Calls for papers

 

International Journal of Services Operations and Informatics

 

Special Issue on: “Intelligent Supply Chain Management”

Guest Editors: Dr Dong Li and Dr Hossam Ismail, University of Liverpool, UK

Supply chains have been experiencing significant changes in the technology, organisation and management. With increasingly diversified customer demands, supply chain operations have to be more agile and flexible to maintain competitiveness. The challenge to deal with these changes in sustainable ways has been well perceived in the research literature and industrial practices. Facing these challenges, approaches and technologies to capture, share and outsource strategically important information through the supply chains play increasingly important roles in improving the agility and competitiveness. Strategically important information as the intelligence of the business provides the visibility of supply chain wide operations, and the capability of responsive decision making.

In recent years, radio frequency identification (RFID) systems, geographical positioning systems (GPS), applied Grid computing systems (GCS), multiple agent systems (MAS) and other data capture, analysis technologies have attracted increasing attentions in the supply chain management for tracking and tracing, business integration and automation and business solution outsourcing, etc. Such applications facilitate supply chain wide intelligence which does not only mean the improvement of operations agility and efficiency, but more importantly the potential of innovation – transforming into intelligent supply chains.

The research and practical cases on these technologies achieving the supply chain intelligence have been reported in the literature. However, the technologies have been investigated as isolated paradigms and have been particularly exploited for improving existing business processes. For instance, RFID technology has been extensively examined for benefits replacing barcode systems in the supply chain efficiency and effectiveness. The research in transforming the existing business with novel business models based on the real-time visibility of the item level information is still rare in the literature. Grid technology is promising in facilitating the collaborated scientific research. Ways of facilitating the virtual enterprise and supply chain formation through this on-demand open service architecture is just coming under exploration.

Other technologies, such as agent-based systems, advanced analytical (e.g. data mining) approaches, on-line scanning and filtering, etc. have also contributed to automation, autonomy and strategic decision making of supply chain operations. The integration of such technologies with appropriate management approaches would promise the opportunity to transform the supply chains with innovative features. It is expected that the integration of the “macro-level” Grid-enabled services with the “micro-level” RFID-enabled automatic real-time product data sources will stimulate new business models in a service oriented, optimisation centric infrastructure for intelligent supply chain management.

Extending the business intelligence concept to the integrated intelligent supply chain paradigm, the research should focus on providing strategically important information and decision making resources to the business in a systematic thinking. What-if scenarios for reconfiguring key functions in the supply chains by such technological opportunities need to be investigated.

Subject Coverage
Recommended topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• New customer service models with RFID enabled retail supply chains
• Real-time scheduling and optimisation with RFID and decision making service Grids
• Autonomous and self-organising systems in logistics
• Virtual enterprise with Grid technologies
• Supply chain cooperation and Grid computing technologies
• Novel supply chain architectures with integrated e-Business and Grid technologies
• E-business solutions to enable the connectivity and use of Grid technologies in supply chains
• Operations automation with RFID technologies and agent-based systems
• Agile service operations with RFID enabled intelligent products
• Mass/personalised customisation with intelligent products
• Just-in-time operations with RFID technologies
• Intelligent products for international supply chain management
• Products and assets tracking with GPS connected RFID networks
• Intelligent traceability systems
• RFID and data grids in product recycling and reverse logistics
• RFID systems with data warehousing for supply chain decision support
• Grid enabled data warehousing
• Case studies on intelligent traceability systems
• Implementation issues of intelligent supply chain systems
• Technology selection and vendor selection issues for intelligent supply chain management
• Knowledge-based systems for information scanning, filtering and interpreting
• Internet-based systems for intelligence scanning and reporting, e.g. portals

Notes for Prospective Authors

Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere

All papers are refereed through a peer review process. A guide for authors, sample copies and other relevant information for submitting papers are available on the Author Guidelines page

Important Dates

Deadline for Submission: 30 November 2006