International Journal of Industrial Engineering & Production Research

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Service Oriented Enterprises (SOEs) are subject to constant change and variation. In this paper, the changes are considered from an economic perspective based on service culture notion. Once a change is implemented, the costs of some member services may increase, whereas the costs of some other services may reduce. We construct a game theoretic model trying to capture the possible conflicting interests of different parties in a SOE. Three incentive mechanisms are applied to the model. The first incentive mechanism shares the utility equally among the services involved in the change the second utility-sharing rule is based on the Nash’s bargaining solution, which accommodates the possible biased interdependencies inside the network and the third rule, based on the Harsanyi’s modified Shapley value, takes into account the possible coalition formation among the network parties. Since the three rules are analytically solvable, the principles of utility sharing can be implemented, for instance, as ex-ante contracts.

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One of the crucial factors affecting success of e-banking services is customer’s trust. Acquiring customer trust depends on different variables that an e-banking struggles to control. This research aims to explain and clarify the inter-relationships and the interaction effects among customer’s online trust and other relevant factors such as satisfaction and loyalty in e-banking. We developed a model of customer's trust in e-banking industry based on the outcomes of previous researches and semi-structured interviews with experts in e-banking services. To examine the model a descriptive survey was applied. The survey sample population consisted of 405 randomly taken e-banking service users in the city of Tehran, according to a cluster random sampling skim. An important part of the results revealed Trust beliefs relate directly with satisfaction and loyalty among e-banking customers.

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  Response time is one of the critical web service quality dimensions. It refers to how long it takes that a web service responds to request of a user. In order to manage the response time, pricing schemes can work as an efficient access control mechanism. In this paper, we study competition between two providers offering functionally same web services where there is a monopoly service provider. The monopoly offers a service that is complementary to their services. Each provider needs to decide a service level (L or H) and a corresponding price for the selected service level to meet the service level guarantee. We construct a Stackelberg game and benefit from queuing theory concept to propose a model that can examine strategic choices of the providers .

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  For any organization sound marketing strategy and quality assurance play vital role in the growth of the organization. The price, quality and service, service centers, friendly attitude, Discounts on sales, esthetics, store location and appearance, ease of operations, guarantees and warranties, adopting new ideas, and flexible payments terms were considered to study the perceptions of the respondents. The ultimate aim is to uphold the turnover of the organization and to create good market penetration of the goods produced in highly competitive business world .

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This paper presents a new formulation for warehouse inventory management in a stochastic situation. The primary source of this formulation is derived from FP model, which has been proposed by Fletcher and Ponnambalam for reservoir management. The new proposed mathematical model is based on the first and the second moments of storage as a stochastic variable. Using this model, the expected value of storage, the variance of storage, and the optimal ordering policies are determined. Moreover, the probability of within containment, surplus, and shortage are computable without adding any new variables. To validate the optimization model, a Monte Carlo simulation is used. Furthermore, to evaluate the performance of the optimal FP policy, It is compared to (s*,S*) policy, as a very popular policy used in the literature, in terms of the expected total annual cost and the service level. It is also demonstrated that the FP policy has a superior performances than (s*,S*) policy.

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There has been considerable number of papers published related to Six Sigma applications in manufacturing and service organizations. However, very few studies are done on reviewing the literature of Six Sigma in all the areas including manufacturing, construction, education, financial service, BPOs and healthcare etc. Considering the contribution of Six Sigma in recent time, a more comprehensive review is presented in this paper. The authors have reviewed Six Sigma literature in the way that would help research academicians and practitioners to take a closer look at the growth, development, and applications of this technique. The authors have reviewed various journal papers and suggested different schemes of classification. In addition, certain gap areas are identified that would help researchers in further research.

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This paper considers the advertising, pricing, and service decisions simultaneously to coordinate the supply chain with a manufacturer and a retailer. The amount of market demand is influenced by advertising, pricing and service decisions. In this paper, three well-known approaches to the game theory, including the Nash, the Stackelberg-retailer, and the cooperative game are exploited to study the effects of these policies on the supply chain. Using these approaches, we identify optimal strategies in each case for the manufacturer and the retailer. Then, we will compare the outcomes of each strategy thus developed. The results show that, compared with the Nash game, the Stackelberg-retailer game yields higher profits for the retailer, the manufacturer, and the whole system. The cooperative game yields the highest profits. Finally, the Nash bargaining model will be presented and explored to investigate the possibilities for profit sharing.

