The impact of adopting customization policy and sustainability for improving consumer service in a dual-channel retailing

In recent decades sustainability and dual-route retailing have been adopted by many big industries. Companies are now bound to maintain such strategies that fulfill the sustainable goals developed by the United Nations. Industries face a huge penalty if carbon emissions exceed a certain boundary. Moreover, factories should maintain sufficient flow in retail chains and product quality. This paper demonstrates 3-pillar sustainability in dual channel retailing, empowering firms to integrate the financial-economic pillar with the non-financial (environmental, social, and ethical) pillar. The core product is made available through the traditional channel and customized products are through online channels. The model is enabling the customers with customization provisions where they can influence the products. Thus, as a novel approach, the article incorporates a presumed threshold limit on the product's (standard and customized) selling price difference. Due to customization, a new product is developed which needs extensive quality checks. The study introduces an investment in checking the quality of the customized product which reduces the probability of customization defects exponentially. Additionally, current research adapts the carbon emission cost, penalties charged to a firm for overshooting the limit, and social costs in a smart supply chain. It also exemplifies that production is directly proportional to financial investments in meeting sustainability objectives. The numerical analysis reflects that as production increases, penalty costs decrease at a significant rate but after reaching optimal production penalty cost again starts to increase. It is observed that the downfall of penalty is 20% more for the single-channel than dual. Adaptation of the customization policy makes the retailing strategy more cost-effective. The model exemplifies that it is more economical to adopt dual-channel retailing compared to single-channel as there is approximately a 14.0625% reduction in total cost in dual-channel retailing. Moreover, an 80% improved quality is observed with a financial investment, which improves consumer satisfaction.     

Is online-to-offline customer care support essential for consumer service?

Customer satisfaction is the main pillar for convenient and profitable retailing. The retail sector continuously tried to develop new strategies to improve consumer satisfaction. It is impossible to provide each service directly to the consumer by the retailer. In this direction, the retailer establishes customer care to provide the best service to consumers. Consumer care can provide promotional or prevention services, increasing the consumer's satisfaction level. This study is developed to show the impact of retailers' customer care service for an offline-to-online retailing strategy. The demand is consumer support, advertisement, and selling price dependent. For maintaining consumer service, some free home delivery policies are offered, when consumers ordered more than a certain percentage of the amount. Finally, the total profit of this O2O retailing system is calculated by the classical optimization technique. Some special cases are discussed in the numerical section to prove the impact of customer care services. Numerical results prove that customer care support enhances the profit by 48.20%, whereas investment in the advertisement and home delivery strategy helps the retail industry to earn 44.80% and 16.74% more profit, respectively. Finally, from this study, it is clear that customer care activities are essential to increase the profit of the retailing sector.     

基于区块链技术的建筑材料供应链质量数据安全共享方法

传统方法在建筑材料供应链质量数据安全共享中应用效果不佳，不仅数据误码率比较高，而且数据共享时延比较长，无法达到预期的数据安全共享效果。为此提出基于区块链技术的建筑材料供应链质量数据安全共享方法。利用区块链技术对建筑材料供应链质量数据属性加密，建立建筑材料供应链质量数据安全共享链，整合建筑材料供应链质量数据加密、解密程序，通过对用户身份验证实现对质量数据安全共享，以此完成基于区块链技术的建筑材料供应链质量数据安全共享。实验证明，设计方法的数据误码率在1%以内，数据共享时延在1s以内，具有良好的数据安全共享效果。     

基于CiteSpace 的创新链研究综述

运用CiteSpace软件，以1995—2022年中国知网（CNKI）核心期刊和中文社会科学引文索引（CSSCI）期刊为数据源，从热点关键词、发文作者、发文机构以及突现词方面对创新链相关领域文献进行可视化分析。研究发现：有关创新链的研究角度大概可以分为产业、技术、区域、模式和价值链5个方面；从发文特征来看，发文量最多的是张杰，群体内相较于群体间合作较多；从研究机构分布来看，机构间的合作比较分散，且合作大多发生在一个国家或地区；从未来演进趋势来看，文献近期表现为国家政策主导。     

基于SD模型的装配式建筑供应链脆弱性研究

装配式建筑供应链的运作存在很多不确定性。为提高供应链管理效率，促进建筑业的发展，运用供应链运作参考(SCOR)模型对装配式建筑供应链脆弱因子进行识别，将装配式供应链系统划分为6个子系统；通过系统动力学（SD）模型对供应链脆弱性进行仿真。结果表明，装配制造流程是脆弱性最大的子系统，整个供应链的脆弱性随着建筑项目的推进而增大。     

“绿色矿业”的逻辑机理、实践探索与推进策略

发展“绿色矿业”是人类进入生态文明社会的必然选择，绿色发展理念指导下的“绿色矿业”发展具有主旨统一性和实践多样性、国家主导性和企业渐进性，需要完善的理论指导、体系构建和政策支持。“绿色矿业”的运行体系是由相关主体（绿色政府、绿色企业、绿色社会、绿色市场）及其功能共同形成的网络结构，各主体多元化、多维度的相互作用共同促进“绿色矿业”的有序发展，最终实现“矿业经济发展、生态环境良好、发展成果共享”的目标。我国发展“绿色矿业”的实践取得了显著成效，各地不同的发展模式既有目标的同一性，又有方式的差异性。当前，我国“绿色矿业”发展还存在标准体系不健全、政策法规不完善、发展格局不协调、协同监管不到位等问题，需要进一步发挥政府的主导作用、企业的主体作用、行业协会及社会的协调支撑作用，并构建和优化“绿色矿业链”和“绿色矿业区域板块网络”，推动“绿色矿业”健康有序发展。     

