiment analysis, and the Saaty scale-based (SSC) scoring rule is employed to obtain specific sentimental value of attribute class, contributing to the multi-grade sentiment classification. To achieve the intelligent recommendation for potential vehicle customers, a novel SSC-VIKOR approach is developed to prioritize vehicle brand candidates from a big data analytical viewpoint.
Findings
The big data analytics argue that “cost-effectiveness” characteristic is the most important factor that vehicle consumers care, and the data mining results enable automakers to better understand consumer consumption behavior.
Research limitations/implications
The case study illustrates the effectiveness of the integrated method, contributing to much more precise operations management on marketing strategy, quality improvement and intelligent recommendation.
Originality/value
Researches of consumer consumption behavior are usually based on survey-based methods, and mostly previous studies about comments analysis focus on binary analysis. The hybrid SSC-VIKOR approach is developed to fill the gap from the big data perspective.
Details
Keywords
Maria Cristina Pietronudo, Fuli Zhou, Andrea Caporuscio, Giuseppe La Ragione and Marcello Risitano
This article aims to understand the role of intermediaries that manage innovation challenges in the healthcare scenario. More specifically, it explores the role of digital…
Abstract
Purpose
This article aims to understand the role of intermediaries that manage innovation challenges in the healthcare scenario. More specifically, it explores the role of digital platforms in addressing data challenges and fostering data-driven innovation in the health sector.
Design/methodology/approach
For exploring the role of platforms, the authors propose a theoretical model based on the platform’s dynamic capabilities, assuming that, because of their set of capabilities, platforms may trigger innovation practices in actor interactions. To corroborate the theoretical framework, the authors present a detailed in-depth case study analysis of Apheris, an innovative data-driven digital platform operating in the healthcare scenario.
Findings
The paper finds that the innovative data-driven digital platform can be used to revolutionize established practices in the health sector (a) accelerating research and innovation; (b) overcoming challenges related to healthcare data. The case study demonstrates how data and intellectual property sharing can be privacy-compliant and enable new capabilities.
Originality/value
The paper attempts to fill the gap between the use of the data-driven digital platform and the critical innovation practices in the healthcare industry.
Details
Keywords
Yandong He, Xu Wang, Fuli Zhou and Yun Lin
This paper aims to study the vehicle routing problem with dynamic customers considering dual service (including home delivery [HD] and customer pickup [CP]) in the last mile…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to study the vehicle routing problem with dynamic customers considering dual service (including home delivery [HD] and customer pickup [CP]) in the last mile delivery in which three decisions have to be made: determine routes that lie along the HD points and CP facilities; optimize routes in real time, which mode is better between simultaneous dual service (SDS, HD points and CP facilities are served simultaneously by the same vehicle); and respective dual service (RDS, HD points and CP facilities are served by different vehicles)?
Design/methodology/approach
This paper establishes a mixed integer linear programing model for the dynamic vehicle routing problem considering simultaneous dual services (DVRP-SDS). To increase the practical usefulness and solve large instances, the authors designed a two-phase matheuristic including construction-improvement heuristics to solve the deterministic model and dynamic programing to adjust routes to dynamic customers.
Findings
The computational experiments show that the CP facilities offer greater flexibility for adjusting routes to dynamic customers and that the SDS delivery system outperforms the RDS delivery system in terms of cost and number of vehicles used.
Practical implications
The results provide managerial insights for express enterprises from the perspective of operation research to make decisions.
Originality/value
This paper is among the first papers to study the DVRP-SDS. Moreover, this paper guides the managers to select better delivery mode in the last mile delivery.
Details
Keywords
Fuli Zhou, Panpan Ma, Yandong He, Saurabh Pratap, Peng Yu and Biyu Yang
With an increasingly fierce competition of the shipbuilding industry, advanced technologies and excellent management philosophies in the manufacturing industry are gradually…
Abstract
Purpose
With an increasingly fierce competition of the shipbuilding industry, advanced technologies and excellent management philosophies in the manufacturing industry are gradually introduced to domestic shipyards. The purpose of this study is to promote the lean management of Chinese ship outfitting plants by lean production strategy.