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Logistics planning in disaster response phase involves dispatching commodities such as medical materials, personnel, food, etc. to affected areas as soon as possible to accelerate the relief operations. Since transportation vehicles in disaster situations can be considered as scarce resources, thus, the efficient usage of them is substantially important. In this study, we provide a dynamic vehicle routing model for emergency logistics operations in the occurrence of natural disasters. The aim of the model is to find optimal routes for a fleet of vehicles to give emergency commodities to a set of affected areas by considering the existence of more than one arc between each two nodes in the network (multi-graph network). Proposed model considers FIFO property and focused on minimization of waiting time and total number of vehicles. Various problem instances have been provided to indicate the efficiency of the model. Finally, a brief sensitivity analysis is presented to investigate the impact of different parameters on the obtained solutions.

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Nowadays, competitive market creates the necessity of quality improvement in different levels of supply chains (SCs). This paper contributes to the SC coordination literature and proposes a bilateral coordination contract for optimizing pricing decisions along with quality improvement decisions in different echelons of a real case of a cell phone SC. The SC comprises a manufacturer who deals with determining the product quality, and a retailer who seeks for the optimal strategy on price, after-sale service and service level in a periodic review inventory system. The proposed bilateral wholesale price (BWP) contract is shown to be capable of simultaneous coordination of these decisions. The sensitivity analysis showed that in a market which is sensitive to quality and after-sale service as well as the product price, the proposed model facilitates investing more in such quality improvements while the members’ profitability with respect to the case without contracts is guaranteed. Moreover, it can increase the SC service level since it enables the members to hold more safety stock even under high inventory costs. Overall, the proposed coordination model on pricing, product quality, after-sale service and service level, leads to the optimal performance of the SC and its members while it is beneficial for the customers.

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In this paper, an inventory-routing problem for a network of appliance repair service is discussed including several repair depots and customers. The customer in this network makes a demand to have his/her faulty appliance repaired. Then, the repairman is assigned to the demand based on the skill needed for repairing of appliance differing for each one. The assigned repairman picks up the faulty appliance from the customer place using the vehicle for transferring faulty appliances to repair depot. The vehicle for picking up and delivering the appliances has a maximum capacity. Additionally, the repair depot needs spare parts to repair the faulty appliances that is supplied either by the supplier or lateral transshipment from the other depots. The capacitated vehicle inventory-routing problem with simultaneous pickup and delivery is NP-hard which needs special optimization procedure. Regarding the skill of repairman, it becomes more complex. Many solution approaches have been provided so far which have their pros and cons to deal with. In this study, an augmented angle-based sweep method is developed to cluster nodes for solving the problem. Finally, the heuristic is used in the main body of genetic algorithm with special representation.

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Innovation is an essential tool for the supply chain to gain its competitive advantage and improve its performance. Many researchers have remarked that supply chain innovation is a vital tool for improving the performance of a supply chain and can be very productive. This research attempts to identify and analyze the effective factors on the innovation supply chain in the health sector. The effective factors on the innovative supply chain were extracted by reviewing the literature, similar studies, and experts’ surveys. In this regard, 49 criteria were determined in eight dimensions. Intuitive fuzzy DEMATEL (IFD) and AHP methods were used to determine the weight and the relationships between them. The results indicated organizational innovation as the most important dimension, government support innovation as the most effective dimension, and process innovation as the most affected dimension. Some researchers believe that this period guarantees the survival and success of service organizations in this competition. However, the logistics and communication network of a business is required as a new and innovative landscape to use the competitive advantage opportunities to perceive the global era.

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The Coronavirus (Covid-19) has become a threat to the world. The government has implemented various policies to prevent its spread, such as self-isolation, social distancing, etc. The regulation turned out to pose a big threat to many companies, especially in the retail sector. To survive in a pandemic, the company needs to ensure brand loyalty as an important factor in maintaining company stability. This study aims to determine the effect of Corporate Social Responsibility, Service Quality, Customer Satisfaction on Brand Loyalty, and the effect of Service Quality on Customer Satisfaction in coffee shop brands from the US. The method used is descriptive quantitative with 100 respondents from Greater Jakarta. The findings show that Corporate Social Responsibility and Service Quality do not directly influence Brand Loyalty, while Customer Satisfaction has a positive and significant relationship with Brand Loyalty. Meanwhile, Service Quality affects Customer Satisfaction positively and significantly.

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Product Service System (PSS) is a developing field of examination in in industry practices in todays’ global economy, which significantly affect both production and utilization of resources. In order to enable the applicability of a product service system in an industry. It is important to assess the system using a metrics SERVQUAL model, which characterizes the quality as difference between the customer’s expectation and perception. And a complex examination device intended to gauge quality by catching the hope affirmation worldview which proposes the customers saw nature of how well a given conveyance measures up to their assumptions of that conveyance. This study analysis the adoption of KMS approach, significantly enhances the employee’s knowledge on tangibility and reliability thus influences the customer’s perceptions and expectations of the quality. The findings of the study revealed that KMS approach served as a facilitated tool for sharing and utilizing knowledge in different organizations.
 

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