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PurposeThe recent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic poses numerous challenges to supply chains. This pandemic is quite unique when compared to previous epidemic disruptions and has had a severe impact on supply chains. As a result, the operational challenges (OCs) caused by COVID-19 are still unknown among practitioners and academics. It is critical to comprehensively document current OCs so that firms can plan and implement strategies to overcome them. Consequently, this study systematically identifies and ranks COVID-19-related OCs.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses an integrated methodology combining expert interviews and the best-worst method (BWM) to analyze the results. The data have been collected from the electronics industry of Bangladesh, an emerging economy. This study also conducts a sensitivity analysis to check the robustness of the results.FindingsThe results reveal 23 COVID-19-related OCs under five categories: sourcing, production and inventory management, demand management and distribution, return management and after-sales service, and supply chain-wide challenges. The quantitative investigation reveals that overstock in finished goods inventory, low end-customer demands, order cancellations from dealers and retailers, high inventory holding costs and lack of transportation are the top five OCs.Practical implicationsThe findings will help practitioners to understand the OCs and allow them to prepare for future major disruptions and formulate long-term strategies for operations during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the literature on supply chain complexity and challenges by considering a major pandemic outbreak. Moreover, the study also contributes to the knowledge on emerging economies, which have been largely neglected in the current literature.

Purpose: Supply chains’ (SCs’) sustainability practices and recovery strategies are attaining popularity in academia and industries to improve the resilience of the SCs and to manage large-scale disruptions. The global pandemic caused by the COVID-19 has raised the question of the sustainability of essential health-care products’ SCs of Bangladesh. It is an essential avenue for making the life of people safe and secure. Despite its importance, most of the health-care SCs in Bangladesh are struggling to meet the demand of its nation due to capacity shortage, technological backwardness of the manufacturers, delivery capacity shortages and less advanced forecasting capabilities. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the key performance indicators (KPIs) of a sustainable recovery strategy in the context of health-care SCs considering the COVID-19 pandemic. Design/methodology/approach: This study used a dynamic method named graph theory and matrix approach to evaluate the most critical KPIs of a sustainable recovery strategy in the context of Bangladeshi health-care SCs. Findings: The result revealed that dynamic forecasting and planning with a smooth delivery and distribution support system, production capacity diversification and having alternative or multiple suppliers during extraordinary disruptions may aid in the sustainability of the health-care SCs in Bangladesh. Originality/value: This study is unique as no previous study has identified and examined the sustainable recovery strategy perspective KPIs considering the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of Bangladeshi health-care SCs. This study will also add value by guiding decision-makers of the health-care SCs of Bangladesh to adopt strategies toward the sustainability of SCs.

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the fragility of global supply chains arising from raw material scarcity, production and transportation disruption, and social distancing. Firms need to carefully anticipate the difficulties during recovery and formulate appropriate strategies to ensure the survival of their businesses and supply chains. To enhance awareness of the issues, this research aims to identify and model recovery challenges in the context of the Bangladeshi ready-made garment industry. A Delphi-based grey decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) methodology was used to analyze the data. While the Delphi method helped identify the major supply chain recovery challenges from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the grey DEMATEL approach helped categorize the causal relationships among these challenges. Of the 23 recovery challenges finalized, 12 are causal challenges. The study's findings can assist decision-makers in developing strategic policies to overcome the recovery challenges in the post-COVID-19 era.

© 2020 ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd Operational excellence refers to a mixed management structure that enhances the productivity of an industry by exercising the best practices and efforts for continuous improvement. In order to achieve sustainability, operational excellence initiatives are practiced by different organizations. The intent is to investigate how to perform the practices of operational excellence towards sustainability in industries. In the existing literature, some studies investigated key performance indicators (KPIs) for other domains that are not readily applicable in the background of an emerging economy, principally for the leather products industry. To fulfill these research gaps, this study contributes to the operational excellence literature by recognizing the KPIs of operational excellence towards sustainability by examining the peer-reviewed scientific articles and through expert's suggestions. The identified KPIs are segregated into six dominant categories and 27 sub-KPIs in the field of leather products industry. Further, the prioritization of the KPIs is established by adopting the best-worst method (BWM), which involves simple pairwise comparison matrices compared with other multicriteria decision making techniques. The findings indicate that the KPIs under the “Management” category are at the highest priority. It is anticipated that the results originated from the study will support the expert's to appropriately recognize the significant KPIs and drop insignificant KPIs for successful operational excellence towards sustainability practices in the supply chain of the emerging economy.