Design/methodology/approach
To promote the lean implementation of Chinese shipyards, the lean practice of ship-pipe part production is highlighted by lot-sizing optimization and strategic CONWIP (constant work-in-process) control. A nonlinear programming model is formulated to minimize the total cost of ship-pipe part manufacturing and the particle swarm optimization (PSO)-based algorithm is designed to resolve the established model. Besides, the pull-from-the-bottleneck (PFB) strategy is used to control ship-pipe part production, verified by Simulink simulation.
Findings
Results show that the proposed lean strategy of the programming model and strategic PFB control could assist Chinese ship outfitting plants to leverage competitive advantage by waste reduction and lean achievement. Specifically, the PFB double-loop control strategy shows better performance when there is high productivity and the PFB single-loop control outperforms at lower productivity scenarios.
Practical implications
To verify the effectiveness of the proposed lean strategy, a case study is performed to validate the formulated model. Also, simulation experiments realized by FlexSim software are conducted to testify results obtained by the constructed programming model.
Originality/value
Lean production management practice of the shipyard building industry is performed by the proposed lean production strategy through lot-sizing optimization and strategic PFB control in terms of ship-pipe part manufacturing.
Details
Keywords
Fuli Zhou, Yandong He, Panpan Ma and Raj V. Mahto
The booming of the Internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques contributes to knowledge adoption and management innovation for the healthcare industry. It…
Abstract
Purpose
The booming of the Internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques contributes to knowledge adoption and management innovation for the healthcare industry. It is of great significance to transport the medical resources to required places in an efficient way. However, it is difficult to exactly discover matched transportation resources and deliver to its destination due to the heterogeneity. This paper studies the medical transportation resource discovery mechanism, leading to efficiency improvement and operational innovation.
Design/methodology/approach
To solve the transportation resource semantic discovery problem under the novel cloud environment, the ontology modelling approach is used for both transportation resources and tasks information modes. Besides, medical transportation resource discovery mechanism is proposed, and resource matching rules are designed including three stages: filtering reasoning, QoS-based matching and user preferences-based rank to satisfy personalized demands of users. Furthermore, description logic rules are built to express the developed matching rules.
Findings
An organizational transportation case is taken as an example to describe the medical transportation logistics resource semantic discovery process under cloud medical service scenario. Results derived from the proposed semantic discovery mechanism could assist operators to find the most suitable resources.
Research limitations/implications
The case study validates the effectiveness of the developed transportation resource semantic discovery mechanism, contributing to knowledge management innovation for the medical logistics industry.
Originality/value
To improve task-resource matching accuracy under cloud scenario, this study develops a transportation resource semantic discovery procedure from the viewpoint of knowledge management. The novel knowledge management practice contributes to operational management of the cloud medical logistics service by introducing ontology modelling and creative management.
Details
Keywords
Saurabh Pratap, Yash Daultani, Ashish Dwivedi and Fuli Zhou
E-commerce refers to the facilitation and delivery of goods and services to the customers employing an electronic arrangement. For an e-commerce firm, the customer service level…
Abstract
Purpose
E-commerce refers to the facilitation and delivery of goods and services to the customers employing an electronic arrangement. For an e-commerce firm, the customer service level provided by its suppliers can make or break the firm. The purpose of this research is to help e-commerce enterprises in addressing the vast challenge of complex supplier selection and evaluation process that must be performed vigilantly.
Design/methodology/approach
The present study utilizes a three-pronged approach that integrates supplier management practices with the operational business practices of an e-commerce enterprise. In the first step, key performance factors for e-commerce capable suppliers are identified through an expert opinion and existing supplier management literature. Further, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is employed to obtain the efficiency score for each supplier that enables their ranking on various performance parameters. Lastly, the suppliers are classified into different categories based on their performance and efficiency.
Findings
Under the proposed classification scheme, top five suppliers, i.e. supplier 1, 7, 9, 11 and 17 are categorized as HE (High Performance and Efficient). It is suggested that e-commerce enterprises must build long-term relationship with the identified top performing suppliers. The study also provides real insights into supplier's performance on a number of objective criteria. Further, the present study enhances the overall performance and productivity of an e-commerce firm by achieving input cost minimization and output quality maximization, simultaneously.
