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Supply Chain Sustainability Risk in Changing Demography and Technology

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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Management".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 October 2022) | Viewed by 20333

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Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Marija Bogataj

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Guest Editor

CERRISK, Institute INRISK, 8210 Trebnje, Slovenia
Interests: transportation; safety; insurance; acturarial science; logistics; decisions science
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Prof. Dr. Josefa Mula

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Research Centre on Production Management and Engineering (CIGIP), Universitat Politècnica de València, c/Alarcón, 1, 03801 Alcoy, Alicante, Spain
Interests: production management and engineering; supply chain management; decision making; optimization; simulation

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Industry 4.0, which was named ten years ago to represent a new industrial revolution, is continuing the trends in automation and robotics where the Internet of Things, cyberphysical systems, and data analytics also enable us to continue this development to Industry 5.0. This term refers to technology and people working alongside robots, collaborating with collaborative robots, using smart skeletons and other smart tools and machines. In the aging European society, the number of older people will double in the next 20 years, and this is where Industry 4.0 comes in, as it is about aging workers, their workplace, and about robots helping humans to work better and faster using advanced technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), cyberphysical systems (CPS) and supported by big data. Industry 5.0 brings a personal human touch to the efficiency of Industry 4.0, but its impact on the wellbeing of workers and buyers of products and services has not clearly been evaluated yet. The quality of products and services increases, and planned work schedules in supply chains are becoming more precise and feasible. However, with the rapid development of technologies and, thus, the rapid technical obsolescence of products and tools and rapid aging of workers, supply chains are also becoming more vulnerable. Not only that, with the rapidly aging population, the demand for goods, products, and services is also quickly changing.

Therefore, this Special Issue seeks to address these two changes and their interaction: the interaction between the rapid development of technologies and the rapid aging of the population. We know that despite the many new forms of interaction between humans and technologies emerging, it is still not fully clear to managers and scientists how the new kind of production and logistics might operate optimally and how they could influence the wellbeing of Europeans. Additionally, proper infrastructure, which should be adopted to these new realities, is not often the subject of considerations. In this Special Issue, we shall try to answer some of these pertinent questions.

Topics may include but are not limited to:

Changes in the production and supply chain design due to Industry 4.0;
Policies toward Industry 5.0;
Innovative Industry 5.0 concepts and approaches;
The impact of fast technological development on production and SC exposure to risk;
Aging of human resources, sustainability of industrial and social systems, and policies;
Adapting production and services to the aging of buyers;
Integrating assistive and collaborative technologies in decision support modeling;
Optimization and simulation approaches for designing and coordinating operations in global supply chains;
Investments that are improving processes should also be the subject of industrial engineers.

Prof. Dr. Marija Bogataj
Prof. Dr. Josefa Mula
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

supply chain resilience
production
services
ageing studies
human resources
facility planning
Industry 4.0
Industry 5.0

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

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27 pages, 4202 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Role of Housing in Sustainable European Long-Term Care Systems

by Valerija Rogelj, David Bogataj, Marija Bogataj, Francisco Campuzano-Bolarín and Eneja Drobež

Sustainability 2023, 15(4), 3075; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15043075 - 8 Feb 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1510

Abstract

There is evidence of benefits from the national health insurance systems in the EU Member States in the case of better-adjustment of housing units to the functional capacities of older adults. Still, the systematic approach to evaluating the social value (SV) of investments in specialised housing and other types of built environment is not yet developed. This paper aims to show how these benefits can be quantified if we evaluate the actuarial present value (APV) of reducing public expenditures in Long-term care (LTC), including Health care (HC) in these systems, after the development of specialised housing units which can accommodate the declined functional capacities of seniors. The paper presents steps to measure the SV as the impact of investments in the properly built age-friendly public housing stock, creating positive externalities for HC expenditures and LTC systems achieved for the Health Insurance Institute of Slovenia, thereby decreasing expenditures for this body. We developed a new model to forecast the SV of investments in specialised social housing as savings for national health and care systems, particularly the Central-European health and care insurance systems. We were forecasting the different demands for different specialised housing as part of the social infrastructure for insured older adults, which mitigates public expenditure on HC and LTC services. The multistate transitions are described based on projections and probability-weighted cashflows (actuarial present value, APV) are calculated. Unfortunately, there are no documents by the European Commission yet, although the Commission stresses the need to develop such a model. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Supply Chain Sustainability Risk in Changing Demography and Technology)

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23 pages, 3276 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Long-Term Care Sustainable Networks in ADRION Region

by David Bogataj, Marija Bogataj and Samo Drobne

Sustainability 2022, 14(18), 11154; https://doi.org/10.3390/su141811154 - 6 Sep 2022

