The objective of the present work is to use a suitable method that can optimize the process parameters like pulse on time (TON), pulse off time (TOFF), wire feed rate (WF), wire tension (WT) and servo voltage (SV) to attain the maximum value of MRR and minimum value of surface roughness during the production of a fine pitch spur gear made of copper. The spur gear has a pressure angle of 20⁰ and pitch circle diameter of 70 mm. The wire has a diameter of 0.25 mm and is made of brass. Experiments were conducted according to Taguchi’s orthogonal array concept with five factors and two levels. Thus, Taguchi quality loss design technique is used to optimize the output responses carried out from the experiments. Another optimization technique i.e. desirability with grey Taguchi technique has been used to optimize the process parameters. Both the optimized results are compared to find out the best combination of MRR and surface roughness. A confirmation test was carried out to identify the significant improvement in the machining performance in case of Taguchi quality loss. Finally, it was concluded that desirability with grey Taguchi technique produced a better result than the Taguchi quality loss technique in case of MRR and Taguchi quality loss gives a better result in case of surface roughness. The quality of the wire after the cutting operation has been presented in the scanning electron microscopy (SEM) figure.

Logistics system is one of the basic concepts of effective supply chain management. In the Republic of Kazakhstan, all types of public transport constitute a single transport system (ETS), which includes railway, river, sea, road, air and pipeline transport. An important element of the ETS of the country is the transport network, which determines the possible directions of transportation and the points between which a particular type of communication is established. It consists of communications of different types of public and non-public transport. The formation of effective supply chain management and transport network is due to a number of socio-economic factors: the development and location of the economy; urban settlements; the direction and power of the main transport and economic relations; location of large resort and tourist sites, the need to optimize costs. Additionally, this research analyzes the trends in innovation for logistic services of supply chain management in the targeted region through multiple aspects, intellectual capital, and organizational resources. Research findings show that both multiple aspects and intellectual capital are positively and significantly associated with innovation in logistic services for the supply chain management. However, the study finds no evidence for the relationship between organizational resources and innovation for logistic services in supply chain management. As a result of the research, practical aspects and significance of the management of the transport and logistics system of the republic are determined, on the basis of which the relevant conclusions were made.

From the past decades, increasing attention has been paid to the quality level of technological and mechanical properties achieved by the Additive Manufacturing (AM); these two elements have achieved a good performance, and it is possible to compare this with the results achieved by traditional technology. Therefore, the AM maturity is high enough to let industries adopt this technology in a more general production framework as the mechanical manufacturing industrial one is. Since the technological and mechanical properties are also beneficial for the materials produced with AM, the primary objective of this paper is to focus more on managerial facets, such as the cost control of a production environment, where these new technologies are present. This paper aims to analyse the existing literature about the cost models developed specifically for AM from an operations management point of view and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of all models.

Supply chain finance has become an interesting research topic which attracts lots of attention from scholars recently, particularly after the global financial crisis. However, only few studies have examined the causal relationship between supply chain finance and firm performance. More specially, there is a big research gap when almost none of existing research has analysed the nonlinear impact of supply chain finance on firm performance. With this aim, this paper succeeds in giving first empirical evidence on the U-shaped nonlinear relationship between supply chain finance and the performance of seafood firms in Vietnam. Specifically, a bad performance of supply chain finance (the increase in cash conversion cycle - CCC) causes a lower firm performance (FP). Nevertheless, if any decrease in firm performance reaches its minimum (CCC*), the restructuring of the firm will gradually improve it. In addition, firm performance is significantly influenced by controlled variables of firm-specific, firm size (SIZE) and capital structure (CAP), and macroeconomic, economic growth (EG), factors. The findings are valuable for the management as well as scholars in bringing a more comprehensive perspective on the causal relationship between supply chain finance and firm performance.

