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AbstractThe strategic decision of selecting an optimal flexible manufacturing system (FMS) configuration is a complicated question which involves evaluating trade‐offs between a number of different, potentially conflicting criteria such as annual production volume, flexibility, production and investment costs and average throughput of the system. Recently, several structured multicriteria approaches have been proposed to aid management in the FMS selection process. While acknowledging the non‐linear nature of a number of the relationships in the model, notably between batch size and the number of batches produced of each part, these studies used linear simplifications to illustrate the decision dynamics of the problem. These linear models were shown to offer useful analytical tools in the FMS pre‐design process. Owing to the non‐linearities of the true relationships, however, the trade‐offs between the criteria could not fully be explored within the linear framework.This paper builds on the two‐phase decision support framework proposed by Stam and Kuula (1991) and uses a modified non‐linear multi‐criteria formulation to solve the problem. The software used in the illustration can easily be implemented, is user‐interactive and menu‐driven. The methodology is applied to real data from a Finnish metal product company and the results are compared with those obtained in previous studies.

PurposeThe purpose of this article is to discuss the role of operations management in society. The article detects trends, raises critical questions to operations management research and articulates a research agenda to increase the value of such research in addressing societal problems.Design/methodology/approachThis paper evaluates the papers presented at the EurOMA 2019 conference to detect trends and discuss the contributions of operations management research to society. It further goes to identify gaps in the research agenda.FindingsThe article finds several important streams of research in operations management: sustainable operations and supply chains, health care and humanitarian operations, innovation, digitalisation and 4.0, risk and resilience. It highlights new trends such as circular economy research and problematises when to stop implementing innovation and how to address and report their potential failure. Importantly, it shows how it is not just a question of offshoring vs reshoring but of constant change in manufacturing that operations management addresses.Originality/valueThe article highlights not just novel research areas but also gaps in the research agenda where operations management seeks to add value to society.

Business students of today are future executives in companies and governments. Therefore, their education for sustainability needs to be carefully considered. However, very little is known about business students in terms of their value priorities and attitudes towards sustainable development. Value priorities guide attitudes, but they are more abstract and long-lasting. Teachers who understand their students' value priorities and attitudes could develop and customize their teaching accordingly. Our goal in this study is to measure business students' value priorities and their attitudes towards sustainability. We compare the results obtained from students in a university business school with a comparable nationwide sample. Our results show that there are differences in almost all values among business students and the comparable sample, in particular in universalism and power. Interestingly, attitudes to sustainable development are equally or even more favorable among business students. As a theoretical contribution in the field of education for sustainability we combined Sterling's three levels of sustainability education into our considerations and suggest that the evolvement of students' values and sustainability attitudes measured regularly should be reflected against them or a corresponding categorization. ; Peer reviewed

Increasingly complex supply chains and heightened disruption risks are bringing risk management to the forefront of managerial and research efforts. We examine how country disruption risks are related to the adoption of combined risk management and external supply chain integration practices, and how these combinations in turn are related to operational performance. We frame our propositions using information processing theory and complementarity theory. We combine primary data from the 6th International Manufacturing Strategy Survey on 21 countries, and secondary data on country level disruption risks to study these links. Our results indicate that companies in riskier countries, characterized by high operational contingencies risk, natural hazard and terrorism and political instability, use combined arcs of external supply chain integration and risk management practices. Such a combined approach is also related to higher operational performance. The findings suggest to managers that companies adopting risk management practices in combination with external integration achieve best operational results. We extend the arcs of integration concept to include also risk management practices thus showing that holistic risk management approaches along supply chains are positively related to operational performance. The combination of primary and secondary data, as well as the focus on exogenous risks distinguishes our approach from previous, mostly conceptual, studies on risks.

PurposeConsumer values increasingly favor sustainable development in products and services, thereby fostering the need to develop new operational and managerial practices that support sustainability in supply chain management. The purpose of this study is to identify relevant product features related to sustainable development in this context, and use the choice of mobile phone as an example in measuring their importance.Design/methodology/approachThe study used two different methods (qualitative and quantitative) in two phases. First it organized focus‐group discussions in order to identify the features of sustainability that affect the choice of a mobile phone. The most significant features served as a starting point for the choice of attributes to be included in the final step, choice‐based conjoint analysis (CBC), which assesses respondents' value functions by means of latent class clustering. Between the two major phases it carried out two additional pre‐tests in order to reduce the number of attributes.FindingsThe results provide fundamental information concerning the relative importance of sustainability features in the selection of a mobile phone. The study identified four different clusters of purchasers: updaters, budgeters, environmentalists, and long‐life users. According to the findings, some consumers are willing to pay a premium for sustainability features. The authors discuss the potential implications of the results in the context of supply chain design.Originality/valueThe literature on supply chain management tends to see the consumers as a "black box". This paper reports the first results of opening this box by linking the supply chain perspective to consumer choice behavior.

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to study the relationships between the capabilities and performance characteristics of logistic service providers (LSPs) in the Caribbean region. The study considers the organization's process improvement (PI) performance as it relates to their innovation capabilities, their efforts into information sharing and collaboration with customers, their planning for contingencies and considering the uncertainty of their customer's technology.


Design/methodology/approach
A survey was applied to 88 LSP firms with operations in the Caribbean region. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the hypothesized relationships.


Findings
The results indicate that the PI performance of LSPs is significantly related to their innovation capabilities, and that these capabilities are positively related to collaboration and exchange of relevant information. Furthermore, they indicate that information sharing between LSPs and their customers significantly improves the quality of contingency planning. However, the study showed that innovation capabilities are not directly related to the LSPs' focus on contingency planning and that customers' technology uncertainty does not have a significant effect on the LSPs' innovation capabilities.


Research limitations/implications
The sample of LSP firms is limited to three countries of the Caribbean region. Further examination of the model in additional countries and across multiple industrial contexts would increase the validity of the findings and expand to settings such as manufacturing and services.


Originality/value
This study measures operational performance of LSPs from a different perspective: its PI performance, and considers how multiple factors affect this performance.