Many plants employ a variety of information systems (IS) to streamline business. Informatization, the business use of information systems, is believed to significantly improve plant performance. In this study, we explore the effects of IS on supply chain management (SCM) activities and effect of SCM capability on inventory turnover performance. Data were collected from nine industrialized countries from 2005 to 2007. The results of this study demonstrate the influence of master production scheduling (MPS), material resource planning (MRP), and inventory control systems (ICS) on SCM activities, and SCM capability on SCM performance. This study shows that it is not SCM activities but SCM capability that affects inventory turnover performance. This study offers recommendations to managers and academics and suggests avenues for future research.

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Supply chain management (SCM) tries to seek ways to optimize production, inventory and distribution to meet the rapidly changing demand. Mass production, quick response, and mass customization are three establishing ways that industries found. Apparel sector practices all of them mainly due to the variety it has and its globally distributed supply chains (SCs). As a result of rapid outsourcing within the apparel industry, almost all garment vendors happen to cater to a range of customers practicing all the three strategies. Thus, these upstream supply chain members have established different approaches to align with different strategies of their B2B customers (retailers). The research uncovers how supply chain’s management orientations, capabilities, and tactical approaches differ with the three strategies. We performed a case study in an apparel anufacturer, located in Sri Lanka. It caters to six different global retailers practicing the three supply chain strategies mentioned above. We utilized the Logistics Scorecard to extract 119 supply chain professionals’ responses. Results imply that an organization with a diverse customer portfolio has to consider the features of these strategies and manage their different value networks accordingly.

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Previous research has suggested that a major cause of commoditization within the digital home electronics sector is modularity. However, we do not know why commoditization speed differs among different finished products. This paper focuses on the motivation of a finished product manufacturer to modularize their product, and on the causes of forming a module market. We propose a conceptual framework from this viewpoint. We suggest that the primary causes of product design modularization and the formation of a module market are the diffusion speed of a new product, and module portability from other industries. The primary findings of this study are: (1) If the market for a finished product grows rapidly, manufacturers tend to choose a modular product design. As a result, the product is commoditized faster. (2) If there is a module that can serve as a component for the focal product of another industry, that finished product will result in commoditization.

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Rework in a chain-structured project such as a clinical trial programming project of the pharmaceutical drug development increases committed total man-hours more than estimated. Rework is a typical problem in project management. In this paper, we investigate causal factors related to rework in a chain-structured project, and discuss how to reduce rework. Our results demonstrate (1) the advantages of applying System Dynamics to locate causal factors of rework in a clinical trial programming project of chain-structured type, and (2) the necessity of well-organized relationships between the constituent groups that frame the chain structure of the project to reduce rework.

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We construct an improvement action selection model. As the way of constructing this model, we identify logistics providers’ actions to gain shippers’ trust, and then conduct Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to clarify the causal relationships between the actions and the factors that lead shippers to trust logistics providers. We formulate a knapsack problem so that a logistics provider can have the optimal selection of improvement actions that maximizes Customer Satisfaction (CS) while keeping an upper limit on the provider’s labor effort.

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