Supply chains need to redesign their existing strategies and must develop new strategies to effectively face the challenges posed by certain disruptions, both man-made and natural. This requires the supply chains to be highly flexible, visible, reliable and cost-effective leading to the achievement of Agile Supply Chain (ASC). In today’s competitive market, achieving agility in supply chain needs dynamic leadership, strategic vision, mutual cooperation from all members and effective utilization of information technology through customer focus. In spite of their initiatives to achieve ASC for improving their organizational performance, barring a few large companies, the medium and small size manufacturing companies have not yet been able to adopt and design supply chains which lead to ASC. This may be due to various challenges in the process of achieving agility. Also, the published literature in this area is very scanty. Therefore, to fill this gap, the purpose of this study is to determine the mediating role of Information Sharing Strategy (ISS) on Agile Supply Chain (ASC) practices for achieving Supply Chain Performance (SCP) in medium size manufacturing companies in UAE. An empirical survey of supply chain managers in UAE is conducted for this purpose. It is found that information sharing plays a major mediating role in ASC to achieve superior supply chain performance.

This paper investigates the impact of financial leverage and supply chain finance on firm performance of Vietnamese construction sector. Although there is a big gap in the literature needed to be filled, little empirical evidence can be found on this interesting topic. Therefore, the results are essential for Vietnamese firms, particularly those in construction industry. By adopting the generalized method of moment (GMM), the results reveal the significant influence of financial leverage and supply chain finance on the performance of construction firms. In particular, firm performance (FP) is more influenced by financial leverage (FL) than supply chain finance (SCF). The findings also show that supply chain finance plays a key role in enhancing firm performance. Meanwhile, more debts and their inefficient use exert a negative impact on firm performance, which is an unprecedented finding of this study.

The objective of this paper is to assess the impact of supply chain linkage on the performance of aluminum profiles enterprises in Northern Vietnam. After qualitative research results, the research team has discovered a new variable in the linkage model which is the Policy linkage. The study performs official quantitative research on 289 aluminum profiles in Northern Vietnam and the results were analyzed on SPSS 22 and Smart PLS 3.0 software. The results indicate that the links in the supply chain include: Supply linkage, customer linkage, policy linkage and internal linkage all contribute significantly to supply chain management efficiency. Moreover, the supply chain management efficiency had a positive effect on business performance of aluminum profiles in the northern region of Vietnam. Finally, the study gives solutions and recommendations to help aluminum bar enterprises shape the northern region of Vietnam to better link in the supply chain and improve business performance.

The growing environmental and economic concerns oblige logistics operations managers to look for simple solutions to optimize their processes and to corporate sustainability in logistics networks. Logistics collaboration is one of the management practices to foster the sustainability of freight transport. This paper presents an ‘ex ante’ decision support tool to evaluate the economic and ecologic impacts of shippers’ horizontal collaboration in urban freight delivery. Optimization model as a two-echelon location routing problem (2E-LRP) is exploited to demonstrate the benefits of joining facility location and vehicle routing decisions under multi-objective optimization approach. Numerical instances reproducing the real urban network are regenerated to test the proposed mechanism. Scenario analysis is conducted to analyze and discuss the effect of parameters’ changes in generated gains.

The objective of this paper is to assess the relationship between supply chain activities in retail businesses enterprises in Hanoi, Vietnam. The sample includes 312 retail business enterprises in Hanoi city. Using the analysis technology of PLS - SEM structure model, through Smart PLS 3.0 software, the results show that the activities of the retail supply chain in Hanoi were statistically significant where the effects were from 0.166 to 0.605 and the level of significance was 1%. Inventory does not have a statistically significant relationship with the supply chain management strategy of these retail businesses in Hanoi.

This research is conducted to investigate the impact of supply chain quality management (SCQM) on supply chain performance (SCP). Data are collected by using questionnaire delivered to 120 manufacturing companies listed on Vietnamese stock market. Three proxies are used to measure supply chain quality management include (i) internal quality management, (ii) upstream quality management and (iii) downstream quality management. Supply chain performance is measured by customer satisfaction regarding three aspects consist of quality, cost and time to delivery. The statistical methods approaches are employed to address the research issues including Cronbach’s Alpha, Explanatory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Ordinary Least Squares (OLS). The findings show that supply chain quality management had significant positive effect on supply chain performance of manufacturing companies listed on Vietnamese stock market. Based on the research results, some key intuitive recommendations are proposed aiming to improve the supply chain performance at operational level of Vietnamese enterprises.

The paper was retracted as the research team had found some significant issues about the results which could mislead the readers.