Prof Vikas Kumar | University Of The West Of England

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Prof Vikas KumarUniversity of the West of England, Brisol Business School, Faculty MemberaddFollowdoneFollowing

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Dr Vikas Kumar is Professor in Operations and Supply Chain Management at Bristol Business School, University of the West of England, UK. Prior to joining UWE, he worked as a Lecturer at Dublin City University Business School in Republic of Ireland from 2009-2013. In past he has also worked for the University of Hong Kong and University of Exeter.At UWE currently he is teaching modules on 'System, Structures and Operations' and 'Management Research Methods' and actively involved in supervising research masters and doctoral students.He serves on the editorial board of around seven international journals including International J. of Supply Chain and Operations Resilience, Int. J. of Service, Economics, and Management and Int. J. of Manufacturing Systems. He has guest edited a number of special issues including J. of Information Technology (ABS 3*), Supply Chain Management an Int. J. (ABS 3*), Production, Planning & Control (ABS 3*), In. J. of Engineering Management and Economics (IJSEM), Int. J. of Lean Enterprise Research (IJLER), and Int. J. of Lean Six Sigma (IJLSS). He is also reviewer of more than 10 international journals including IJPR, IJPE, PPC, IJPE, SCMIJ, ESWA, IJOPM, JIMS and CAIE.He is currently working on two research projects funded by British Academy/Newton Fund and EPSRC/Innovate UK. His current research focus is on green supply chain management and supply chain integration. His other research interests include sustainable supply chain management, green supply chain, short food supply chains, process modelling, innovation in SMEs, operations strategy, and service supply chains.He is currently supervising a number of Masters and PhD students and he welcomes PhD applications broadly in the area of operations and supply chain management including lean, process modelling, service operations, short food supply chains and sustainable and low carbon supply chains.Phone: +441173283466Address: 6X219, Bristol Business SchoolUniversity of the West of EnglandBristol, BS34 5GA, UKlessInterestsView All (7)

