I was privileged to be part of his research group where I enjoyed developing as an independent researcher in supply chain management. It is essential to identify and prioritize risks affecting the entire industry supply chain. The aim of the thesis is to support the home appliance industry in such a way that supply chain professionals and industrial engineers can easily identify the strongest risks to a smooth supply chain process.
Supply chain management (SCM) is the flow of goods and services from procurement to the customer. Production planning, production process, distribution and delivery of products and services are monitored by supply chain management. Such growth in supply chain activities plays an essential role in the home appliance industry as well.
The risks associated with the supply chain in this sector should be briefly analyzed. To make that supply chain reliable and efficient, most of the home appliance manufacturing industries are putting a considerable amount of effort and resources into this matter. In the current paper, analysis of the existing supply chain practices in the home appliance industry and the categorization of the home appliance industry according to the power consumption is done.
The Multiple Criteria Decision Making Method (MCDM) TOPSIS is used to prioritize risks by including the defined risk weights associated with the supply chain.
Objectives of the Thesis
The Delphi method is used to identify the most relevant risks and assess them in terms of their importance and character in affecting the supply chain. The normalized decision matrix is taken to decide, and the relative proximity to the positive ideal determines the risk rank preference.
Outline of Methodology
Positive ideals and negative ideal solutions should be identified for each decision maker. Then, after calculating the relative proximity to the positive ideal solution, the priority ranking of the risks is determined.
Organization of the Thesis
- Supply Chain Risk Management
- Overview of the Home Appliance Industry
- Existing Supply Chain Practices
- Collaborative Demand Planning and Replenishment
- Collaborative Production
- Collaborative Logistics Planning
- Categorization According to Power Consumption
- Major appliances
- Small Appliances
- Consumer Appliances
Supply chain risk management refers to reducing supply chain vulnerability by ensuring business continuity through planning. The discipline analyzes to what extent the supply chain is susceptible to disruptions and thus potentially detrimental to a company's overall profitability and performance (Giunipero & Eltantawy, 2004). SCS management, on the other hand, is an element of supply chain risk management and seeks to prevent human-caused attacks such as theft and damage or destruction of products and assets (Sheffi, 2001).
Lee and Wolfe (Wolfe, 2003) linked the topic to established quality management concepts and proposed an approach for prevention, process control and design improvements. Williams et al., 2008) provided an extensive literature review, demonstrating the main challenges in the field and concluding that SCS research is lacking in depicting intra-organizational activities, the interaction between supply chain partners and the role of government, as well as quantitative assessments, to better understand the rationale, targets, sources and causes of SCS initiatives. Bangladesh manufactures various consumer electronic products, but in most cases the manufacturing companies import various parts from abroad and assemble them in their factories. According to World Bank data, only 21.6% of the population had access to electricity in 1990.
Although the majority of the population still lives in rural areas, the urban population is steadily increasing. Supply Chain is a systematic integration process that involves various parties and entities to meet the customer's call efficiently and skillfully. Supply chain management in the white goods industry tries to coordinate all processes to fulfill the customer's request.
To meet customer demand and deliver it at the lowest possible cost, industries are following some supply chain management trends. Retailers and manufacturers study together to assess customer demand and work accordingly to create and develop the best supply chain strategy to meet demand. Supplier and manufacturing work together to reduce inventory of raw materials and finished products along the supply chain.
Cooperation with the supplier of raw materials and finished products can lead to the successful execution of the supply chain. Because knowing the inventory level of the raw materials and planning production accordingly can save lost time and also save inventory costs. The third area of the supply chain is related to the transportation of goods between stages in the supply chain.
- Delphi Survey Method
- TOPSIS Method
- Application of the proposed research framework
- Data Collection
The assessment is done based on the consensus of the participants, and the difference of opinion is taken into account to identify and select the most relevant events. In the real-time data survey, the clarity of the survey is significant, and the experts get the feedback immediately just after one round is completed (Lee et al., 2009). This makes the participants available for the next round and prevents mortality of the group over several survey rounds.
