Dr. Salim Y. Lakhal
EVENTUAL TOPICS FOR PAPER RESEARCH
Topic 1: Greening Supply Chain Management
The past few decades have seen businesses come under increasing scrutiny from governments,
communities, shareholders, non-governmental organisations and competitors on numerous natural
environmental issues. Researchers and practitioners have studied and implemented a number of
reactive and proactive measures to help organisations respond to these pressures. In fact, many
organisations have come to realise that organisational strategies and practices that incorporate
consideration of the natural environment can be a source of competitive advantage. Studies in this area
have focused on financial, operational, marketing, labour, technological and strategic topics that
organisations are pursuing. One of the key elements in the management of corporate environmental
practices is the linkage between and relationship to vendors and suppliers. As a result, the greening of
supply chain management is now becoming a major factor in the environmental management of
organisations.
The role of supply chain management and its relationship to environmental sources and programmes in
organisations is in its infancy from both a research and practice perspective. Examples of topics that
could be addressed include, but are not limited to:

Strategic Relationships between Supplier Management and Corporate Environmental
Programmes - How organisations integrate supplier management and environmental
programmes to determine long-term development of competitive advantage. Integration of
environmental and supply management (procurement, in-bound logistics, material and
inventory management) including other sustainability and social goals. Using strategic
environmental benchmarking data for research and evaluation of corporate financial and market
performance.

Green supply chain management as a tool to develop and manage organisational
relationship development across organisational boundaries.

The roles of environmental management systems (e.g. ISO 14001) within green supply
chain management.

Regulatory relationships to green supply chain management. What are the implications of
current and emerging regulatory policies on managing organisational supply chains, e.g.
the sharing of information for life cycle analysis and product stewardship of products,
materials and components. Investigation into the role of various governmental sources and
programmes to aid in green supply chain management.

Tools and models for green supply chain management including:
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Dr. Salim Y. Lakhal
- Vendor selection methodologies that incorporate environmental criteria.
- Vendor assessment and auditing approaches for current members.
- Using the Internet and other pervasive information technologies to aid in green supply
chain management.
- Tools to help optimize transportation and in-bound logistics from an economic and
environmental perspective.
- Environmental benchmarking with respect to the supply chain.

The role of green supply chain management within other operational management
programmes such as total quality environmental management, just-in-time management,
design for the environment, reverse logistics, and in-bound logistics.
Topic 2: E-commerce Enabled Manufacturing Operations
The management of materials, information, and other resources in organizations has expanded beyond
the role of typical operations managers. Along with the breakdown of internal and external
organizational boundaries has come the more open environment that may envelop organizational
boundaries. Practitioners and managers throughout the world have realized the enormity and
importance of these inter-organizational systems. Central to the development of these systems are
concepts, technologies, and tools for electronic commerce. These issues are of critical importance to
large, medium, and small-sized manufacturing firms.
E-commerce encourages and supports communication and cooperation among various functions,
vendors, and customers of organizations. Evolving e-commerce paradigms and practices are expected
to be central enablers to operations and manufacturing concepts such as concurrent engineering, design
for "x", supply chain management, computer integrated manufacturing, agile and virtual enterprising.
Thus, its importance is strategically vital to organizations that wish to remain competitive.
Practitioners have realized this importance by spending billions in e- commerce-enabled systems and
practices, and supporting processes. Yet, researchers have been slow to critically investigate their
roles, especially with respect to manufacturing organizations. Thus, you could help expand the field of
knowledge in this area by working on this area. Your effort will deal on:

Planning for E-commerce in Manufacturing and Operations settings
- Organizational strategy, justification, and project management
-Models and tools to integrate and incorporate e-commerce within strategic directions
-Applications of tools through case studies
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Dr. Salim Y. Lakhal
-Project management models (e-commerce linkages with internal systems)
-Enterprise Resource Planning Systems
-Web based enterprise integration and management

Design and Analysis of E-commerce based Manufacturing systems Performance of E-commerce
enabled Manufacturing and Operations systems
- Decision Tools and approaches for systems development
- Integration of e-commerce with existing and new operations business processes and policies
- Architectures and Systems Models integrating manufacturing and operations with ECommerce

Operations of E-commerce systems
- Capacity and logistics planning and management
- Materials management in an E-commerce setting
- Scheduling in an E-commerce setting
- Supply Chain management within an E-commerce setting
- Virtual facility layout

Monitoring and Control of E-commerce systems
- Performance evaluation tools and techniques for E-commerce based operations systems
- Decision support and expert systems and their development for the E-commerce enabled
manufacturing setting
- Cost Management and Product Pricing for E-commerce Enabled Systems
Topic 3: Responsiveness and performance.
Knowledge management initiatives are undertaken for the purpose of achieving better organizational
efficiency and effectiveness, with the goal being to achieve superior performance. In this respect,
spending resources on developing knowledge without a plan to use the knowledge to achieve success
is of limited value to organizations. Critical to our understanding of the value of knowledge is its link
to organizational responsiveness and performance outcomes. Knowledge management has
performance implications at various levels in the organizations: individual process-level (such as
supply chain cycle time, product development initiatives, and globalization efforts), functional level
(such as performance of various organizational domestic and international units), and the overall
performance of the organization (such as ROI and sales growth).
A number of rigorous research methodologies are needed to address problems in each of the above
areas and other areas related to knowledge management. Hence, analytical modeling approaches,
theory driven empirical studies, case studies based on a company and field research are all welcome.
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Dr. Salim Y. Lakhal
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