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Papers by Prof Vikas Kumar

Dependability a Key Element for Achieving Competitive Advantage: A Study of Information Service FirmsIFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, 2013In the current economic climate and intense competitive environment achieving sustainable competi... more In the current economic climate and intense competitive environment achieving sustainable competitive advantage has become vital for any organisation's survival. Organisations around the globe are seeking ways to distinguish themselves from their competitors and win customers. This paper attempts to study the significance of sustainable competitive advantage from the information service firms' perspective. The paper argues that service firms can distinguish themselves and attain competitive advantage by performing well on operational performance elements that lead to customer satisfaction, loyalty and ultimately to profitability. Particularly, the paper empirically investigates the importance of dependability and quality in driving customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. The analysis shows that dependability is a key driver of customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. Thus, information service firms should focus more on improving the reliability of their services to achieve competitive advantage and later that may lead to a sustainable competitive advantage.Download Impact of New Technology on Sustainability of Supply Chains: Empirical Evidence from Manufacturing SMEs in ChinaLecture Notes in Information Systems and Organisation Understanding the Role of Digital Technologies in Supply Chain Risks ManagementLecture Notes in Information Systems and OrganisationSupply chain risks have been regarded as one of the most significant threats to business continui... more Supply chain risks have been regarded as one of the most significant threats to business continuity. Digital technology is considered to reform human production and manufacturing methods. In the recent wake of COVID-19, disruptive digital technologies have emerged as a key tool to manage supply chain risks. Therefore, exploring the impact of digital technology on supply chain risks is considered an important topic in the supply chain management domain. The paper reviews different digital technologies such as 3D printing, IoT, Blockchains, RFID and Big Data Analytics used in supply chains. This exploratory study is based on a survey response from 176 supply chain professionals in China. The findings show the role of digital technologies in managing supply chain risks. The study highlights the current level of implementation of digital technologies in supply chain functions and emphasizes the importance of training. Moreover, the study underlines the significance of supply chain data analysis capabilities for supply chain risk management. The study adds to the limited literature exploring the importance of digital technologies in supply chain risk management. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG. Inventory Share Policy Designs for a Sustainable Omni-Chanel E-Commerce NetworkSustainabilityThis paper studies inventory share policies for sustainable omni-channel e-commerce supply networ... more This paper studies inventory share policies for sustainable omni-channel e-commerce supply network design by seeking for a good integration policy of online and offline retailers so that the overall supply network reduce its cost, environmental negative impacts by the decreased number of shipments from the main depot, and increase its responsiveness. By the recent advancement in information technologies and internet use, e-commerce practice gained popularity also to keep up with the competitive environment. The increased competitive supply chain environment has revealed the business-to-business (B2B) concepts enabling business applications between companies. Strategic alliance is a partnership concept realized between two or more organizations ensuring that stages are managed with consideration of the welfare of the others in the whole network. By considering that there are inventory share policies between stages, we accept the existence of strategic alliance implementation in the n...Download Personal development review (PDR) process and engineering staff motivationJournal of Manufacturing Technology Management, 2014Purpose – The academic literature and motivational theory recognise the positive role of motivati... more Purpose – The academic literature and motivational theory recognise the positive role of motivation on organisational performance and considers personal development as a key motivational factor. In practice, most organisations employ a personal development review (PDR) process to drive and plan the development of their staff. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the interrelation and impact of the PDR process, and its elements, on staff motivation. Design/methodology/approach – The study is based on a case study research approach carried out in two large manufacturing-engineering departments of a world-class manufacturing organisation. A survey questionnaire was designed, validated and distributed to the engineering staff and its results were analysed using descriptive statistics. Findings – The study's results indicate that in most of the cases, a PDR process does not by itself motivate staff. But it argues that a poorly designed and conducted PDR process may make motiva... Assessing the environmental impacts of agrifood productionClean Technologies and Environmental Policy, 2021Agriculture, forestry, and other land use approximately contribute to 24 percent of 2010 global g... more Agriculture, forestry, and other land use approximately contribute to 24 percent of 2010 global greenhouse gas (GHGs) emissions. This study, therefore, focuses on assessing the environmental impacts of jasmine rice production. The life cycle assessment method is used to find the hotspots that are of high environmental impacts. Face-to-face interviewing was conducted with 49 rice producers engaged in chemical, organic, and good agricultural practices in farming activities. The results show that most of the emissions were caused during the post-harvest management stage. Following eco-efficiency, organic jasmine rice production offers a reduction in the consumption of resources, reduced impact on the environment, and increased product value. Furthermore, our study shows that crop residue is a key to increase rice yields and decrease GHGs emissions. Our findings thus add to the limited literature on organic jasmine rice production and propose a recommendation for policymakers to promote...Download Auction-based approach to resolve the scheduling problem in the steel making processby Prof Vikas Kumar and M. K TiwariInternational Journal of Production Research, 2006Steel production is an extremely complex process and finding its coherent schedules for the wide ... more Steel production is an extremely complex process and finding its coherent schedules for the wide variety of production steps in a dynamic environment, where disturbances frequently occur, is a challenging task. In the steel production process, the blast furnace continuously produces liquid iron, which is transformed into liquid steel in the melt shop. The majority of the molten steel passes through a continuous caster to form large steel slabs, which are rolled into coils in the hot strip mill. The scheduling system of these processes has very different objectives and constraints, and operates in an environment where there is a substantial quantity of real-time information concerning production failures and customer requests. The steel making process that includes steel making followed by continuous casting is generally the main bottleneck in steel production. Therefore, comprehensive scheduling of this process is critical to improve the quality and productivity of the entire production system. This paper addresses the scheduling problem in steel making process. The methodology of winner determination using combinatorial auction process is employed to solve the aforementioned problem. Combinatorial auction based approaches are capable of minimizing large search space, discontinuity, and noise in order to obtain near optimal solutions. Hence in the proposed work the authors have adopted its splendid characteristics to enhance the quality of the solution in such complex scenarios. In the combinatorial auction, allowing bidding on a combination of assets, offers a way to enhance the efficiency of allocating the assets. In this paper, scheduling problem in steel making has been formulated as a linear integer program to determine the scheduling sequence for different charges. Then bids are obtained for sequencing the charges. Next, a heuristic approach is used to evaluate the bids. The computational results show that our algorithm can obtain optimal or near-optimal solutions for combinatorial problems. The proposed algorithm has been verified by a case study.Download The relevance of outsourcing and leagile strategies in performance optimization of an integrated process planning and scheduling modelby Prof Vikas Kumar and M. K TiwariInternational Journal of Production Research, 2009Over the past few years the grown global competition has enforced the manufacturing industries to... more Over the past few years the grown global competition has enforced the manufacturing industries to upgrade their old production strategies with the modern day approaches. As a result of which, recent interest has been developed towards finding an appropriate policy that could enable them to compete with others, and facilitate them to emerge as a market winner. Keeping in mind the abovementioned facts, in this paper the authors have proposed an integrated process planning and scheduling model inheriting the salient features of outsourcing, and leagile principles to compete in the existing market scenario. The paper also proposes a model based on leagile principles, where the integrated planning management has been practiced. In the present work a scheduling problem has been considered and overall minimization of makespan has been aimed. The paper shows the relevance of both the strategies in performance enhancement of the industries, in terms of their reduced makespan. The authors have also proposed a new hybrid Enhanced Swift Converging Simulated Annealing (ESCSA) algorithm, to solve the complex real time scheduling problems. The proposed algorithm inherits the prominent features of the Genetic Algorithm (GA), Simulated Annealing (SA), and the Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC). The ESCSA algorithm reduces the makespan significantly in less computational time and number of iterations. The efficacy of the proposed algorithm has been shown by comparing the results with GA, SA, Tabu, and hybrid Tabu-SA optimization methods.Download Performance optimization of a leagility inspired supply chain model: a CFGTSA algorithm based approachInternational Journal of Production Research, 2009Lean and agile principles have grown interest in the past few decades. The industrial sectors thr... more Lean and agile principles have grown interest in the past few decades. The industrial sectors throughout the world are upgrading to these principles to enhance their performance, since they have proven to be efficient in handling supply chains. However, the present market trend demanded a more robust strategy inheriting the salient features of both lean and agile principles. Inspired by these, the leagility principle has been emerged encapsulating, features of lean and agile. The present work proposes a leagile supply chain based model, for the manufacturing industries. The paper accentuates the various aspects of leagile supply chain modeling and implementation, and proposes a new Hybrid Chaos-based Fast Genetic Tabu Simulated Annealing (CFGTSA) algorithm to solve the complex scheduling problem prevailing in leagile environment. The proposed CFGTSA algorithm has been compared to GA, SA, TS, and Hybrid Tabu SA algorithms to reveal its efficacy in handling the complex scheduling problems.Download ×Close

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