Today, in this era of globalisation we have open economies providing vast opportunities for business. In contrast, customers’ preferences are changing all of the time. To meet this demand we need to integrate our sprawling supply chains and to work in a collaborative manner by making use of management technologies and innovative methods. Rapid advances and complexity in engineering technology and management, and the accompanying growing uncertainty in the business environment, have brought about mergers and takeovers, and these have changed the shape of many markets. In all sectors quality and costs, the traditional competitive differentiators, have become broadly similar across many suppliers.
One way in which organisations can differentiate themselves, reduce costs and improve service is to consider environmental, social and economic factors relating to their supply chains as well as to their manufacturing practices. The greatest benefits are derived by extending the focus as far as possible upstream towards the consumer and then back again as the products and waste are recycled. Moreover, in recent years, factors such as evolving financial and competitive pressures, increasingly demanding customers and complex environmental regulations have elevated the attention paid to sustainable supply chains collaborating in a healthy manner and reverse logistics activities. As product life cycles shrink, many organisations are realising that sustainable supply chain management and reverse logistics are critical processes for increasing quality and profitability.
The global economy and advanced information technologies have generated unprecedented opportunities for innovative methodologies for the design and operation of sustainable supply chains, logistics and transportation systems. From recent examinations of operations and environment, the integration between sustainable supply chain management and reverse logistics is the critical next step for the comprehensive and efficient strategic design and analysis of supply chains for the future.
Therefore, through this special issue the Guest Editors hopes to move supply chain co-opetition, collaboration and reverse logistics research forward by emphasising on more realistic studies that cover multiple supply chain processes incorporating sustainability and which address both the social and environmental aspects of sustainability in supply chain integration as well as dis-integration type of activities of supply chains. Guest Editors seek to publish both conceptual and empirical research papers so as to bridge the gap between the industrial and academic worlds. However, the conceptual papers should, at a minimum, provide some exploratory analysis or case example(s) for supply chain co-opetition and collaboration. In general, more emphasis will be given to the papers describing rigorous theoretical results with real life supply chain applications.
Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Supply chain collaboration, coordination, co-opetition, integration and dis-integration
- Global supply chains with shrinking product life cycles
- Supply chains with socio-economic considerations
- Resilient supply chains, agile supply chains
- Information technology integration with supply chain management
- Green supply chain and sustainability aspects
- Ethical issues in supply chains and their effects in current scenarios
- Decision support tools and strategies in reverse logistics
- Application areas and case studies (strongly encouraged)
Important Dates
Manuscript submission: 31 October, 2014
Reviewer reports: 31 December, 2014
Revised paper submission: 15 February, 2015
Revision and completion of second review process: 31 March, 2015
Final paper submission: 30 April, 2015
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