Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)-based Innovations for Sustainable Production and Service Operations Management
摘要截稿:
全文截稿: 2020-05-30
影响因子: 7.246
期刊难度:
CCF分类: 无
中科院JCR分区:
• 大类 : 环境科学与生态学 - 1区
• 小类 : 工程:环境 - 1区
• 小类 : 环境科学 - 1区
• 小类 : 绿色可持续发展技术 - 1区
Overview
Rapid socio-economic development and technological advancements coupled with the increasing consumer pursuit of new product designs and functions, have ever-accelerated product upgrades and replacements (Han et al., 2018). This, therefore, led to the over-consumption of products and thus generated substantial amount of wastes. On the other hand, resource-driven economic development has caused serious environmental pollutions and climate change, which has received increasing attentions from the governments, firms and residents (Cao et al., 2017). Under these circumstances, sustainable product production and related service operations management has become a more and more important issue for decision makers. The challenges to achieve sustainable development are complicated and require various innovations in production and service operations, including product design, production, supply chain, logistics, remanufacturing as well as post-sales services such as returns and trade-ins. Therefore, it is necessary to break away from traditional production and service operations modes to create more sustainable solutions.
It is well known that technical innovations are key to achieving sustainable development by creating incentives for greater efficiencies in the use of natural resources, reducing energy consumptions and wastes, allocating resources to the highest value-generating production and service processes, and unlocking opportunities for value creation (Song and Wang, 2018). In particular, rapid developments and applications of modern information and communication technologies (ICT) have created more and more opportunities for production and service operations mode innovations, such as Internet based networked manufacturing, service-oriented manufacturing, platform-based operations, and sharing economy. These innovations can help accelerate the transformations of production and service operations models, and thus reduce the consumptions of energy and natural resources, optimize the material flows, and improve resource efficiency. Consequently, such transformations can also help reduce wastes and carbon emissions. For example, Moyer and Hughes (2012) found that ICT effectively contributes to carbon emissions reduction. Gelenbe and Caseau (2015) further showed that ICT can reduce carbon emissions in many sectors, including, transportation, logistics, smart building, virtual work, and learning. These evidences suggest that ICT has the potential to support a more sustainable environment while offering economic benefits (Laplante and Murugesan, 2011).
In recent years, in addition to Internet technologies, various new ICT-based innovations (e.g., next generation network, Internet of Things, cloud computing platform, Industry 4.0 and block chain) have been widely applied in sustainable production and service operations management (SPSOM). Some prior studies have investigated ICTs for environmental sustainability at the micro- or macro-level, such as the interactions between ICT and sustainability (Gouvea et al., 2018), the relationships between Block-chain technology and sustainable supply chain management (Saberi et al., 2019), the impact of ICT on China’s energy intensity (Zhou et al., 2018), shaping urban low carbon development pathways via ICT (Jacob, 2018), expanding operations management to the smart-city scope (Qi and Shen 2019), exploring how the use of big data can help enterprises make sustainable decisions (Corbett, 2018), and supplier selection and lot-sizing in the contexts of carbon emission regulations and Big Data (Lamba et al., 2019). Nevertheless, there are many challenging issues regarding how ICTs help enhance the performance of production and service operations management with regard to energy saving and emission and waste reductions should be addressed in more depth. For example, the application of block-chain technology can permanently store the records of all transactions, which could be available to all supply chain members in a trustworthy manner. This creates many opportunities for sustainable supply chain optimizations for energy and resources saving, materials minimization, waste reduction, as well as used product and by-product recycling and reuse.
Motivated by the importance ofICT-based innovationsin production and service operations, we propose this Special Volume (SV) with an aim to feature research on how ICT-based innovations can effectively improve sustainable production and service operations management performance. To achieve such objective, several thematic themes should be addressed. The themes cover products and related services, as well as their production, operations, supply chains, and related information management. Contributions to this SV should increase the understanding of the effects of specific or various ICT-based innovations on sustainable production and service operations and/or provide corresponding solutions for sustainable development. Authors should address the core objectives of the Journal of Cleaner Production.
Potential themes for this SV may include, but are not limited to, the following issues.
Theme 1: Consumer behaviors towards Sustainable Production and Service Operations
In order to realize sustainable production and service operations based on ICT innovations, consumer behaviors become particularly important for the consumer facing companies such as manufacturers and retailers, because consumers’ purchase behaviors or choices are key factors determining their success of sustainable production and service operations management. Central issues are related to consumers’ specific requirements or decision making regarding eco-friendly products, including energy-saving products, low-carbon products, remanufactured products, and second-hand products, as well as associated services such as product distribution, returns, recycling, and trade-ins. Consumers’ choices of distribution or recycling channels, such as online channel, physical channel, or even multichannel, will also affect energy and resource consumptions and waste reduction. Based on consumer behaviors, marketing research should address the use of ICT-innovations by incorporating the overall marketing mix. We invite all submissions from consumer research to the overall marketing mix, including experimental and empirical studies, as long as they can help understand and promote sustainable consumer behaviors based on ICT-innovations and related ICT-enabled data (e.g., online reviews and transaction records).
Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
• Consumer attitudes, willingness to pay and choices for eco-friendly products or related post-sales services such as returns or trade-ins based on ICT-innovations.
• Consumer attitudes and choices for distribution or recycling channels using ICT-enabled data.
• Market segments for or positions of ICT-based eco-friendly products or related services (e.g., sharing bike, smart electric vehicles, smart energy-saving appliances, online post-sale service).
• Market strategies for promoting ICT-based eco-friendly products or related services.
• Consumers purchasing behaviors and marketing strategies on innovative operations platforms (e.g., sharing economy platform, e-commerce platform) based.
Theme 2: Sustainable Production and Service Performance Analysis and Related Policy
Since ICT-based innovations can help optimize the operations modes of productions and service, the corresponding operational performance will be significantly affected. Therefore, production and service related energy and natural resource consumption, pollutant discharge, as well as waste gas emissions will also be influenced. At the same time, policy makers will seriously consider these effects and enact various policies to accelerate the applications of ICT-based innovations in order to reduce energy and natural resource consumption, save materials, and reduce waste discharge. Generally, different ICT-based innovations and policies may have different effects on the sustainable production and service efficiency. Under these circumstances, what effect of a specific ICT-based innovation or policy is the most efficient for the sustainable production and service? How to evaluate and improve such efficiency?
To answer the above-mentioned questions, the following topics of interest (including related ones that are not listed here) are welcomed:
• The impacts of ICT-based innovations on sustainable production and service performance.
• The effects of related ICT-based innovation policies on sustainable production and service performance.
• Evaluation, analysis and improvement methods of ICT-based innovations related sustainable production and service performance.
• Determinants of ICT-based innovations related sustainable production and service performance.
Theme 3: ICTs and Related Information Systems for Sustainable Production and Service Operations
ICTs and related information systems in the value-generating networks for sustainable production and service can help support the business processes and contribute to overcoming the challenges such as the saving of energy and natural resource consumption, reduction of waste and emissions, optimization of material flows, and improvement of resource efficiency. Industrial practitioners and scholars have launched much efforts in working on how ICTs and related information systems can contribute to meet the requirements described above. In particular, related information systems such as inter-organizational information systems can help obtain the data of material flows, energy and resource consumption, and related transactions among different companies and industries, which can contribute to identify important information to improve the sustainable production and service performance.
Topics of interest within this theme include but are not limited to:
• ICT-based tracking systems and related management techniques for sustainable production and service operations.
• ICT-based innovations aided production planning and control as well as material flows optimization.
• Inter-organizational or inter-industrial information systems and related management techniques for sustainable production and service operations.
• Determinants of ICTs and related information systems’ value-generation for sustainable production and service operations.
• The impact of ICT-based information systems on sustainable production and service performance.
Theme 4: Sustainable Supply Chain Management
In recent years, firms are increasingly focusing on the environmental and resource consequences of their production processes, products, and services due to growing environmental pressures (Kleindorfer et al., 2009). Supply chains have played a key role in realize sustainable production and service operations. A report shows that supply chains may account for over 75% of a company’s carbon footprint (Huang et al., 2009). Therefore, it is urgent for firms to optimize their entire supply chains, from product design, raw materials selection, manufacturing process and product delivery to customer services providing and product at the end of their lifetime, including the recycling and remanufacturing of products. To effectively fulfill sustainable development requirements, sustainable supply chain management must integrate optimization strategies and advanced technologies. ICT-based innovations can create many opportunities to satisfy such requirements regarding social, economic, and environmental concerns. To uncover such findings, authors are invited to submit papers about ICT-based innovations for supply chain management considering the social, economic and environmental sustainable development.
Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
• Innovative strategies, methodologies, and operations models for sustainable supply chain configuration, implementation, and monitoring based on ICT-based innovations.
• New models and methods for logistics and sustainable supply chain management by using ICT-based innovations.
• Reverse or closed-loop supply chain management (e.g. recycling, trade-in, buyback and remanufacturing) in the context of ICT-based innovations and environmental sustainability.
• Sustainable supply chain finance management in the context of ICT-based innovations.
• Innovative strategies and methodologies based on “BIG DATA” analysis for product lifecycle and sustainable supply chain management.
Theme 5: Sustainable Service Operations Management
With the rapid development and applications of technological innovations, service industries, including medical- and aged care, education, transportation, sports and entertainment, public facilities and tourism, are booming, and have become a major driver of economic growth in recent years. Consumers are increasingly emphasizing the service qualities and their impacts on environmental sustainability (Duarte et al., 2009; Chu et al., 2012; Namin, 2017). In such case, it is important for service firms to take sustainable service operations into account by optimizing their operations management. As ICT-based innovations can provide opportunities to change the service product distribution and operations, service related waste reduction and materials saving would be affected. Within this context, we invite papers focusing on the applications ICT-based innovations and related data for service operations management.
• The impacts of ICT-based innovations on sustainable operations management in the service industry.
• Sustainable service operations management based on ICT-based innovations.
• Humanitarian operations in the service industry within the context of ICT-based innovations.
• Innovative strategies and methodologies based on “BIG DATA” analysis for service product and operations management.