© 2020 Elsevier Ltd In the present competitive business environment and era of globalized marketing, supply chain (SC) of the leather industry is facing a variety of risks. Hence, one of the fundamental concerns in the leather industry supply chain (LISC) is recognizing and prioritizing the various risk factors for attaining sustainability. The present study is an attempt to determine a comprehensive evaluation of SC risk factors considering the case of the leather industry. Based on the literature search and interviews with the domain experts’, forty-four risk factors in the context of LISC are identified. The identified risk factors are further segregated into five-dimensions to sustainability (social, environmental, economic, technical, and institutional). A Pareto analysis is performed to discover the most pertinent risk factors. Further, the best-worst method (BWM) is embraced for evaluating the importance of each pertinent risk factor for the decision-making purpose. The findings from the study reflect that ‘inefficient effluent treatment’, ‘change in consumer preference’, ‘improper dumping of solid waste’, ‘volatility of price and cost’ and ‘fiscal changes’ are the crucial risk factors that are required to be addressed for the successful execution of sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) practices in an emerging economy context. It is expected that the results and findings will assist the leather industry managers in decision-making for better administration and alleviation of supply chain risks to achieve sustainability.

The recent emergence of data-driven business markets and the ineligibility of traditional data management systems to trace them have fostered the application of Big Data Analytics (BDA) in supply chains of the present decade. Literature reviews reveal that the successful implication of BDA in a supply chain mainly depends on some key drivers considering the size and operations of an organization. However, collective analysis of all these drivers is still neglected in the existing research field. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to identify and prioritize the most significant drivers of BDA in the supply chains. To this aim, a novel Best-worst method (BWM) based framework has been proposed, which has successfully identified and sequenced the twelve most significant drivers with the help of previous literature and experts’ opinions. Theoretically, this study contributes to the BDA literature by offering some unique drivers to BDA in supply chains. The findings show that ‘sophisticated structure of information technology’ and ‘group collaboration among business partners’ are the top most significant drivers. ‘Digitization of society’ is identified as the least significant driver of BDA in this study. The outcome of this study is expected to assist the industry managers to find out the most and least preferable drivers in their supply chains and then take initiatives to improve the overall efficiency of their organizations accordingly.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate the barriers for implementing Lean Six Sigma (LSS) in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and present a framework that provides prioritized strategies to overcome the barriers.Design/methodology/approachThe barriers and strategies are identified via a comprehensive literature review and validated by industry experts. The study uses the fuzzy Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (fuzzy TOPSIS) to analyze the barriers and strategies for determining the prioritized list of strategies.FindingsThe findings reveal that there are sixteen barriers to LSS implementation in Indian SMEs. To overcome these barriers, this study reveals twelve strategies. The analysis shows that “effective management” is the most crucial strategy to overcome the barriers for implementing LSS in Indian SMEs.Research limitations/implicationsThis research guides SMEs practitioners to efficiently and effectively implement LSS, which, in turn, can enhance the performance of SMEs.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the literature by integrating the strategies with the barriers for implementing LSS in Indian SMEs. Besides, this study provides the prioritized list of strategies to overcome the barriers for implementing LSS in Indian SMEs.

© 2019, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature. Reverse logistics (RL) is gradually becoming more important to manufacturing companies through environmental awareness, competitiveness, and environmental regulations. In the leather footwear industry of Bangladesh, it is possible to recycle and reuse waste, meaning a reverse logistics system could increase return-on-investment and give a competitive advantage. To date, studies on barriers to RL implementation have been conducted in other countries and in other domains, leaving a research gap in RL barrier analyses in the leather footwear industry. There are many obstacles to implementing RL in a developing country like Bangladesh; examining these barriers is a crucial research issue. This paper identifies RL barriers through (1) an extent literature review, (2) advice from Bangladeshi industry experts under the Delphi study, and (3) ranking RL barriers using the fuzzy analytical hierarchy process. The results indicate that, of the barriers investigated, the ‘knowledge and support’ category seems to be most critical. A lack of interest and support from top-level management—related to ‘knowledge and support’ issues—appears to be the major obstacle for RL implementation in the Bangladeshi leather footwear industry. These findings will help the Bangladeshi leather footwear industry, as well as other industries in Bangladesh, to understand the nature of each barrier and overcome the complexity of RL implementation in supply chains. This study will also assist decision-makers in making certain strategic policies. Future studies may contribute to the life cycle assessment and engineering of recycled and reused footwear.

© 2019 Elsevier Ltd This research presents critical success factors (CSFs) for developing energy-efficient supply chains (EESCs) in the leather industry in an emerging economy, which implications for energy policy. A novel decision-making support approach named the ‘best-worst method’ (BWM) is employed to rank the most important CSFs. Furthermore, an interpretive structural modeling (ISM) approach and a MICMAC analysis (Matriced Impacts Croisés Multiplication Appliquée á un Classement) are undertaken in this study to depict the relative dependences and influences among the selected CSFs. The CSF ‘International pressure and scarcity of natural resources’ is identified as the most significant factor via a hybrid BWM-ISM method that may drive the leather industry to implement EESC practices and thus maintain a sustainable environmental approach. This research will be beneficial to decision makers in carrying out effective operations and improving implementation of EESC practices in the leather industry.

