This paper presents the relationship between supply chain collaboration and trust, two important concepts in supply chain management. The transaction costs and stakeholder theories were used as frameworks in analyzing supply chain collaboration and trust. These constructs were developed through literature review and in consultation with industry experts. Factor analysis was conducted to identify the underlying dimensions of these constructs while correlation analysis was done to determine their association. A total of 57 companies from Philippine manufacturing and service sectors participated in the study. From the factor analyses, two important dimensions of supply chain collaboration emerged: (1) joint planning and decision making and (2) information sharing. The trust construct, on the other hand, revealed two important perspectives: (1) relational perspective (the long-term relationship of the supply chain partners and their familiarity with their respective organizations) and (2) risk perspective (the propensity and willingness to take risk under conditions of uncertainty). Correlation analyses reveal that information sharing, a measure of supply chain collaboration, is significantly correlated with the relational perspective of trust. The study contributes to the supply chain management (SCM) literature by providing comprehensive and pragmatic definitions of supply chain collaboration and trust. It also provides practitioners with a listing of SCM strategies that they can employ to achieve better collaboration.

Rapid development and innovation in science and technology have resulted in shorter product life-cycle, especially in technology-based commodities like mobile phones and computers. Mounting wastes from such products have received increasing attentions from government, society, as well as industries for sustainability concerns. Numerous studies on remanufacturing have been found on durable goods, but only a few focusing on short life-cycle products. Even though several studies implied that successful remanufacturing requires products to have long useful life and stable technology, there are other findings that support remanufacturing of short life-cycle products. It is our intention to investigate remanufacturing of short life-cycle product. A literature review is conducted to study the pros and cons, life-cycle implication, and remanufacturing aspects of short life-cycle products. Then we propose a framework that can be used to decide and plan the remanufacturing system. Furthermore, we conduct a survey to obtain descriptive analysis about the market potential for remanufactured short life-cycle products. The factors investigated are existence of demand, customer’s willingness to pay (WTP), and existence of green segment. The survey results show that low-end customers are the potential market segment for short life-cycle remanufactured product, because they have the highest preference toward remanufacturing and 95% of them chose remanufactured product when the price is less than 40% of new product. It is also shown that green segment exists since 42%, 65%, and 47% of customers from high-end, low-end, and student sub-group respectively consider buying remanufactured products over new ones driven by their concern for the environment.

Over the last decade, supply chain management (SCM) has been studied extensively, and its importance to practitioners and academics has received a high level of recognition. However, despite major investments in SCM and supply chain integration (SCI), recent surveys indicate that businesses are struggling to achieve competitive advantage due to SCI silos. This urges us to investigate the emerging concept of SCM integration (SCMI) that is aimed to integrate various traditional supply chains (SC) across intra and inter-organisational processes in practice. While there is enormous information on SCM, little is known about the supply chain management integration (SCMI) problems and possible solutions that could be identified through open discussions and brainstorming among management executives of various organisations. This paper presents the results of an exploratory study of SCMI practices via an on-line forum conducted with supply chain personnel in New Zealand. This study identified the organisations’ SCM integration problems and possible solutions. The analysis reveals the major problems that are critical to be addressed and the recommended solutions, including: SCMI requires a holistic approach; two-way communication; written service level agreements; relationship management; use of new technologies and integrated software systems; strategic alliances and trust; integrated processes; effective partnership; and predictive cost/benefit analysis of SCM. The insights on the critical problems and solutions provide valuable information on business risks and uncertainty as well as recommendations to effectively employ SCM analytics for sustainability in the global market environment. We developed a SCM analytics framework for SCM integration.

This paper deals with modelling of deteriorating used products inventory in a two level reverse supply chain. A time dependent optimisation model is developed for multi-retailer single manufacturer reverse supply chain involving collection and disposal of used products from customers. Collection rate or supply is assumed to exponential with time and time dependent deterioration of items is considered. Two cases are presented with one on decentralised policy optimizing retailers and manufacturer’s cost separately and another on centralised policy optimizing system wide cost. The optimal collection and disposal cycle times are derived and discussed with numerical example. The model has potential to be used in industries where existing distribution system is used for end-of life products collection and disposal.