In the last step, we analyzed the quantitative and qualitative data in different ways in order to determine the contribution of the research in the field of SCS. A decision-making problem is the process of finding the best option among all feasible alternatives. In the TOPSIS process, performance scores and criteria weights are given as exact values.
The 𝑅 value of alternative closer to 1 implies the higher priority of the 𝑗th alternative. The basic principle of the TOPSIS method is that the chosen alternative must have the „shortest distance‟ from the positive ideal solution and the „farthest distance‟. The factory's products are exported in many developed countries and meet the demand of their own brand in the local market of Bangladesh.
The factory has faced some serious problems in the supply chain department related to sudden changes in factors related to the effectiveness of the overall supply chain. Risk factors affecting the supply chain cannot be identified in time, therefore losses are affecting the overall performance of the factory. The studied information had to be put as a risk factor linguistic value for a better understanding of the survey participants.
Officials Customs & Law Government Export Import Operation Law Enforcement Agency Step 3: Analysis of the Delphi results. After their assessment, the data was saved and they had the opportunity to review their choices and the overall result of the study was displayed. Due to the diversification of the Delphi panel, we were able to obtain a multi-stakeholder view of the topic and generate a controversial discussion among the participants.
While the number of participants exceeded the minimum number of participants of 30, it can be said that the quality and consistency of the survey has increased. The results of the survey and the responses of the participants are presented in the last part of the thesis.
Sensitivity Analysis
To check the robustness of the proposed methodology, a sensitivity analysis is performed and changes in the results are shown. The weight of the impact criteria varies according to the opinions of different experts and different factories. In this study, we use archetypal sensitivity analysis by assigning separate weights to different criteria established by experts and academics.
To check the validation of the evaluation criteria of this study, the calculation and evaluation of the most important identified risks the TOPSIS method is tested again based on the varied weighting factors of the impact criteria. For the analysis of the changes in the decision matrix, the weighted normalized decision matrix is constructed according to the new weights of the criteria shown in Table 5.3. The normalized decision matrix is unchanged since the attribute value of the risk alternatives is not changed.
The comparison of the values of weighted normalized decision matrix with the positive ideal solution and negative ideal solution is calculated. According to the formula of equation 3.5 and 3.6, the separation values of the positive and negative ideal solution are measured. After obtaining the cutoff values, relative closeness to the ideal solution is calculated and compared to the closeness to the value 1.
The closer the value of 𝑅 is to 1, the more important the risk criteria are based on the effect criteria. The values are then ranked according to their performance values based on the values of separation metrics ( 𝑑 , 𝑑 ) and relative closeness values 𝑅 are shown in Table 5.5. From the above ranking found based on the change weightings, it is clear that there is no major change in ranking among different risk alternatives under sensitivity analysis.
These results show the same order of preference for the risk alternatives considering changes in the weights of the impact criteria, except for a minor change in the ranking order. So we can say that there is no serious change in the classification for sensitivity analysis.
Recommendations
In this thesis, to identify and shortlist the supply chain risks, the Delphi method is used and to rank these risks, a multi-criterion decision-making tool TOPSIS method is proposed. The prospect of this thesis is that it will help identify and evaluate the supply chain risks in other industrial areas of Bangladesh to implement a smooth and efficient supply chain. All these industrial sectors have an extensive channel of supply chain activity and are vulnerable to different types of risk factors, increasing the overall costs of an industry.
This thesis will help those in the industry who are responsible for the effective achievement of the entire SCM activity. Other MCDM tools such as Fuzzy-VIKOR, Fuzzy-DEMATEL Fuzzy-AHP, ANP, ISM, ELECTRE III, Fuzzy TOPSIS can be used for SCR analysis to evaluate the most influential SCR to obtain a successful supply chain system. Working Time Management in the Garment Sector in Bangladesh: Pathways to Survival and Growth.
Appendix A: Survey form to identify prioritized supply chain risk for implementing the Delphi method.