© 2019 Elsevier Inc. Environmental sustainability is not being practiced in the supply chains of many industries. Previous studies on environmental sustainability have not outlined clear strategies to achieve sustainability across supply chains, particularly in the context of emerging economies, and have been of limited relevance in settings beyond the geographical region of their focus. To address these gaps, we have proposed a best worst method (BWM) as a framework to assess the environmental criteria for sustainability in select industries in Bangladesh. Different industrial activities or criteria affecting the environment in various ways were assessed and weighted using the BWM. To ensure the efficiency and accuracy of this framework, we sought the opinions of 34 experts to specify the most suitable indicators from our initial literature review. Findings from this study revealed that “waste management” was the most important indicator for establishing environmental sustainability in industries in Bangladesh, which was substantiated by a sensitivity analysis. This research will assist industry managers and entrepreneurs to work toward environmental sustainability across supply chains.

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd Recently, big data (BD) has attracted researchers and practitioners due to its potential usefulness in decision-making processes. Big data analytics (BDA) is becoming increasingly popular among manufacturing companies as it helps gain insights and make decisions based on BD. However, there many barriers to the adoption of BDA in manufacturing supply chains. It is therefore necessary for manufacturing companies to identify and examine the nature of each barrier. Previous studies have mostly built conceptual frameworks for BDA in a given situation and have ignored examining the nature of the barriers to BDA. Due to the significance of both BD and BDA, this research aims to identify and examine the critical barriers to the adoption of BDA in manufacturing supply chains in the context of Bangladesh. This research explores the existing body of knowledge by examining these barriers using a Delphi-based analytic hierarchy process (AHP). Data were obtained from five Bangladeshi manufacturing companies. The findings of this research are as follows: (i) data-related barriers are most important, (ii) technology-related barriers are second, and (iii) the five most important components of these barriers are (a) lack of infrastructure, (b) complexity of data integration, (c) data privacy, (d) lack of availability of BDA tools and (e) high cost of investment. The findings can assist industrial managers to understand the actual nature of the barriers and potential benefits of using BDA and to make policy regarding BDA adoption in manufacturing supply chains. A sensitivity analysis was carried out to justify the robustness of the barrier rankings.

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd The leather industry of Bangladesh is facing considerable amounts of pressure to adopt sustainable supply chain management (SSCM). While there are some studies that have examined barriers to SSCM practices in developed and developing countries in various domains, these are not necessarily applicable to the Bangladeshi leather industry. To bridge this gap, it is crucial to identify most influential barriers to SSCM practices, particularly in the context of developing economies. Therefore, this study identifies such barriers and examines the causal relationships between them with an aim to facilitate the effective implementation of SSCM in the Bangladeshi leather processing industry. Thirty-five barriers to SSCM implementation were identified through a detailed literature review and a survey of leather processing industry experts. Among them, the most common 20 barriers were selected with the help of industry experts. Then, a blended, grey-based Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) approach was utilized to examine their interrelationships. The results demonstrate that nine barriers could be classified as “causal” and eleven as “influenced”. ‘Lack of awareness of local customers in green products’ and ‘lack of commitment from top management’ took high priority in the causal group. ‘Lack of reverse logistics practices’ and ‘Outdated machineries’ were the most influenced barriers. This research uses a leather processing company as a case study for demonstrating the proposed model. The findings aim to support the leather processing industry in a structural way, so that industrial managers can identify the most influential barriers and work to eliminate them. This study may be useful to stakeholders to achieve sustainable development.

© 2017 Elsevier Ltd Sustainable manufacturing practices and the circular economy have recently received significant attention in academia and within industries to improve supply chain practices. Manufacturing industries have started adopting sustainable manufacturing practices and a circular economy in their supply chain to mitigate environmental concerns, as sustainable manufacturing practices and a circular economy result in the reduction of waste generation and energy and material usage. The leather industry, in spite of it contributing remarkably to a country's economic growth and stability, does not bear a good image because of its role in polluting the environment. Therefore, the leather industries of Bangladesh are trying to implement sustainable manufacturing practices as a part of undertaking green supply chain initiatives to remedy their image with the buyer and to comply with government rules and regulations. The main contribution of this study is to assess, prioritize and rank the drivers of sustainable manufacturing practices in the leather industries of Bangladesh. We have used graph theory and a matrix approach to examine the drivers. The results show that knowledge of the circular economy is paramount to implementing sustainable manufacturing practices in the leather industry of Bangladesh. This study will assist managers of leather companies to formulate strategies for the optimum utilization of available resources, as well as for the reduction of waste in the context of the circular economy.