Research limitations/implications
The results are valid for e-commerce enterprises in general. However, the present DEA model can be further evolved when applied in case of any particular e-commerce enterprise depending upon the internal capabilities of that firm. The nuances related to a firm's own supply capability development can be further explored by practitioners and researchers.
Practical implications
The proposed approach is expected to motivate decision-makers to consider using more sophisticated approached like DEA in supplier evaluation processes. Also, as a benchmarking technique, the proposed supplier classification approach is expected to be highly useful for practitioners in real-life settings.
Originality/value
The novel contribution of this study includes the supplier evaluation, ranking and classification for e-commerce enterprises based on the real-life data. The insights would help the practitioners to formulate novel strategies for appropriately investing in supplier relationships.
Details
Keywords
Shan Chen, Fuli Zhou, Jiafu Su, Longxiao Li, Biyu Yang and Yandong He
The paper investigates firms' optimal pricing policies and green strategies in a dynamic green supply chain with consideration of different retail service strategies. The purpose…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper investigates firms' optimal pricing policies and green strategies in a dynamic green supply chain with consideration of different retail service strategies. The purpose of the paper is to address the following research questions: (1) What are the optimal pricing policies and green strategies of the dynamic decentralized supply chain with the competitive or supportive retail service? (2) How does the dynamic consumer's perception of green product affect these equilibrium solutions?
Design/methodology/approach
The paper establishes the dynamic game models and then derives a firm's instantaneous and steady-state feedback equilibrium solutions in three scenarios as follows: (1) the integrated supply chain; (2) the decentralized supply chain with competitive retail service and (3) the decentralized supply chain with supportive retail service. Finally, we conduct numerical analyses to compare the firm's instantaneous and steady-state equilibrium solutions and profit in the three scenarios.
Findings
The theoretical and numerical analysis results suggest that the supportive retail service is less inefficient than the competitive retail service in the decentralized supply chain and that the types of retail service have no influence on the green strategy. Moreover, a firm's myopia leads to lowering the greenness degree, retail service level and severe price competition, resulting in economic losses. Consumers’ initial perception of greenness degree determines whether the retailer should adopt the skimming pricing strategy or penetration pricing strategy. Furthermore, only when consumers’ perception of greenness degree is higher than a threshold, will the manufacturer produce green product with positive greenness degree.
Originality/value
This is one of few studies on the effect of different types of retail service on horizontal competition in green supply chain. The extension of the static study by adopting differential game approaches provides researchers with a deeper understanding of the application of retail service in green supply chain.
Details
Keywords
Longxiao Li, Xu Wang, Yun Lin, Fuli Zhou and Shan Chen
In the context of sharing economy and online shopping, establishing a stable urban joint distribution alliance (JDA) is extremely necessary for the entire logistics service…
Abstract
Purpose
In the context of sharing economy and online shopping, establishing a stable urban joint distribution alliance (JDA) is extremely necessary for the entire logistics service market. The purpose of this paper is to rationally allocate the profits and determine the most stable allocation scheme for the urban JDA as well as provide a direction for cooperation between express enterprises and lead managers to pay more attention to the comprehensive performance.
Design/methodology/approach
Cooperative game-based methodologies including the proportion method, the core theory, nucleolus and Shapley value have been employed. Four criteria consisting of enterprise operation, customer satisfaction, environmental sustainability and information technology have been incorporated into Shapley value for improvement.
Findings
This paper reveals that express enterprises in logistics service market can achieve more benefit from JDA than those who operate separately. Among proposed profit allocation schemes, improved Shapley value scheme shows more rationality by considering partners’ asymmetric contribution. Besides, a stable alliance can be always ensured with partners’ lower propensity to disrupt and relatively balanced negotiation power under improved Shapley value scheme.
Originality/value
This paper makes a few attempts to contribute to the literature on the improvement of Shapley value and applies the concept of “propensity to disrupt” into the field of logistics. Besides, this paper provides various profit allocation schemes and incorporates influencing factors into Shapley value for an improvement thus helping policy-makers make better-informed decisions on urban distribution. Additionally, a case study based on urban express enterprises in Southwest China has been conducted to verify the proposed profit allocation schemes.