Medication,equipment, and supply costs for common interventions providing extended post-surgical analgesia following total knee arthroplasty in US hospitals

Aims: To estimate the cost to hospitals of materials (i.e. medications, equipment, and supplies) required to administer common interventions for post-surgical analgesia after total knee arthroplasty (TKA), including single-injection peripheral nerve block (sPNB), continuous peripheral nerve block (cPNB), periarticular infiltration of multi-drug cocktails, continuous epidural analgesia, intravenous patient-controlled analgesia (IV PCA), and local infiltration of bupivacaine liposome injectable suspension (BLIS).

Materials and methods: This analysis was conducted using a mixed methods approach combining published literature, publicly available data sources, and administrative data, to first identify the materials required to administer these interventions, and then estimate the cost to the hospital of those materials. Medication costs were estimated primarily using the Wholesale Acquisition Costs (WAC), the cost of reusable equipment was obtained from published sources, and costs for disposable supplies were obtained from the US Government Services Administration (GSA) database. Where uncertainty existed about the technique used when administering these interventions, costs were calculated for multiple scenarios reflecting different assumptions.

Results: The total cost of materials (i.e. medications, equipment, and supplies) required to provide post-surgical analgesia was $41.88 for sPNB with bupivacaine; $756.57 for cFNB with ropivacaine; $16.38 for periarticular infiltration with bupivacaine, morphine, methylprednisolone, and cefuroxime; $453.84 for continuous epidural analgesia with fentanyl and ropivacaine; $178.94 for IV PCA with morphine; and $319.00 for BLIS.

Limitations: This analysis did not consider the cost of healthcare providers required to administer these interventions. In addition, this analysis focused on the cost of materials and, therefore, did not consider aspects of relative efficacy or safety, or how the choice of intervention for post-surgical analgesia might impact outcomes such as length of stay, re-admissions, discharge status, adverse events, or total hospitalization costs.

Conclusions: This study provided an estimate of the costs to hospitals for materials required to administer commonly used interventions for post-surgical analgesia after TKA.     

Supply Chain Integrity: A Key to Sustainable Supply Chain Management

As stakeholders continue to increasingly hold firms accountable for environmental and social performance in their supply chains, the importance of understanding how firms can be more sustainable becomes more prescient. Based on the underlying premise of stakeholder theory that business and ethics decisions are intertwined, the current research introduces the concept of supply chain integrity (SCI) to explore how the interdependence of business and ethics decisions can lead to improvements in sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) practices. Exploratory analysis employing secondary data sources in an elastic net (EN) logistic regression provides support for the proposed construct, by providing preliminary empirical evidence that SCI, measured through two subdimensions of structural and moral SCI, can be linked to firm sustainability. The research contributes to the supply chain management literature by: (1) introducing the concept of SCI; (2) performing an exploratory econometric analysis to provide initial validity of the SCI construct; and (3) providing a research agenda to guide further research on the concept of SCI and its role in SSCM.     

Performance evaluation of China's high-tech innovation process: Analysis based on the innovation value chain

The Chinese high-tech industry has developed greatly since the beginning of China's “National High-tech R&D (863) Program” and “China Torch Program”. This paper introduces a conceptual model extended from the innovation value chain model to simultaneously estimate the R&D and commercialization efficiencies for the high-tech industries of 29 provincial-level regions in China. To match reality, a network DEA incorporating both shared inputs and additional intermediate inputs is constructed to open the “black box” view of decision making units used in single-stage DEA. This study is the first attempt to link the R&D and commercialization with a solid theoretical foundation and feasible mathematical methods. The empirical findings show that most of the 29 regions have low efficiency in the commercialization sub-process compared to the R&D sub-process, although there are regional differences in China's high-tech industry. Pearson correlation shows that the R&D sub-process is not closely correlated to the commercialization sub-process in terms of efficiency. Our analysis can provide information for the formulation of policies to achieve high innovation efficiency.     

Effects of scale economies and production seasonality on optimal hub locations: the case of regional fresh produce aggregation

Interest in supporting local and regional food systems is rising and food hubs have attracted considerable attention among Federal, State, and local policymakers. This study explores the problem of endogenous hub location in fresh produce value chains in the Northeastern United States. To overcome limitations in the literature, we incorporate the effects of economies of scale and production seasonality into our models. Three experimental models are designed to examine the effects of alternatively applying yearly, quarterly, and monthly data on model solutions. We explicitly assess how interactions of scale economies and seasonality influence the structure and spatial attributes of an optimal regional produce aggregation hub system. The three models generate marketed different solutions and in many respects they lead to different conclusions about developing local/regional supply chains. The monthly model allows for production seasonality and actual hub operation cycle frequency and thus leads to more efficient hub solution with rich policy implications.