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1384

Abstract

The Long-Term Care (LTC) industry mainly comprises networks managed by providers of services other than informal caregivers and government agencies. Among the providers are the local providers of community-based services. The segment still consists of mostly small businesses. As such, it needs many improvements in logistics, information and communication technology (ICT) support, and educational programs, specifically in the ADRION region, where the rural areas require a high percentage of travel time in a working day for service providers. The demand for LTC services must be known early enough for providers to adapt to the growth of these demands, and they also need methods to support decisions on how to optimize the number of care workers to be able to plan the necessary human resources in the long term. The results are based on the authors’ previous studies of sustainable hierarchical spatial systems. The paper presents the achievements of these research activities and policies, governance and financing in the hierarchically organized services and networks of educational programs for human resources and ICT innovations in LTC, which are currently in short supply. Projections of capacities from facilities are necessary. Logistic networks to human resources are based on geo-gerontological projections, such as the multistate transition model, which is a new achievement in this area, and the adequate norms and standards of these services. The optimal number of human resources is based on the combination of the Patterson-Albracht algorithm and Multiple Travelling Salesman Problem (mTSP), as a new Home Health Care Routing and Scheduling Problem (HHCRSP), which helps in ensuring the inclusion of travel time in the concept of norms and standards, to achieve a work balance and care schedule according to the wishes of clients. The proposed approach might help professionals adapt in advance to the coming changes caused by the growing number of seniors and rapid changes in technology, and might also help in considerations as to whether the priorities of clients should be included in the basic national insurance programs or additionally charged as a higher standard of home care services. The aim is to make care and supply networks as sustainable as possible. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Supply Chain Sustainability Risk in Changing Demography and Technology)

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25 pages, 2507 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Machine Learning-Based Analysis of a Wind Turbine Manufacturing Operation: A Case Study

by Antonio Lorenzo-Espejo, Alejandro Escudero-Santana, María-Luisa Muñoz-Díaz and Alicia Robles-Velasco

Sustainability 2022, 14(13), 7779; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14137779 - 26 Jun 2022

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1603

Abstract

This study analyzes the lead time of the bending operation in the wind turbine tower manufacturing process. Since the operation involves a significant amount of employee interaction and the parts processed are heavy and voluminous, there is considerable variability in the recorded lead times. Therefore, a machine learning regression analysis has been applied to the bending process. Two machine learning algorithms have been used: a multivariate Linear Regression and the M5P method. The goal of the analysis is to gain a better understanding of the effect of several factors (technical, organizational, and experience-related) on the bending process times, and to attempt to predict these operation times as a way to increase the planning and controlling capacity of the plant. The inclusion of the experience-related variables serves as a basis for analyzing the impact of age and experience on the time-wise efficiency of workers. The proposed approach has been applied to the case of a Spanish wind turbine tower manufacturer, using data from the operation of its plant gathered between 2018 and 2021. The results show that the trained models have a moderate predictive power. Additionally, as shown by the output of the regression analysis, there are variables that would presumably have a significant impact on lead times that have been found to be non-factors, as well as some variables that generate an unexpected degree of variability. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Supply Chain Sustainability Risk in Changing Demography and Technology)

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19 pages, 2283 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Sustainable Inventory Management in Supply Chains: Trends and Further Research

by Pablo Becerra, Josefa Mula and Raquel Sanchis

Sustainability 2022, 14(5), 2613; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14052613 - 24 Feb 2022

Cited by 21 | Viewed by 12708

Abstract

This article presents an overview of the models applied to sustainable inventory management in supply chains and a roadmap for new research. It aims to address the lack of understanding of how sustainability is being incorporated into quantitative inventory management models in the supply chain context. The study is based on a classification of the reviewed literature according to the following criteria: supply chain structure, environmental approach, problem type, modeling, and solution approach. As a result, 36 articles were analyzed and classified. The main findings show that studies that incorporate social sustainability into inventory management along supply chains are lacking, while environmental studies are a growing research area. Uncertainty issues also need to be incorporated into sustainable inventory management models. Another important result of this study is the definition of a roadmap with trends and future research guidelines. The identified future research guidelines include incorporating decisions that can help to improve economic, environmental, and social sustainability. Thus, future studies should focus on both following quantitative models that incorporate inventory decisions integrally with transportation and location decisions, and more complex models, and employing new algorithms and heuristics to solve them. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Supply Chain Sustainability Risk in Changing Demography and Technology)

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Other

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16 pages, 1004 KiB

Open AccessSystematic Review

Urban Resilience and Sustainability in the Perspective of Global Consequences of COVID-19 Pandemic and War in Ukraine: A Systematic Review

by Bojan Grum and Darja Kobal Grum

Sustainability 2023, 15(2), 1459; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15021459 - 12 Jan 2023

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2440

Abstract

The study of urban resilience (UR) in the context of sustainable development (SD) is a relatively new chapter, so we give it our full attention in this article. We seek to link UR and SD by understanding the complexity of current anthropogenic hazards—more precisely, global consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and war in Ukraine. In our study, we go a step further and create a hypothetical model based on hazards that links the key factors of UR and SD. We set the following two objectives: whether and how research incorporates newly perceived conceptual hazards (pandemic, war) and whether all groups of factors are explored equally and simultaneously. As these two hazards have only recently emerged and research on the subject is still well underway, we have opted for a systematic review method. We focused on articles from 2019 to 2022. The study showed that newly perceived conceptual tensions (pandemic, war) related to UR and SD have not been adequately explored. The study confirmed the lack of existing research in the broader context of understanding resilience of the built environment, and thus the lack of studies that provide a foundation and perspective for SD of the built environment. Therefore, we believe that further research should specifically focus on the plurality of approaches to understand the complex interactions, their impacts, and feedbacks in the context of multidimensional urbanization to understand UR as a perspective for SD. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Supply Chain Sustainability Risk in Changing Demography and Technology)

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